Fantasy, futuristic shooter, dungeon crawler, or all of the above?
This Mystic Gate review is played and tested on a Xbox One.
Zoo Corporation is a developer who in recent times loves to team up with publisher Eastasiasoft. Amongst their earlier (console)games are Rogue Explorer, Cake Invaders and Beat Souls. Before they entered the console market, Zoo Corporation was mostly familiar with developing for PC. The first game by their hand I could find was BreakThru! Which was released in 1994. Funny, but somewhat strange note: apart from developing video games, the company also develops medical prescription systems.
Their most recent game is Mystic Gate and has entered most storefronts on September 13th 2023. If you want it, you’ll have to spend € 9,99. At the time of writing, the game was discounted and available for a price of € 7,99. The game is currently available for PC, Switch, PS4/5, Xbox One and Series X/S.
Blast away my friends
In Mystic Gate, gods have created a gate in the human world. Lore has it, that when you travel through the gate all of your wishes will come true. Sounds like a sweet deal, doesn’t it? Well, you’d better think twice. Because when you have entered the gate, you will need your trustworthy piece of junk of a gun and every weapon you can get your grubby little hands on. The world beyond the gate is somewhat unfriendly and every inhabitant is eager to blow your head off.
But before we step through this gate, let’s see where we start off. Every game you play, starts off in a really small camp. There’s a campfire where you can start your co-op games. There’s a store where you can buy (much needed) permanent upgrades. There’s a shack where you can get gems in exchange for missions you have accomplished. And last but not least there’s the gate, your ticket to fame and riches. Or death, whichever comes first.
Checking out the dungeons
When you step through the gate you notice your futuristic sidekick has come along with you. Thank god. As you are severely under-powered every bullet counts. And your sidekick is happy to shoot along with you. He’s not really strong, but especially in the early stages of the game he’s a more than welcome partner.
From now on it will come as no surprise. Mystic Gate is a top-down shooter and dungeon crawler. Visually it looks like a 90’s game. Simple text, visuals that lack detail (but are clear enough to see distinctions between things). The music was easy-going and mellow in the camp, but becomes more intense with every dungeon you explore and survive.
Bomb dropping pigeons
As soon as you get out of the first room you’ll encounter enemies. And there’s a pretty good variety of them. You’ll encounter pigeons dropping bombs, orcs, blobs, manbearpig (or at least something that looks like it) and even some bunnies. Everything that moves around, except for your sidekick, can be killed. When you enter a room with enemies all doors will be locked. They only unlock when you have killed all enemies. So far, nothing new under the horizon. When you have killed all enemies in a room something else happens as well. A teleportation station activates. This can come out handy when you have to backtrack to a different section of the dungeon, but you wouldn’t miss it if it hadn’t been in the game.
It can’t be all about the enemies. So in some rooms you might find a crate containing a new weapon. You can carry two weapons, one of which is always your pistol. As dungeons are randomly generated, there’s no telling what type of weapon you’ll find. Could be a boomerang, could be a bazooka. In this game there’s the possibility to equip an ability. This ability can only be used once during your run through the dungeon. So be careful when you use it.
Shopping spree
Somewhere in each dungeon there’s a store. After you defeat enemies you’ll sometimes receive money. The money you collect is only useful in the dungeon itself. As soon as you die, every coin and weapon is lost. But you’ll want to upgrade on weapons in the dungeons for sure. So the trader is a welcome guest. You also can buy some health back in case you were hit.
Your ultimate goal is to find and encounter the boss of the dungeon. You can’t just barge in, that would be rude. No, you have to find and collect three (later on in the game four) keys to open the door to the boss. After you collect them you can backtrack to the room where the boss hides out and it’s go-time.
The bosses in this game are big! And they regularly disappear off-screen because their room is also quite big. Key is to stay moderately close to the boss and not get killed. Easier said than done. If you lose sight of the boss you can get surprised by lasers, guns, bombs seemingly appearing out of nowhere. Result: death within a matter of seconds. The bosses are also randomly generated. So even if you are bad at these type of games, you’ll still encounter a nice variety of bosses. Really well doen by the devs!
Economics 101
Yes, you will probably have noticed in this review. This game has two economic worlds. One is in the dungeons itself. You can collect coins, which you can spend at the in-dungeon store. Everything you buy there only has durability as long as your gameplay in that dungeon. Still important, but lasting only temporarily.
The second one is way more important and takes place in your base-camp. For every mission you accomplish you can get gems. Also for every type of enemy you encounter and every weapon you discover you can get a smaller amount of gems. With these gems you can buy upgrades. And yes!!! These are permanent!
You can choose between active and passive upgrades. The cheapest putting you back 30 gems, some of the more expensive costing you 700 gems. Upgrades vary from increasing your odds of poisoning an enemy, a slight increase in doing damage, to being able to revive yourself with 50% health. The better the upgrade, the more it’ll cost you.
Conclusion
Mystic Gate is pretty decent top-down shooter / dungeon crawler. It’s pacing can get a bit frustrating in the beginning, but when you have bought a few upgrades things become better. The fact that every dungeon and boss is randomly generated is a great addition to the game.
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Pros:
+ Randomly generated dungeons and bosses.
+ Effective, yet barebones visuals which clearly shows: gameplay rules!
+ Fun gameplay. Be it for short bouts, or for long gaming sessions.
Cons:
- Teleportation devises are not really useful.
- I encountered some stickdrift in this game. As I am not sure whether it’s because of the game or my controller is shutting down, no points were docked because of it.
