Intro

"Mirra and the Crimson Catastrophe" was a project that was being developed by Punkitt using RPG Maker 2003. The project was part of the Kill the Cutie! event that took place back in October of 2020. An event that's probably largely been forgotten by newer events for Halloween like the Resurrect the Dying event that just recently ended at the time of writing. The sad part is this project had a lot of promise in my opinion, but will probably remain an unfinished project whose potential can only be gleamed through a 10 minute long demo.

I suppose my bosses at work would argue that's rather pessimistic of me, but this project hasn't seen any updates in about two years. So the likelihood of any future updates is probably rather slim.

Story

You play as Mirra a cutie that loves to get her beauty sleep which is disturbed when someone bursts into her room begging her to get up and save the day since dark forces are possessing people and forcing them to attack others. A force whose identity is never really revealed beyond looking like a crimson cloud. A color that just screams evil or violence at people since the color crimson is often associated with blood. Thankfully Mirra isn't alone in her fight and can call upon the powers of Jumble, a talking cat that can provide endless support in the form of tuna sandwiches and saucers of milk.

Gameplay

The game features the standard active-time battle system that comes with RPG Maker 2003. Where the game changes things up is that Mirra much like Kirby can copy the powers of her enemies. Unfortunately she can't use her mirrored powers against the enemy she copied since enemies in this game are immune to attacks of the same element.



Thankfully most enemies appear in groups with members representing various elements. So while you may not be able to use your dragon breath on the flame covered pigeon you can definitely use them against the ice cube loving polar bear.

And considering you can't gain experience and level up in this game I imagine the importance of exploiting elemental weaknesses would have been a prominent aspect of certain boss battles. Unfortunately the game doesn't get that far. So this is mere speculation, but it would be rather odd in my opinion to have a system like this and not have it play a major role at some point in this game.

And the game actively encourages the player to go all out in terms of using their abilities since your HP and MP are fully restored after battle. So there really isn't any reason to not spam moves like Dragon Breath if you have enough MP to cast them.

Graphics

Graphically the game is rather cute for the most part and features original assets as far as I'm aware. Though considering this is meant to be part of a Halloween jam it does feature one enemy that is meant to be scary near the end of the demo.



After all, this enemy does appear to be a pile of flesh and internal organs. At least I assume some of the pink bits are meant to be part of someone's intestines. So at looks like the evil at work here causes those it possesses to slowly melt into an organic slurry.

Sound

On the audio side of things the game appears to be trying to imitate games from the 8-bit era. At least that's what it sounds like to me. Though maybe I'm a bit off and they were aiming for the 16-bit era. All I know is the sound effects that go off when you hit an enemy or take a hit is mildly annoying.

Minor Issues

The developer misspelled "Happy Halloween" on the card that pops upon completing the demo.



Conclusion

"Mirra and the Crimson Catastrophe" has a lot of potential and I can see why some people were excited to see this demo drop two years ago. And I really can't fault them for that excitement since the underlying game seems rather solid, but the likelihood of this project ever being finished is rather remote in my opinion. And while the demo might be worth a look to get ideas for your own Kirby inspired game. There isn't enough here for me to recommend it for anything beyond that at the moment since there are complete games on this site that can beaten in under ten minutes that at least provide some form of narrative fulfilment.