Mystical Map

A fresh and cool concept for a rogue-lite with a bunch of neat items and weapons to find and use. I don’t often play these types of games but it looked interesting and hey, it’s cheap lol. Definitely a fun little game to pick up and play for a bit to challenge yourself!

Very fun game that I'm absolutely terrible at.

There are some parts of a good game here, but it falls a bit flat, I can't recommend it universally, but it's a fair gamble for the price if you are interested at all. The game is pretty difficult, with combat being largely hit and run, tedious and slow, with enemies tanking a lot of damage from you, but huge chunks of health from you. Enemy placement is punishing, unfairly so when you drop down and get instantly hit with nowhere to go. If you think you should learn from this and slide to a side when dropping, sometimes the enemies are on the side, so no real way of telling. Building a map is a neat idea, but it just appears to shuffle the same "rooms", you are mainly picking the order or drawing a map to avoid things. There doesn't appear to be any incentive to fighting beyond escaping locked rooms, you can run away and avoid most fights. The platforming rooms are a bit awkward, and simply repeat. The game has no stopping points so far, explains very little and has no way to exit the game outside of pressing Alt-F4. I think you need to complete a boss fight to save your game? Can you save? Is there a point to getting oil or items? Is it just each run and it resets, no meta progress? Either way, the boss was quite frustrating, as you can only whittle away it's health, hoping you timed your escape right, but the timing changes and the boss ramps into different attacks that require more trial and error to figure out. With no option to parry or block, all you can do is walk away or do your fixed distance dash on a timer/limit per jump. Some balancing or UI could help this title out, it has a great concept, graphics and controller support, but is lacking in level design and combat variety, but with over 2 years of development, changes this late seems doubtful.

If you're looking for a bite-sized game for a reasonable price then I recommend giving this a try. I'm generally not big on roguelikes, but I do love metroidvanias so the map system scratches that itch nicely on planning out how many items I'd like to get on each run or if I just want to speed through it. For a first attempt solo dev project made in his spare time I think this game turned out pretty solid.

A really inventive take on the roguelike formula, getting to plot out your own map path swaps the uncertainty of the usual randomly-generated map ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ for a cooler feeling of ownership. I made the dungeon that is now whooping my ass, that rocks

A great little title, with solid variety and challenge! Runs are short, but the variety of sub-weapons and relics keeps things fresh every time through! Well worth the $4 price tag!

Never been the best at games like this, but I liked the concept of choosing my own direction! Have been enjoying the gameplay quite a bit even if I die a lot. The game keeps making want to try again and see if I can do better! Combat can be a bit grindy at first, but once you get things down and do some trial and error, it's a lot of fun!

---{ Graphics }--- ☑ Very good The enemy design, map aesthetic, and animations, in particular, are really nice! If you're a "pixel" art fan, this is for you! ---{ Gameplay }--- ☑ Very good Super solid 2-D platforming that is reminiscent of games like Blasphemous, Risk of Rain (the first one), and platformers like Celeste. The challenge of the enemies and bosses is definitely on the tougher side, but still rewarding and not frustrating. Beyond that, the charting mechanic for building out your route adds a bit of strategy to approaching a given map. ---{ Audio }--- ☑ Very good Excellent audio design ranging from the actual music of maps, menus, and the like. Additionally, the sound effects for actions are top-notch and add a bit of weight to your actions throughout the game. Beyond that, the audio for enemies helps provide a feel for what they are getting up to. ---{ Audience }--- ☑ Anyone As mentioned before, if you like more challenging 2-D action platforming games, you'll feel right at home playing this one. ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☑ Potato Check the specs; you can get away with playing this on just about anything. ---{ Game Size }--- ☑ Roughly 300 MB ---{ Difficulty }--- ☑ Difficult but rewarding While you may hit a wall sometimes or not get the best items on a particular run, that's the point of a rogue-lite game. Most of the difficulty for me came from tricky enemies and tough platforming challenges. However, it all felt fair. There was always something I could have done better or thought about how to use my loadout better. ---{ Grind }--- ☑ Average grind level It's a rogue-lite, so some items/upgrades are locked behind the in-game currency dropped by enemies. That said, it's not something you have to think about much, and choosing which enemies to fight and which enemies to skip definitely feels like the game's intention. No need to grind, but it can be helpful for those upgrades! ---{ Game Time }--- ☑ Average Each run is relatively short. That said, Mystical Map is the perfect game to play in short bursts when I need a quick gaming session. However, when you get a good build (bow + the damage dodge boots), you might find yourself playing for much longer than initially anticipated! ---{ Price }--- ☑ Worth the price It's $3.99 USD. What more do I need to say? ---{ Bugs }--- ☑ Never heard of I haven't run into any yet! ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☑ 10 Overall, it's a super fun game that I'm looking forward to spending more time with and exploiting weird builds in (✿◠‿◠)

Amazingly fun roguelike platformer. Can't wait to sink more hours into this game!

Very fun game. I don't play too many games on Steam because I'm a filthy casual who likes his consoles but games like Mystical Map may change that.