Game Review: The Mildew Children

By Manuel

Players: 1
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, XBox, PC

Adventure games and visual novels are genres that have a lot of crossover when it comes down to gameplay, and today we'll be looking at a game that mixes those two gameplay concepts a bit more than most others. The Mildew Children is a dark fantasy visual novel that also features some adventure game-style gameplay, as well as quick-time events. It's developed by The Glowing Stones, published by Valkyrie Initiative, and it recently arrived on the XBox and Nintendo Switch following an earlier PC release. We have a lot to cover in this one, so let's dive right into it!

The hardest part of the day.

A journey indeed.

The Mildew Children places you into the shoes of Kyrphel, a witch who is something of an outcast within her village. The village she resides in is very unique, as it's populated solely by children. These children have established a rural ritualistic pagan society that sort of feels like what you'd get if you crossed Lord of the Flies with Children of the Corn. There's even a bit of Logan's Run mixed in when an early scene shows what happens to the children who've grown too old. In this setting, we get a plot that revolves around a Ritual that must be performed regularly to ensure the survival of the village. Said ritual requires four witches to perform it, but one of Kyrphel's witch-sisters has recently passed away. The remaining three witches have various ideas as to how they plan to resolve the deadly serious situation that only they know of, but it's ultimately Kyrphel that comes up with the best solution. They must find the current reincarnation of a previously dead witch, and they must do it fast. There's actually a lot more I can outline regarding the plot, but seeing as it's probably the best aspect of the game, I think I'll leave it at that for now. The Mildew Children has a dark fairy tale feel to it, and it doesn't ease you into things as you might expect a tale of this scope to do. I'd be lying if I said I understood how every aspect of the world of the game works, but it does do a great job of worldbuilding in spite of this minor storytelling setback. Leaving some details up to interpretation, or just leaving them out altogether, is a great way to keep up the mystery regarding the happenings of the game. While I plan to circle back around to discussing the game's plot later on in the review, I have to say now that The Mildew Children features one of the best stories I've ever had the pleasure to experience.

This is quite the opening scene.

Speak in riddles.

While I described the game as a mix of an adventure game and a visual novel earlier, I also have to admit that it doesn't really feel like it plays like one or the other. Visual novels are often static affairs with text boxes occupying much of the screen. They rarely involve character movement, and when they do, it's usually very light. The Mildew Children has a rather large 2D world that you're mostly free to explore at any time. There isn't a lot to do in this world, but there are a lot of sights to see, and a few optional dialogue sections available to you if you're thorough. It may be an odd thing to nitpick about, but I wasn't a fan of the way to game displayed its dialogue. Rather than show dialogue in a series of text boxes that changes with each set of lines, you instead get a text scroll that occupies the right side of the screen. This admittedly has the bonus of letting you see past text without the need of a dedicated menu to do so, but it just never looked appealing to me. Rather than feeling like I was experiencing a conversation between two people, I'd instead feel like I was reading from a teleprompter that displayed lines for an actor. There's also a lot that goes on within this text sub-screen, as it's also where you'll make many in-game choices, and perform in-dialogue minigames. The choices thing is rather self-explanatory, but the minigames were something I was not expecting to encounter in a game like this. While you are able to change the difficulty of the minigames, or even turn them off entirely, putting QTEs in a dialogue box, during dialogue, has to be one of the worst gameplay decisions I've seen all year. These minigames include keeping a shifting meter in the middle of a life bar, playing a rhythm game to pull off a spell, or even moving a character's behavior towards or against you via specific dialogue choices. I get how this might've felt like a way to insert more actual "gameplay" into an otherwise text-heavy game, but it made actually reading and enjoying those parts of the game to be rather difficult.

Visual novel stuff aside, let's see where else The Mildew Children dabbles in adventure game style gameplay. While there is a bit more to the adventure side of things than just character movement, it's best not expect anything too extreme like inventory management. While you do have some puzzle solving and escape room type situations, you won't ever have total control of your characters actions as you would in an adventure game. The Mildew Children is divided into twelve chapters, and each chapter has its own set of quests and goals. Though it can sometimes be a bit confusing as to where you're expected to go next, the map within the pause screen shows your current location, the next goal, and even a brief outline of your current tasks. You'll sometimes carry items from location to the next, or from person to person, but all the gameplay involved with interacting with objects or the world is done automatically for the most part. You'll often be given choices via the text box that can change certain parts of the outcome, but that's not a very deep system either. While choosing to play Kyrphel as a certain way is a lot of fun, there doesn't seem to be all that much that happens if you make different or even "incorrect" choices. I tried out a few different outcomes out of sheer curiosity in a brief second playthrough, but other than some of them sending me straight to an actual game over, there wasn't much that I noticed to be different.

The map screen.

Bits of the greater world are revealed.

There were a lot of things I love about The Mildew Children, but there were also a couple things that keep me from truly gushing over it. Obviously the story is the strongest part of the game, and I have to say that the writing is extremely on point, with all the characters and their motivations being very well-written. You really feel the agony of the fate of the witches in Kyrphel's actions, and you even get to experience the rather extreme nature of her witch-sisters. Then there are characters like Littlegrave, Natt, and Oplucea who made me want to learn more about the world they live in, especially since they all represent roles within the village that aren't exactly explained in detail. I don't know how much of the story is based on actual folklore or fairy tales, but the entire setting felt very unique. There are several bits and pieces here and there that felt like they may have been inspired by other media, with me even mentioning a few earlier, but despite this there was nothing in The Mildew Children that didn't feel totally original. I sped through most of the game in two long sessions, and that was due to the fact that it was a story I just couldn't put down. It really goes places, and it's a tale that stuck with me after I'd completed it. I probably would've placed it in the my favorites list right away if it weren't for the handful of things I mentioned earlier that made the game less enjoyable than it could've been. While there a few other things that I'll get to later on in the review, I want to circle back around to the QTE events that happen during certain dialogue sections. For the purposes of this review, I didn't turn them off, but there were several times where I wish I had. I actually had to eventually turn them to Easy because there is a repeated one that you have to successfully clear multiple times or else Kyrphel dies, which leads to a game over. I still don't know how one is expected to clear this minigame on Normal or Hard, but it gave me more than a few headaches trying. Since I can only assume that playing them on the more difficult setting was the way the developers meant for the game to be played, it meant that I was always confused as to why they'd make them feel so punishingly hard. The world of The Mildew Children is cruel enough, we don't need that being passed onto players too.

Put fist in mouth.

I want to learn more about Natt.

Even though there were some aspects to the visuals that I didn't much care for, like the text box being an ugly scrolling wall, the visuals in The Mildew Children were quite impressive overall. The entire game takes place in a flat 2D world, but there's a lot of layers and detail that are hard to see outside of the game in action. Though you'll sometimes need to rely on the map to get around, you will more than likely learn the layout of the village through its several distinctive landmarks. Then there's the character models and designs that are all top-notch and impressive. The witches all have their own look, the village warriors look imposing, The Mistress gives off an air of foreboding that is hard to explain outside of the game, and Kyrphel emotes through everything that is going on. Me noting that each character has a beautiful on-screen portrait is one thing, but what is hard to relay in screenshots is that there are several variants that are used to denote changes in health or mood. The shifting of these portraits helps give every conversation and scene weight and emotion since the character models themselves aren't exactly the most animated. There are some other neat effects worth mentioning too. The burial grounds look sinister and full of secrets, the trees and plant life sway in the background with the wind, the interior of buildings are lit in ways that look surprisingly realistic, and there are even times where the game almost jump scares you with its cinematic camera pans and scene transitions. There really isn't a whole lot I have to complain about. One thing that I feel that I have to point out regards the platform I played it on: the Nintendo Switch. While I'm not sure what exactly caused it, there were times where the game didn't seem to like being put to sleep using the system's sleep mode. Twice the game would slow down to only a couple frames a second when I tried to play it again, and it was so bad that I was actually amazed it didn't just crash. Both times the issue was solved by restarting the game, but it's something I can only assume has to do with the graphics themselves. There's a very PC-like option to turn down the graphic detail within the options menu, and I can't help but feel that its inclusion has something to do with the problems I experienced. (I turned the graphics option to the lowest after the first time I had to restart it.) Those hiccups aside, I have to say that the visuals stand right up there with the story itself.

Sound is an odd topic to discuss, as I'm not exactly sure what the developers were going for. I sure hope it was silence though, because that's what we get the most of here. Let me start by saying that there isn't much in the way of sound effects, typing sounds, or anything like that with The Mildew Children. There's also no voice acting at all, so get all those voices and noises out of your head. This probably sounds like the game would just be all music, but my next point is that there is very little in the way of traditional music as well. I played the second half of the game with the volume turned up really high so I could hear the music better, and I'm now convinced that about half the game has no nearly no sound at all to it. Sometimes a shock stinger will play, or an atonal melody will drift in when things are getting intense, but there isn't a single music track in the game that I can speak of in detail. I guess one could use the term "atmospheric" to describe the game's sound design, but there isn't a lot of atmosphere either. There's just a lot of silence. With that said, there were times when I felt this really worked in the game's favor. Playing late at night, only hearing the occasional soft sound or melody, gave off vibes that most horror games would kill to achieve. In spite of this not exactly being a horror game, it played well into the dire situations unfolding on-screen. I do wish there was voice acting though, as it really would've sealed the deal on the excellent story. It's probably asking too much for a game of this scope to have full voice acting, but the idea of hearing some of the crazy things said by the characters being spoken out loud is too exciting to not want for.

The Mistress is an imposing figure.

That mask is kind of creepy.

Neither the adventure game genre, nor the visual novel genre are known for long gameplay length, but somehow The Mildew Children manages to clock in at about 6-8 hours depending on reading speed and how thorough you are in each chapter. I guess now is as good a time as any to mention that the game relies solely on an autosave system, and I don't think there's any on-screen notification as to when this happens. This meant that there were several times when I was scared to turn off the game for fear of having to replay certain sections again, and other times when I wished I could go back but was unable to due to the game having saved at the end of the last scene. It sets players up for a somewhat inconsistent experience, and also makes it hard to revisit parts of the game to see different outcomes. I mention all this because I'm not exactly sure as to how replayable The Mildew Children actually is. You can definitely go through the story again with a better understanding of the world and its characters, but I can't see many players doing that. This isn't really an issue though as I feel that the game does a good job providing a story-rich, single play experience. Also, at just $9.99, the game is priced perfectly for the amount of content you receive. Think of this as watching several half hour episodes of a short-run series and suddenly the pacing and price will all feel perfect.

The ritual is as deadly as it is secret.

Death is always an option.

I may have been a bit negative here and there throughout this review, but I think it's rather obvious that I give The Mildew Children the fullest of recommendations. It's one of the best visual novels I've played in a long while, and it has a story that will stick with me for a long time to come. It's worth picking up for fans of visual novels, adventure games, dark fantasy stories, and even those just looking for one of the most unique games of the year to add to their collection. Pick it up on whatever platform you can, and help Kyrphel go about the thankless task of saving her village! I hope that we can someday get a follow-up to this game, and I know I'll be here to review it!

Check Out The Mildew Children on Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/the-mildew-children-switch/

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Story: A
Gameplay: B
Graphics: B+
Music/Sound: B
Value: A

Overall: B+

Pros:
+ A well-written story that feels like a cross between Lord of the Flies, Children of the Corn, Logan's Run, and even Game of Thrones.
+ Mixing visual novel and adventure game style gameplay makes The Mildew Children one of the most unique games I've seen in a long while.
+ The setting feels very alive, and the cast of characters will make you care about the fate of the game's world.
+ Besides a few issues with the overall presentation, the visuals are simply amazing, especially the character designs and portraits.
+ The atmospheric soundtrack gives off a vibe that would make any horror game envious.

Cons:
- The difficulty of some of the quick-time events, and their placement in the middle of dialogue sections, can make those sections of the game rather annoying.
- Having the text all placed in a scrolling window, rather than a series of text boxes, felt a bit off at times.
- While I enjoyed the story fully, I do wish a few things were given more clarity. Even if only for the sake of worldbuilding.
- Though you are given a lot of in-game choices that feel very important, they usually don't change much, or simply lead to a game over screen.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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My work here is done.

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