Mika and the Witch’s Mountain Review (Switch)

Delivery! Ignore those dents and how damp it is.

I’m not sure why, but there’s just something about delivering mail that really interests me. Especially so if the character you play happens to be a witch and you’ll be utilizing a flying broom to help you deliver said mail. No matter if I tell myself I won’t play it, the allure wins in the end. So, how did this one turn out?

In Mika and the Witch’s Mountain you play as a young girl named, you guessed it, Mika. She wants to become a witch like her mother and we start the game with her just arriving at a place called Mout Gaun where an old witch named Olagari resides in the Stellar Lighthouse at the very top of the mountain. Olagari taught Mika’s mother and she wants to learn from her too, even got a recommendation letter written by her mother. However, it does not go so well. After a quick talk with Mika and being disappointed with how nonchalent she was, Olagari drops Mika off her mountain and sends Mika plummeting down. Leaving Mika with her first lesson: get back to the peak of Mout Gaun on her own. Mika doesn’t take it too badly, but her broom does break on impact since she wasn’t as good at flying as she thought. Luckily, Mika fell pretty close to a developed town on the island called Orilla Town. Here, she not only finds someone to fix her broom, Allegra, but also a job so she could pay Allegra to make new brooms.

It seems like witches don’t work, but Mika takes one up as she really needs a new broom. Allegra tells Mika about it and she takes it up once she speaks to the boss. If you read the premise of this game, you’ll know this job is to deliver mail! Greff, the boss of this island’s delivery company, hires her quickly due to her enthusiasm and having no workers. It sounds good at first, it being no pressure and being able to handle your own schedule, but then he reveals how he treats his employees (don’t worry, you only have to deal with him for the first half of the game). After you learn about the grading and damage system, you’re all set. From here on, you’ll be taking on deliveries and, whenever you deliver something, be able to have a conversation with the recipient. You’ll also end up helping the residents here thanks to the deliveries you’ll be able to deliver for them.

I found the story to be pretty alright. I do like the framing of the game and how it starts. You do need some kind of excuse and being literally thrown off and having to work your way back is a good one. I also like how delivering mail starts with you needing the money to repair your broom, and then buy a new one, but soon Mika ends up doing it just cause she wants to help out the people that she met. I do also like how a lot of the characters will change their location and their overworld dialogue. However, the game can’t seem to pick whether it wants Mika more involved in the town or just hearing snippets of what’s happening and hearing a bit of some of the character’s backstories. The first half builds up two antagonists, Greff and W.Soot, but they completely drop off after the first half. You’re also left with 30 coins that don’t get used after this. The few conversations you have with characters are also used to point to bringing up issues, but I feel doesn’t really do much other than that and makes some conversations end awkwardly. The sad thing is, the game was doing a good job with Greff and W.Soot, but they just get dropped after Day 2. There’s no (clear) resolution, W.Soot just disappears after Day 2, a quest chain references him, both get a joke appearance implied to be them at an event, and then Greff only gets one set location and line before disappearing after getting the ending. The factory doesn’t even get shut down after you deliver a certain item. I also thought the story was leading to Mika making her own delivery service, but it didn’t end up happening.

Long story short, I wished the game either fully committed to the storyline centered around Greff and W.Soot or have Mika indirectly being involved through helping the residents of the island (especially since a lot of the deliveries are framed as favors and the story deliveries are structured like a quest chain). After all, a lot of the story deliveries do act as mini-stories already.

Also, no one helps Mun down from the tree. Help the girl out!

Although, I did find the foreshadowing of the twist that gets revealed at the end pretty clever. I was not expecting it, I literally had a “wait, what?!?” reaction, but looking back at the interactions it makes total sense. It even makes some aspects that I found a bit strange make total sense retroactively. It does well in hiding it as it plays with what you expect how characters would act.

Now, it’s no time to dawdle. Let’s deliver some packages! When you first start out, you fly on Mika’s repaired broom, which is a miracle it still flies, and work your way up to getting broom upgrades. You start with the basic movement, but more mechanics are introduced as the next broom upgrade is able to handle it. At first, you’re only able to fly close to the ground (or water) with it, dive, and gain a bit of height with a jump. You get each broom upgrade at the beginning of a chapter, or day, as you’ve earned it by then (plus the deliveries for that day does need the mechanic you just unlocked). You’ll unlock the ability to ride the airstreams, where horizontal ones will give you a nice speed boost and vertical ones letting you gain height; gain a boost which will give you a speed boost (of course) as well as a height boost; be able to use ancient tech (which gives you another speed boost option and lets you open up the map more once you do what’s needed); and be able to ride up strong winds. The amount of items you’ll be able to carry also increases with each broom upgrade. Some areas on the island are tricky to get to, but you can use the airstreams to help out, letting you gain height and stay in the air as there are airstreams above ground level, or just the environment to jump and using boost to boost your way up a to a small platform. You can also find these magic orbs to activate what are basically air slingshots that are located in the ocean (pretty helpful if you needed to do something out in the water) and activate vertical airstreams (which really only happens once outside of the end game climb) for a handy shortcut. You can dismount Mika’s broom at any time as well to run on foot, so no need to stay on it.

Alright, with movement out of the way let’s get to doing deliveries. A lot of deliveries will have Mika holding the item once you get out of dialogue, but you can just grab the items and fly off. Of course, if your broom lets you or else you’ll just drop what you’re holding. Anyway, delivering mail is actually pretty easy. You’ll just need to take it to its recipient, which you’ll be told who it is and where they are on the map, and make it to them with the item in one piece. This is where some difficulty comes in. Everyone of course wants their item to arrive undamaged and it’s up to you to get it there without it being destroyed. A little damage is fine. Packages can be damaged when they get wet, take damage, or when time runs out. Luckily, these aren’t all at once and you’ll know what will damage it based on the icons accompanying the item artwork. Plus, there’s like only a few packages that are timed. Most of the packages also has its own health, which is how much damage it can take before it’s ruined. I did find that the game is lenient on water damage, as a little dip is fine as long as it’s immediately taken out, but not so much if you accidentally drop it and it splashes in the water (yes, this happened to me with a TV…it was kinda funny). Damage is also determined by how fast you were approaching the ground or a side of the mountain or bluff. Mika doesn’t get hurt, but you do hear a good smack if you hit the side of, say, the mountain when you speed is boosted or if you fall from a high height. This is something you can’t really describe as you’ll learn what’s too high or too fast as you play. Though, you might get annoyed at the south Windy Meadows if you enter it from the wrong direction as that’s a “smacking into the side of small bluff” minefield. There was only one time I felt that damaged the item unfairly, which was when I was trying to climb up the mountain using some rocks as a makeshift shortcut and the item happened to hit the edge of the little cliff.

Technically there is a rating system, but you’ll be fine as long as you’re not delivering destroyed items (if that is possible). The only time you’ll have anything but a green stamp is through story events. Talking about the destroyed items, don’t worry about accidentally destroying the package. You can reset the item and send it back to the original location to get another chance. It will also reset if you leave it on the ground or in water for too long or you move too far away from it. You can also drop items at any time and cycle through what you want to be holding (which is what will be dropped) without dropping everything before it.

Aside from the story deliveries, there are also some side deliveries. You don’t have to delivery these, but you’ll find items as you’re exploring that you will be able to return to its owner. However, you won’t know who it is. You get a hint on who it could be and you just have to deduce it based on what you already know about the various characters. Some are even ones where you have to find three of an item and deliver them. I quite liked this. I found that the story deliveries do often bring you to where these optional deliveries are located. Most items do also glitter, which helps spot them, but you might just instinctively grab an item when you see the prompt if you’re like me. Overall, there were only two side deliveries that I had a bit of trouble finding who the recipient is due to thinking it was for someone else.

Of course, there are collectibles here. There are two types scattered all around the island, one is pretty easy to spot while the other isn’t. The first collectible you’ll be able to grab are these small statues called Napopo statuettes. There are a ton of these little statuettes, 100 in fact, ranging in colors. These guys can be hard to spot, especially since a good portion are well hidden, but you can use these to buy optional customization for Mika! Once you find the Offering Fountain, you can buy two outfits and three charms for Mika. I bought the black cat witch outfit cause it looked cute and a tadpole charm for her broom cause it also looked cute. Though, the charm is pretty hard to really spot. It hangs off of Mika’s broom and it’s so small it’s hard to see that it’s even there (at least on the Switch). I actually thought it was a bug since I thought it would be a charm for Mika’s backpack.

The tutorial mentions buying broom trails, but that is not true in this version of the game. I was a bit confused when I found no broom trails, but you instead find these while exploring. There are these statues that are hidden in the tough-to-get-to spots that will give you the trails when you interact with them. Honestly, I liked this as you would already be exploring all around anyway. On that, I liked all of the trails, but I stuck with the witchy one the most.

The other collectible are tarot cards. It’ll take you a while to be able to get these as you do need a good enough broom. There are these huge jars, called Simiente jars, that are places all around the island. These are pretty sturdy, but you can break them if you fall from a high enough height. When you do, you’ll get a tarot cards featuring a significant area or a character. Sadly, they are only to look pretty and don’t have an interesting blurb about that location or character. I did also notice that two of the jars had the same tarot card show in the pop-up (the Death card), but the correct card is added to your collection. I will also mention that three tarot cards are on the path up to Mout Gaun so don’t fly all around looking for your last three if you wanted to get them all before you get the ending.

Though, I wouldn’t worry about trying to find all the collectibles before getting the ending. Once you complete the story, you’re set free to explore the world again and do anything that you didn’t do yet.

I really liked the gameplay here. I was a bit worried over how it would feel flying, as I did hear some mentioning that it felt wonky and a demo playthrough I watched made it seem wonky, but there was nothing to worry about. I actually had no problem handling the flying controls and the only thing I had to get used to was fishing and realizing to just get off the broom instead of circling around a boat to try to hover over it. Maybe it helped that I did play some other games where movement felt wonky, namely Flying Neko Delivery and Demon Turf: Neon Splash, or maybe it was tweaked before final release. Either way, I liked how movement felt on the broom. I also did like how there was a bit of difficulty introduced with package health, but also you are able to reset packages in case you accidentally did break it too much. I also did enjoy delivering the packages, finding optional stuff, and how mechanics are unlocked when upgrade your broom (as well as it getting faster); which is a major plus for a game like Mika and the Witch’s Mountain.

There are two content updates that Mika and the Witch’s Mountain have planned, the first in October and the second in December. This is the reason why the game is listed as early access on Steam despite being released on a console. Basically, these content updates will include some minigames, more side deliveries (which may be the planned dungeons), more outfits, more broom trails, and broom tricks (whatever that might mean). Honestly, I do wish some of the planned additions were already in as it’s already partly in the game. Namely, fishing and kitties. Fishing is used early on for one of the first deliveries and afterwards you there are three fishbowls and three fish that spawn. However, these have no use as giving them to O’Vel isn’t in the game yet (I was so confused when I tried). The kitties are less so obvious, but I did feel that they were supposed to be a side delivery.

Also, I have to say that I nearly passed this game up due to it being listed as Early Access on Steam. I’m someone that now waits until games leave Early Access and I was a bit confused when I saw this was releasing on the Switch. After all, consoles don’t really do early access titles. I picked it up after reading the developers assuring that the game’s main game is already finished and it’s just more optional side stuff they wanted to add not included yet. I can safely say yeah, that was the truth. There are only two aspects that do feel like the implementation is missing (which I already mentioned in the previous paragraph), but the game does feel finished.

There are some negatives that I found while playing through Mika and the Witch’s Mountain. The first is the control scheme. It’s mainly good, but it’s so weird that the jump button is “X” and the usual button for it, “B”, is used to drop packages or to send it back to its original spot. It was so awkward to use “X” for jump and while I did get used to it as I played more, I did still find myself reaching for “B” when I wanted to jump and having to remember that it’s not that button right before I pressed it (or sometimes afterwards). Luckily, the majority of the time I was trying to jump with “B” I had no packages, but there were a good couple times when I did, with a few being packages that got ruined due to me being over water or being high enough to damage the package. I really wished there was a rebind buttons option in the options just to switch the buttons for jumping and dropping packages. I did also notice one journal entry for one of the items being cut off due to it going longer than the spot designated for it. There’s also no use for the 30 coins you get in the first half of the game and I was expecting someone to need it. There are also a few mistakes in the script (one that I remember is mixing up “How” and “Who”).

Other negatives are that I do wish there was a bit more information added to the map or that you’re able to add stuff to the map. Like marking the original spot of an optional delivery item that was sent back, letting you mark a couple spots, and circling the general area for where the sponges are. I did have two moments where I lost the items I had, but I was lucky that the optional delivery item I had was close to a story delivery item. You do also lose the items you had when you exit the game, so keep that in mind too. I think marking spots on the map would have been helpful for the spots you can’t get to yet, like the spots that are on fire, where you put in the magic orbs, or where the Offering Fountain is. I got stuck once and that was due to not being able to find a sponge to progress a story delivery. Luckily, most of the time I was doing the other story deliveries and optional deliveries, but it would have helped having a hint on where to find the sponges. It wasn’t clear whether it was an actual sponge or a sea sponge. And even then, it doesn’t glitter so you can’t fly over and spot it.

There was also one optional delivery that I felt didn’t make a lot of sense. You find an ostrich egg with a scarf around it so you, of course, bring it to the ostrich farm. However, no one takes it. Not even the person that talks out loud how there’s a missing egg and they put their scarf over it. You, instead, have to bring it to the owner’s son, who was still in Orilla Town.

I found the art pretty charming and I felt it translated well to 3D. I liked the art style for their sprites, although they do block words if the dialogue is too long, loved how cute the sprites are for the delivery items, and I loved how beautiful the tarot cards are. The few animated cutscenes also looked really nice. I’m used to graphics on the Switch being fuzzy, but man was it a shame here. There were so many points where I wished there was a photo mode. For the music, it was good whenever the music actually was playing for me. I did like the sound effects, especially the one for when you just smack into a bluff (it sounded so painful), but I felt like it could have used more ambiance. A lot of the time it was so quiet where it felt there should have been some cozy music or something.

Talking about the game on the Switch, I did find that the game played really well. I had no issues on its performance, even when I was flying down from a high height and looking down at the more dense parts of the map, flying fast, or spinning the camera at any situation that could have affected the performance. The only thing I noticed was that the fish in the fishbowls can just disappear, acting like there’s no fish in there even though the icon shows there is one, and the text saying “Day __” strangely had half of “Day” cut off.

Verdict

Overall, Mika and the Witch’s Mountain turned out to be good. I was a bit worried going in, since I heard flying on the broom was a bit wonky, but I had no trouble. While I’m pretty neutral on the story, I did like interacting with the various characters, delivering their mail, finding the optional deliveries, and finding the collectibles so I could afford one of the outfits. Really, the only thing I was hoping was that it would feel good to play and this game achieved that. I was a bit hesitant at this being labeled early access on Steam, but I’m happy that I did end up playing it.

I’m a bit mixed on the pricing, but I’d say if you want to play a game where you’re delivering mail, check it out. It is short though, I ended my playthrough at five and a half hours and I did everything but find all the statuettes, so while I did have a good time with the game, it’s probably best to get it when discounted. Also, if you played Flying Neko Delivery and liked it, you would like Mika and the Witch’s Mountain as well! There’s also a demo for this on the Switch, which I just now learned about as I was writing up this review. I wished I knew about it, but it doesn’t matter now since I ended up liking this game anyway.