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Lovely tale of a warmhearted witch

  • calunio
  • 01/22/2014 09:15 PM
  • 666 views
Halo's Mixtape is a visual novel by Moga/CARRIONBLUE. I decided to review it as part of RMN's Reviewrim event, in which I set myself on a quest to review ALL of Moga's games.

This is not really a game, it is a visual novel, and it is a very short one. I don't really see a point in writing a spoiler-free review. If you're interested in the game, just take 10 minutes of your time to play it, and then check what I have to say about it.

Visual novels with simple charming graphics and very reduced color-palletes have been a trend. I'm not sure what started this trend, but Wither is definitely a benchmark. After that, we have the Very Pink Game, and you could even add variations to that list like Pom gets Wi-fi and The God of Crawling Eyes. Such games, for developers, are a nice option if you want to make a game that is fresh-looking yet not too hard to make because of simple custom graphics and lack of gameplay. They can still be fun. Their power relies on story, and no matter how short or simple it is, it needs to have a distinct message to stand out from all the lookalikes.

Halo's Mixtape tells the story of a dungeon witch that has all the characteristics of your typical evil final-boss dungeon witch, except... she's not evil. Problem is, the Hero doesn't understand that, and he wants to defeat her anyway, having stolen some of her personal objects as loot. As the witch (I named her Mimi <3), your mission is to recover a mixtape you got from a friend, a treasure stolen by the Hero.

The inversion of the enemy and hero roles are the focus point of the game and its story. It's also a slight critique on traditional RPG tropes in which you, as a hero, decide to kill monsters and steal treasure in some random enemy's dungeon just because... well, the game tells you to. Having the main character talk to her monster servants to check if they were ok, and listen to the townsfolk complain about the Hero's arrogance was really fun and smart.

The game's final message is about friendship and caring about what really matters. I didn't feel like it was quite well delivered, but it was enough to make a charming character out of Mimi.

I also loved graphics and music. Graphics are made of a pallete of 4 or 5 colors including white, black and 2/3 shades of blue in a very high contrast. It's cute, it actually looks good, and it's unique enough to avoid that unwanted deja-vu sense of "I've played this before". Music is also interesting, consisting of few extremely short looping chiptunes, that sound great and suit the game's atmosphere nicely.

I feel like Moga's strongest point as a game designer is aesthetics, and her second strong point is story. I truly loved I'm Scared of Girls, mostly because of its story bits, even though they were so short and sparse. Halo's Mixtape feels more childish, but it's obviously intentional and cute. I'd like to see Moga get bolder with her writing. Level design is definitely not her strong point, and the lack of gameplay is something that made this game as smoother experience compared to the others.

Overall, Halo's Mixtape is a short and sweet story I'd recommend to those who like charming visual novels, but it doesn't like such a strong impression as other titles of the genre.