REVIEW – Released three and a half months ago, this game combines 2D adventure with visual novel elements and is therefore full of dialog. This makes the way the game is written all the more important. Nevertheless, The Mildew Children can attract attention because of its theme, although it can be divisive, as not everyone believes in reincarnation.

Dead people, funerals, sacrifices, rebirths, and rituals. These are not common themes in games, but TMC deals with them in a pretty ironclad way, and maybe that’s why it can be good.

The four witches

There’s a big apocalyptic event that’s going to happen in a few days, and it’s going to hit the village. Kyrphel and her three sisters have to stop it with a ritual. However, one of them dies, leaving the others weakened. The two sisters argue about the solution, while Kyrphel takes a different path: she believes they need a replacement, but the community cannot stand her. Either there will be characters who will help, or characters who will only hinder. In most cases, they need something, and the experience varies from character to character. But the absence of older characters is not accidental: they make sacrifices and their souls are reborn in the first child born under the third moon. So the lore is good, but perhaps the world itself is held back. At least it can be entertaining with twelve chapters, which guarantees a total of 5-6 hours of playtime. Just don’t save during the dialog, because then the dialog starts all over again. Kyrphel’s character is likeable, because she dares to go off the beaten track for the long-term good of all, and there are several endings, which also depend on the text we put into the mouth of our heroine (or the sometimes appearing second protagonist).

There are also a lot of nice background animations in the village at the end of the Middle Ages, but the characters that are only there for decoration “hang out” a bit distractingly, because they are much worse drawn or don’t move. The faces of the characters don’t move much either, but they switch between different expressions, which is a good stylistic solution. The soundtrack and sound design may seem odd at first, but it is too minimal in some places and even tends to be frighteningly evil in others. It’s very subjective who likes it and who doesn’t. You can’t teleport quickly between places, but the map makes it easy to figure out where to go. It’s worth relying on it, because you’ll often be running between locations, and as soon as you get to the important character, the dialog will pop up (and then take up the right side of the screen), otherwise you can explore the world in full screen. The gameplay is livened up a bit by a rhythm-based mini-game (Kyrphel has to recite verbs and click accurately). And sometimes you have to press buttons quickly. In both cases, you have to reach from right to left. In both cases, perseverance and concentration are recommended.

It all depends on your state of mind (too)

Kyrphel is not immune to stress. Unfortunately, in the late Middle Ages, it was common for a person to become mentally distressed, and for a witch, this can be a big problem. You’ll have to press the up and down arrows while fast-forwarding the dialog to keep it from getting too much worse, but sometimes it will go off the rails in a completely unexpected way. This is something to watch out for, because if you’re not careful enough, Kyrphel will die, but at least you can quickly return to the beginning of the pre-death dialog and deal with this challenge, or even turn it off. Not when you have to convince NPCs, but when they have this bar pop up, you need to keep it as high as possible, and to do that you need to “turn them on” in the right way.

Failure in this case could mean changing the end of chapters or dropping certain side missions. You have to pay a lot of attention to the dialog, because in the case of the witch’s replacement you have to convince them first and then ensure their survival, and in the meantime you have to recite the right verbs, and you cannot pick them up from a random diary, you have to know by heart what the right option is. The ending usually depends on whether we tell the truth or lie. The Growing Stones may have made a mistake with TMC on this point, because it is not so clear at first what is relevant and what is not.

We will not recover from this

The Mildew Children is good, but not great. For that reason, it probably deserves a 7.5/10 rating, because there is some replayability in the game. The gameplay gets a bit monotonous, mainly because you have to run around like a poisoned mouse. The story is good and the theme is atmospheric. So it’s definitely worth a try. It won’t be nominated in the game of the year category, but it’s not really a genre that should disappoint.

-V-

Publisher: Valkyrie Interactive

Developer: The Growing Stones

Style: 2D action-adventure, visual novel

Release: April 17, 2024.