Mages and Treasures (Nintendo Switch) – The test

Indie games have made a name for themselves on our nintendo-switch with a number of quality titles that borders on indecency. Unfortunately, trying to take advantage of such success to offer an experience completed in a few weeks, being nice, and thus trying to reap the laurels sown by talented developers has become a common practice on theeShop. It is then up to us, experienced testers or not, to sort the wheat from the chaff to allow our enlightened readers to more easily choose these titles which only too rarely benefit from publicity. And that’s why now is the time to address Mages and Treasuresdeveloped by the studio LightUPformed by a single individual, Juliano Lima, and which arrives on our consoles.

Ninety minutes to live

Making a title alone seems difficult these days and yet more and more developers are trying to bet on total freedom to offer us their vision of video games. The success of such production is often limited and yet real nuggets regularly arrive on our consoles for our greatest pleasure. But there are also an incredible number of tasteless titles made on overly restricted game engines that flood theeShop.

Know that this Mages and Treasures was developed through gamemaker immediately cools our ardor. And unfortunately, it’s not the sequel that will prove us wrong. However, a small introduction welcomes us sympathetically. We learn that our avatar, a mage, has just had his most precious possession stolen. What is this theft and why? Questions to which we will have answers after defeating the last boss of the game.

Unfortunately this one appears only after ninety minutes of play. And we’re not talking about a speedrun, but a 100%. In a single game session, we were able to discover how much the title of LightUP was of little interest to the player. Whether it’s its game system, its mechanics of gameplay or its graphic part. Nothing ever comes to raise the level.

Mages and Treasures is a twin stick shooter a little wobbly in which our character moves in 2D freely to the left stick while his spell can only cast in one of four directions, north, south, east and west. An already strange choice for a Twin Stickwhich moreover can be imprecise with the stick.

symmetry is beautiful

We must therefore eliminate enemies to unlock passages as well as solve very small tasteless puzzles to unlock others. The problem is that the level design overuse symmetry. Of the ninety minutes spent playing, half is done in front of halves of levels already visited. Boredom comes very quickly and if it doesn’t last long, it’s only because we end our adventure very quickly.

The puzzles are incredibly sad, they just consist of pushing boxes on switches. Unfortunately, what could lead to racking our brains has not benefited from any reflection and it does not matter whether we are talented or not, it is quite possible to do anything, in any order and without no logic while managing to end up finding the solution, and quickly moreover.

Graphics are less limited, but once an area is started, assets are never renewed, and above all, the character design monsters we’re going to have to fight is close to zero, not to mention their attack type, which is limited to two for the duration of the game. Either they rush at us, or they send a projectile and that’s it . The bosses are even worse since only the final boss will have any interest in asking us a little thought and tact. For the rest, it’s the flat encephalogram.

And this lack of variations could still pass knowing that this project is the work of a single person. But bugs collision with walls as well as bugs detection of our projectiles on our enemies make an unsightly and painful appearance very early in the game, sometimes forcing us to have to start a table over for no other reason than that of being stuck between a barrel and a wall of grass that no longer wants us let go.