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Mika and the Witch’s Mountain (Switch): COMPLETED!

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I have a soft spot for games by Chibig. I like how they’re all set in the same universe, often with recurring characters (like Mûn). Probably the biggest game of theirs was Summer in Mara, a sort of Wind Waker-ish, Harvest Moon-lite adventure. Most of their games are of slightly different genres too.

Mika and the Witch’s Mountain is a sort of arcade adventure. It’s set on an island, at the top of which is a witch, whom you want to train you up but she immediately throws you off her mountain and you have to make your way back up by completing tasks for the locals to earn enough to repair your broomstick to the point where it can fly high enough.

Basically, you run (and fly, a bit) round the island collecting and delivering things. Most items you deliver need to stay dry and undamaged, so you can’t slam into rocks or take a swim, but (a few items aside) it’s not too tricky. The draw is in the characters and interactions, which Chibig do very well.

There are a handful of puzzles, and the odd bit of difficult traversal, but it’s mostly laid back and stressless. The island has a number of secrets to discover and exploring every inch of it is fun. There are a few character-related side stories too, like the relationship between the two fishermen or the unruly children of an artist who has lost his mojo, which (naturally) you get involved in and try to resolve.

Another joyous blue-skies game in the series.

Castaway (Switch): COMPLETED!

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Yes, it does look a lot like a Game Boy Colour Zelda game. It feels a bit like one too, not least because you have a sword and a hookshot and there are block pushing puzzles just like in Link’s Awakening. Only it’s only an hour or two long and there are only really three short dungeons.

Which is fine. It was enjoyable and tight and all that.

Once completed, however, you get access to a roguelike dungeon mode, where you have 50 small rooms with increasingly difficult baddies and traps to get past, with random upgrades every time you’ve collected enough XP. A run here will be maybe 45 minutes or so, and it’s great. I completed this too, but it did take about 10 or 12 runs to do so. Tip: the seemingly useless pickaxe upgrades should not be ignored (like I kept doing) as they make the final boss much easier.

The Fairyland Story (Evercade): COMPLETED!

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This is one of the games on the recent Taito cartridge for the Evercade. I’m not 100% on the timings, but it feels very much like a precursor to Bubble Bobble – loads of single screen platforming, baddies to destroy, a particularly nasty baddie that appears if you take too long, and so on. It isn’t anywhere near as much fun as Bubble Bobble though.

The main issue I had is that often, especially on later levels, some of the baddies are really difficult to reach, especially without accidentally colliding with them and dying. There’s a level right near the end – level 95, I think – where the screen is sort of split in two and if you’re playing single player (like I was) then you can’t physically get from the left side of the screen to the right side. I can demonstrate with this screenshot from StrategyWiki:

You’re the witchy looking woman in red. The issue is that there’s no way to do a “small” jump to get over the four blocks at the bottom without jumping too high and ending up on the platform above. Except… there is. Thanks to a web search and a very old post on GameFAQs, I found that if you tap jump and then immediately tap right, then providing you’re standing in the right place, you can do a tiny jump. Get the timings or length of tap wrong and you don’t, so even if you know how it’s still nearly impossible. Literally nowhere in the game does it say this either directly or indirectly. Nowhere else in the game is it necessary. How arcade gamers in the 1980s without GameFAQs managed this I have no idea.

You can also see in that screenshot that neither of the baddies are actually reachable even if you do this. You have to coax them out by climbing higher up the screen than them. Which is a pain.

So, it’s not a great game. I completed it mainly because I’d started so I had to finish, but there are far better single screen arcade games like this out there. Still, if it wasn’t for the mistakes of The Fairyland Story maybe we wouldn’t have Bubble Bobble.

Picross S Namco Legendary Edition (Switch): COMPLETED!

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It’s been a while since I last completed a Picross game, but I’ve actually been playing this one off and on for six months or more. It is, as they always are, more of the same – a polished, Jupiter developed, game of Picross with loads of puzzles.

The difference this time, however, is that it’s Namco themed. Specifically, 8-bit Namco games from the 1980s. Pixel representations of the likes of Dig Dug, The Tower of Druaga, Pac-Man, Rally-X, Mappy, Xevious and several Japanese titles I’ve never heard of, all in Picross puzzle form. Excellent.

Aside from the music. I mean, I love the Mappy theme tune as much as anyone, but the same 8 seconds over it repeating overandoverandoverandover for a 45 minute puzzle? Nah mate, that got turned down fast.

Teddison Inc (Playdate): COMPLETED!

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Teddison Inc is a cookie-clicker type numbers-go-up game. You’re a bear (for no explained reason, except – presumably – to enable the pun in the title) and you’d discovered you can use a bike to generate electricity. So you crank the Playdate and the number of watts goes up.

Then you can spend these watts to buy automations so you no longer have to crank. And more cyclists. And then better electricity generators like solar farms and wind turbines, as well as upgrades like better bike cranks to make existing generators more efficient. Soon you’re generating kilowatts, megawatts, and so on as the number go ever higher.

Unlike some of these clicker games where you have to leave them running overnight to get enough currency to progress, the whole game here is doable in a single sitting of about an hour. Which feels a bit short, but it’s fine. Some irony in a game about generating power using less power to play than other games in the same genre, I suppose.