Review: Maria the Witch (Switch)

When I first looked at this game I thought it would be like that minigame from Game & Wario where you fly around on a broom maneuvering through side-scrolling levels. I mean, Maria the Witch has exactly the same premise. The big difference is that the two games control much differently from each other. That isn’t to say that is a good thing.

Story

Apparently, the title character is a mailperson. Some big villainous guy stole all of the mail she was going to deliver and it’s up to Maria to get the mail back. You’ve seen this kind of “A took B from C” plot before. In fact, you’ll see it every time you play this time because the game always shows its four story panels whenever it’s booted up.

Graphics

If nothing else, Maria the Witch looks like a mobile game (Then again, it does have a mobile release…). The graphics appear clean but not quite interesting enough to distinguish themselves from the visuals of numerous Mario clone platformers that plague the Google Play store. Much of the game has a blocky design which takes away from its visual appeal. Also, why does Maria look a lot different in-game than on the title screen?

Audio

The game’s soundtrack consists mainly of psuedo-orchestral pieces (You know – The kind of music that somewhat sounds like it’s orchestrated but really isn’t). It works well enough but the death sound effects will get annoying pretty quick.

Gameplay

Maria the Witch is a game that looks like it would be simple enough to control. Flying around to get to the end of the level doesn’t seem like a difficult objective. Yet, it is. It is absurdly difficult. I’m honestly baffled how utterly crippled the controls are. To show you just how badly this game plays, I recorded myself playing through a level of the game. Words can only describe this so much.

Watch as my thumb keeps hopping back and forth. Watch as the level throws me off with design choices that kill me unexpectedly. Watch as the game requires players to get an amount of stars to move on to the next world, let alone coins for checkpoints.

Verdict

Maria the Witch is an endurance test of poor controls and a totally fragile protagonist. Beneath those things are otherwise dull level designs and an unimpressive presentation. I am not going to come back to this one anytime soon and I can recommend skipping this one if you happen to come across it on the eShop.

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