Developer: Duckbill ProDucktions
Publisher: Angel Star Studios
Platform: PC
Tested on: PC
Mira’s Brush – Preview
Today, we’re bringing in some color into our gray days with our preview of Mira’s Brush, a side-scrolling pixel-art platformer that is currently still in Early Access on Steam. The game is colored with humor and cheerfulness, but also frustration and annoyance at the same time. What is it about Mira’s Brush that strokes us the wrong way?
A kingdom that once stood bright and colorful has now turned dark and gloomy. After Colonel Blump’s raid to claim his (un)rightful place on the throne is successful, he and his minions steal all the color from Chromaland. Thankfully, the kingdom has Mira to save the day. With Mira and her magical paintbrush, we travel through Chromaland, bringing back peace and restoring all the colors.
While the story is very basic, it’s a nice, light-hearted tale to accompany such a simple game. The game still has quite some holes in its story, but that doesn’t really matter when it’s told in such an amusing way.
The game’s visuals and soundtrack can give the older generation of gamers a sense of nostalgia for retro arcade games/platformers. The pixel-art graphics, mixed with the awesome 8-bit soundtrack in the background, might even be the best thing about Mira’s Brush. The soundtrack is very vibrant and upbeat, such as the game’s look. Unfortunately, the look doesn’t give us the same joy as the soundtrack does. Sure, it’s a colorful game about colors; that’s the whole point, but there’s still such a thing as going overboard. It’s too vibrant. Some colors clashed so hard our heads started to hurt.
Mira’s Brush is your familiar, yet not-so-typical, action-adventure platformer. It gets more challenging and fast-paced the longer you play and this of course has its pros and cons.
Firstly, let us talk about why Mira’s Brush is so untypically platform-y than other platformers. Here, you do more than just jump around and smash enemies. It’s a bit trickier than that. As Mira, you can defeat those pesky foes by stealing or changing their color. Stealing their color will make them harmless, which makes it easier for you to avoid them; painting your enemies into the same color as the backdrop will fully defeat them and give you an extra painting ability.
As stated above, the game gets progressively more difficult with more threatening enemies and trickier platforming. This would be fun if it wasn’t already hard enough to play. Now, if it was a hardcore platformer where you meant to die over and over again like it’s some kind of pixelated Dark Souls, then that’s fine. In such a scenario we can accept that that is the supposed way to play the game. Unfortunately, Mira’s Brush is only harder to play due to its clunky controls.
In a genre such as this, tight controls make or break a game. Sadly, in this case, the controls break the game. To play a platformer you need to be precise and flexible in moving around. Nonetheless, it seems that the keyboard controls are fighting against you from start to finish. Jumping and inching forward with precision is tedious, and the controls just make it impossible to do it flawlessly. There is also an option to switch over to a controller, and with gameplay like this, you’re almost forced into doing so.
Conclusion
Mira’s Brush does have great potential in its concept, but it just needs tweaking. Unfortunately, doing an overhaul for the controls of an entire game is not an easy task. The gameplay is the core of a game, and when that is flawed, you’re kind of doomed. The amazing, colorful – sometimes headache-inducing – pixelated graphics and lit soundtrack can’t even make up for that. Nonetheless, Mira’s Brush is still in Early Access, and can still be improved in so many ways. The developers seem hopeful that they can polish the game, and we are too.
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