Mystical Map

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!

Mystical map has been on my radar for a minute now, what with the concept of charting your own rogue-like maps. And that price point? Sign me right up, Susan. My very first foray into Mystical Map was while I was sitting in a coffee shop. The download was quick and I was right into the game. Therefor, if you have a few bucks and a minute, you could be playing right now. The first thing I noticed was the combat, it does take a little getting used to, but that isn't a bad thing. You attack in quick combo like fashion, though enemies will get knocked back, they will remain dedicated to taking a swing at you. You have to get into the mindset of hitting and dashing out of the way of incoming attacks. Which if you keep track of the enemy types, you can usually plan your attacks just fine! Charting my own course is a nice change of pace for the genre! Rather than rely on luck to stumble upon a health room, or a weapon room. I can just plan to go through said rooms. But in doing so, I may be sacrificing another potentially beneficial room for my run. It's a neat concept and my biggest selling point of the game. The dev seems like a super cool dude who would be cool to hang out with at…

The idea might be interesting, but the execution and combat are not great. The twist is quite intriguing. You have a blank map that contains random occurrences like combat encounters, new weapons, and healing. Before you may play the map, you must draw a path from beginning to end. However, you can only create a limited number of paths, so you won't be able to see everything. The empty rooms connecting events contain basic random enemies. Aside from jumping and wall-jumping, you can use a basic attack and dash to get away. Unfortunately, battle is bad. A room is filled with a variety of melee and ranged enemies who strike quickly. You will always lose health because the game does not encourage careful play. Dash is meaningless because it does not always negate damage and carries you too far, so by the time you return to an enemy to attack, it has already recovered for the next attack. This leaves you with no option but to lunge at an enemy and spam attack. There's the bothersome knockback. This is painful with spear lizards that keep attacking and pushing you back. The worst is when you're pushed into a new screen. Enemies can swap rooms, but this also regenerates their healt…

Interesting premise but the game falls flat. The idea of creating your own level sounds good but the issue is you are limited to so many rooms so it ends up being a straight line to the end with one or two turns. The combat isn't good. Fighting enemies is a trap. There only reason to fight monsters is to gain ink which is used for some very limited meta progression. Since the enemies only drop ammo for your secondary weapon, fighting enemies just depletes your life. Enemies are damage sponges with the weakest taking 3 to 4 hits. So you end up doing a hit and run strategy for every one because enemies don't stagger. This means the best strategy is just to run from everything since most chests can be open without fight any enemies.

The game has an interesting premise, but doesn't do much with it. The map creation phase doesn't have much too it, just filling out a route with some room types. Most of your time will be spent traversing the map and fighting things. However, the poor combat and floaty jumping doesn't make either of those feel good.

before playing this, I’d never seen anything where you can literally map out your own path like this… I guess Rogue legacy would be the closest thing (but on a much larger scale) because it will rearrange the map, but in this you control the arrangement, which is very interesting. since playing this I did find another game using the same map mechanic, but it wasn’t really that good (plus it didn’t have pixel art, so this game wins based off that alone!) Hope the developer decides to keep making games, I’d like to see what else he comes up with. *I know a lot of people have a bug up their bum-bum about certain assets being used by a lot of other people in their games, but if the game is good, and the assets aren’t horrible looking, I don’t get what the problem is? I think I have 5 games with this same character (maybe more), and I’ve grown quite fond of the little fella!