Mika and the Witch’s Mountain [Review]
Pushed off a mountain with no power and a broken broom. Mika is tasked with proving herself to her teacher and returning to the top of the mountain on her own. Unfortunately money is needed to repair her broom. In this beautifully crafted world Mika must work as a delivery girl and earn enough money to fix her broom to return to school. Mika and the Witch’s Mountain is a short and cute game developed by Chibig and published by both Chibij and Nukefist. Mika and the Witch’s Mountain is best described as an adorable and cozy game—just something calm and quiet to sit down and play. The game’s chibi art style has clear inspiration from games like Wind Waker and A Hat in Time, though it plays like neither of its inspirations. The gameplay consists of Mika delivering packages to the villagers that live at the base of the mountain.
The map was much bigger than I was anticipating, there are three major locations on the island, with many little things in between. Mika falls in love with the townspeople quickly and wants to do what she can to help. This means she will find lost and hidden items throughout the island, that’s up to you to find out to whom they belong. When I was presented with the side quests, I was a bit annoyed because the item didn’t tell me where to deliver it. But reading the description, it’s fairly obvious if you just pay attention. Like how one item you find is described as “potentially a good ice cream topping,” so obviously it belongs to the ice cream salesman.
Of course, the side quests are optional, the main objective is to deliver mail for money so Mika can buy a stronger broom that’s strong enough to fly to the top of the mountain she was pushed off of. Though the game is short, even with the side quests, I managed to complete every objective and find every hidden item (aside from one single kite!) in about five hours. I think this game would benefit more from being longer. When I turned it on, I was expecting something like going back and forth between people for hours. Something like Crazy Taxi (though less chaotic, of course) when it came to the objectives. But there isn’t much replay value in Mika and the Witch’s Mountain.
The game isn’t too expensive—around $17 digitally, which makes sense for a game that's so short. I thoroughly enjoyed Mika and the Witch’s Mountain. As someone who loves short, cozy games, I think it’s worth the price that is asked for it. Though the game seems to need some polish, I played the Switch version of the game, so I don’t know how stable it is on PC, but I came across a lot of graphical glitches. Especially when looking over the ocean, black lines would skate across the screen every once in a while, and occasionally items that were being held would glitch in and out of existence. Luckily every glitch I came across was simply visual, none of them affected the gameplay, but they were still noticeable.
Even with the glitches making the game feel a bit unstable, the game was fun and was a very good distraction. It was easy to immerse myself and just ignore what was going on around me. The movement was natural and easy to grasp, which was nice since the entire game was about flying back and forth. I’ll be giving Mika an 8/10. The game is currently available on Switch, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox One, and PC.