Review: Mika and the Witch’s Mountain lets you live out your Kiki’s Delivery Service dreams

Mika and the Witch’s Mountain is a lovely little fantasy adventure game where Mika strikes out on her own to be a formal witch. Her path isn’t linear, however, and to reach her goals she has to figure out a way to climb the mountain where her mentor is.

Through the kindness of the village resting at the bottom of the mountain, she finds a job and a place to stay. You’ll play as Mika as she rides around the island on her broom helping to deliver packages and lost objects to the patrons.

Personally, any time I get to do anything remotely witchy, I’m excited and I’m so pleased with this experience. 

Mika and the Witch’s Mountain: You’ve got Mail!

Mika and the Witch’s Mountain is visually interesting. There are cutscenes that almost feel like you’re watching an older cartoon which I found delightful. I enjoyed the environment and the mishmash of different types of people that make up the main town.

You start the game at the top of the Witch Mountain, meeting the witch that is going to teach you. Unfortunately, she’s a bit miserable as far as personalities go and isn’t impressed that you were essentially dropped off the easy way.

So, what’s a witch to do but throw you off a mountain? Yeah, we got yeeted right off the top and landed down in the town below. Our goal is to climb the mountain on our own merits and prove that we are worth training.

Unfortunately, when we were Sparta’d off the side, we broke our broom and now need money to repair it. This is where we meet Allegra, a woman who can help us fix our broom and give us a place to stay. She, also, introduces us to Greff, a man that runs the delivery service on the island.

There’s a trial run, but once we get through that, we’re officially delivery people! As we complete deliveries, we’ll earn money that we can then use to upgrade our broom. It’ll need several upgrades before you can ascend the mountain fully. So, settle into your role.

You’ll be spending a lot of time flying circles around the island to help patrons and it’s not always as simple as making a trip from A to B. Your packages may have caveats on how they need to be treated. Some packages are delicate and will lose health if they get banged into things or get damaged by getting wet. 

You couldn’t fly your way out of a wet cardboard box… or something

It seems simple enough not to aggravate a package, but you don’t have infinite flight. Your broom will boost once before it starts to lower and you won’t get another boost until you touch ground or hit an air tunnel. This means that if you have to fly over the ocean, you have to be very mindful of the route to ensure you don’t get the package wet.

As for navigating the tunnels, you have two different types (three, technically, but you don’t have to worry about the third which is a “tornado” vortex until later in the game). Mostly, you’ll see vertical tunnels and horizontal ones. Vertical will push you up to the top of the tunnel and horizontal will speed you up. It’s during these horizontal ones that your broom can get a little caddywompus and you may damage your package.

When you first start, you can only hold one thing and it will dangle from the handle of your broom. But, as you unlock more brooms, you’ll be able to hold even more stuff. This is great for being able to get more stuff done, but that’s even more items dangling down the line from your broom and more opportunities to accidentally hurt a package.

Luckily, if you damage something, you can switch to the item and hold ‘B’ to send it back to spawn and try again. It’s pretty easy to get good marks, but I’ll just go ahead and tell you that there is a miserly character on the island, and no matter how fast or how well you do, he’s going to give you a bad mark.

And that’s most of the game, honestly. As you play, you’ll find hidden objects and collectibles that can be used to open up other parts of the island or customize your character. What I think this game does well is give you several things to focus on at once. 

Sorry, can’t hear you, I’m too busy flying away

If you just want to work on packages, you can do so. If you want to scour for the little statuette collectibles that are used as currency, you can. This game falls into my fetch-quest genre of games that I love so well. So, I have to caution anyone who isn’t into the side quest life: you may not enjoy this game. It really is back and forth with the characters adding the richness and story as you play.

As far as controls go, I found the broom to handle well, but it’s not perfect. The broom is a touch too responsive and it can make picking up items while in flight a pain, but it’s as simple as dismounting to grab the item and then hopping back onto your broom.

I do have some things that I have a few gripes with, but for the most part, the game is lovely. There were a few instances of typos, but nothing egregious. Mostly, I have an issue with the fact that some things never get explained. Part of your collectibles are tarot cards that you can find, however the game acts as if they don’t exist. You only learn they exist by seeing them in your inventory and, even then, it’s only the backs.

Thankfully, there is one tarot card that is given to you during gameplay, so you get some clue about what those cards are. However, you never learn how to find more. So, I’m just going to tell you. Dotted around the island are giant amphoras (Grecian-style vases) and if you drop on top of them from a high enough height, they will shatter. Each amphora has a tarot card in it. 

Additionally, there is a spot to buy outfits and charms to customize your look. They’re not cheap with outfits ranging from 30-40 statuettes and charms being 10-20 each. Well, in the main village, there is a place to input codes and it appears that if you know the code, you can get two of those outfits from inputting the code instead of spending 70 of your currency. 

This is not what I meant when I said, “Shut up and take my money”

Of course, I found this out AFTER I’d bought them. Truly a shocked Pikachu moment as I was standing there broke with more charms left to buy. To learn I could have spent that money finishing the charms instead felt a bit like a kick in the neck; but, I digress. I’m telling you so that you don’t have to be me. (If you want to know the codes, there are guides in the Steam community that have them.)

All in all, I got a little less than 8 hours of gameplay out of it for the main story, but I still have a few things I can do on the island. There are some packages to find, statuettes to collect, and a charm set to finish. So, you’re looking at about maybe 9-10 hours unless I’m missing something else the game didn’t inform me of.

I found Mika and the Witch’s Mountain to be a delightful way to pass the time and really enjoyed the ability to be able to zoom around on a broom.

In addition to the regular missions, there are some races around the island that you can do, but I’m here for a good time and I know my limits. Spyro games have ruined timed races for me for life. 

If you want to give Mika and the Witch’s Mountain a try, you can get it on Steam, Nintendo Switch, Xbox, or PlayStation for $19.99. If you want to give a different game a chance, you can check out the review we did on PRIM.