Everyone needs to start somewhere and that includes witches. When apprentice-witch Mika needs training she’s sent to learn under the powerful eye of Olagari, who promptly kicks her off the mountain to see what she can do. The answer to that question, as it turns out, is “not much”, especially after the landing breaks her family broom and leaves her grounded. A local tinker helps fix the broom but it’s not getting Mika back to the top of the mountain ever again, so she’s now taking on odd jobs to earn the money needed to buy a broom good enough to get back up there. The small island is filled with people who need deliveries completed, and every successful job is one more coin in the bank plus sees Mika learn the island and its residents. Whether that latter result is part of Olagari’s plan or not is a mystery, but seeing as becoming a witch is as much about the people as the magic it’s a good result.
Mika and the Witch’s Mountain landed on Kickstarter yesterday and promptly took off. It’s basically a self-admitted fusion of Kiki’s Delivery Service and Zelda: Wind Waker, featuring a young witch flying through the island’s free-roaming skies delivering packages and trying not to let them get too dinged up along the way. I got to play a (very short) demo to get a sense of the game and its flight mechanics, and it showed off a cute and super-likeable adventure in a colorful world with what promises to be lovely free-flight broom riding. Hopping on and off the broom is done with the touch of a button, and the left and right triggers cause Mika to slow down and dive or ascend with a burst of speed, respectively. Just flying along sees Mika slowly sink to the ground, so you’ll need to tend to her speed on a regular basis. The demo didn’t get much farther than flying over the houses at sea level, but there were updrafts scattered across the landscape to help get Mika some quick altitude. Because the deliveries were from the earliest part of the game they didn’t need much in the way of height to complete, but even just tooling around on the broom in the small opening area felt good.
TheKickstarter campaignfor Mika and the Witch’s Mountain has already blown past its initial target plus a couple of stretch goals, including a physical Switch version. It’s a lovely little thing, promising to be short and sweet at about four hours of gameplay total, with the full release planned for later this year. Check out the trailer below to see it in motion, complete with animated cut-scenes for the story bits.
