Genre: Indie
Developer: Morphcat Games
Publisher: Morphcat Games UG
Release Date: May 1, 2019
Price: $10.99
Micro Mages makes my heart happy. The game is a classic platformer that was developed to run on the NES, but that has now made it’s way onto Steam. There’s just something about limitations, in this case developing for the NES hardware, that pushes developers to do some really cool things. It’s why the forward motion in this industry is done by indie studios which is then ripped off by AAA studios.
Micro Mages is super simple to understand and play. You control a tiny wizard dude inside a huge fortress. It’s your job scale said fortress by jumping off walls, collecting treasure and dealing with enemies along the way. Since the NES only had two buttons, you have two buttons to work with. Once can jump and the other can shoot. And when you boot up the game for the first time you can map the controls before starting, something that I really appreciate.
The trick Micro Mages employs is that the stage constantly scrolls vertically. It’s not incredibly difficult to scale each stage and deal with enemies and traps, but when the stage is slowly moving upwards all bets are off. You are constantly looking ahead and thinking about the path you’ll take. Do you risk death in order to snag more treasure and a chest possibly holding a power-up/ability? Or maybe you take the easier path and take the risk you won’t be caught off guard later.
Along the way you can access checkpoints so that death, while always crappy, won’t have you tearing out your hair by throwing you back to the beginning of the stage, something that old NES games loved to do. It’s also one hit death in Micro Mages, but there are power-ups that you can collect to give you a slight advantage from time to time. Maybe you snag a fairy that allows you a free hit, or maybe a feather that lets you hover down instead of falling like a brick onto something nasty.
All this climbing and sliding leads you to a massive boss at the end of each area which will test your platforming skills. You have the ability to move and shoot at the same time, as well as shooting up, giving you a lot of attack options of which you’ll need. Bosses are sometimes as much puzzles as they are a pure shooting fest. And because this is a classic NES title, you’ll be learning patterns, something that brings my a lot of joy. There’s nothing like finding how a boss moves and attacks and dealing with them. Remember when games rewarded you instead of nicely shuffling you along with regenerating health.
Micro Mages is full of limitations, but these limitations give it its unique look and feel. It’s not hard simply to be hard, rather, it uses its inherent limitations to allow the player feel like they have a chance. You’ll be putting in work, sure, but you won’t feel like you are being cheated or like the game is actively screwing you over because it can. All this through 26 stages with a couple of extra modes if you are a masochist and wants to hurt on the inside.
All this would be good enough to earn this little title a recommendation, but Micro Mages has something else up its sleeve: 4 player co-op gameplay. That’s right, you can totally play the entire game with three other mages along with you. This co-op feature can really change the game more than simply making it a wild experience with everything happening on the screen. You can cooperate like friends, or be dicks and everyone work for the high-score.
It’s still one shoot death here, but death doesn’t mean you are out of the game completely. When you die in co-op you turn into a ghost that has some abilities to help you friends progress to the end of each stage. You can freeze enemies in this form, giving your friends a hand and an incentive to stay alive. You can also find a chest with with a fairy to bring you back into the world of the living. It makes for a bloody good party game with a bunch of friends either helping or hurting each other. Perhaps even a little of both.
Micro Mages is a bloody good time and shows that sometimes less is more. On top of just the gameplay the developers also included the actual NES ROM file of the game so you can play it on your favorite emulator or even dump into onto an Everdrive NES cart to play it on actual hardware. Add in having access to a fun NES-style manual and Micro Mages hits all the right notes for retro goodness.
As you can expect, Micro Mages comes highly recommended, especially at only $10.99 on Steam. Hell, I like it so much that I’m going to try and track down the actual NES cart of the game so I can play it on my Nintendo Entertainment System back home.
Micro Mages is a bloody good time and shows that sometimes less is more
Final Score:
3.5/5
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