Mirthwood has great vibes that are hampered by some majorly frustrating gameplay mechanics.
There are times when videogames mirror real life. In Mirthwood’s case, it’s the fact that I’m constantly hungry. A bread chunk barely lasts me a few axe thwacks at a tree, and a baked apple carries me for a few steps before my stomach is growling at me once more.
It’s a real vibe-killer in my ongoing desire to fulfil my cosy medieval peasant fantasy, and it’s only one of many things actively making an attempt on my life. The game advertises itself as a life sim RPG, but it often feels more like a straight survival-crafting game above all else.
I’m making it sound like I don’t like Mirthwood, but I do. Bad Ridge Games is a two-person team, and it’s crafted something that has the potential to be real special. It’s a delightfully darker take on your Stardew and Stardew-likes, throwing my farmer into a somewhat dreary town with a beaten-up shack and some ratty clothes. There are some origin-related questions at the beginning—my social hierarchy prior to arriving, my career, where I hark from—but they’re little more than flavour text and minor stat changes than anything super involved.
Finding my way around and speaking to some of the townsfolk helps lead me to some tools, with a background narrative bubbling away that investigates some more mystical elements with wraiths and werewolves. Eventually I’m able to patch up my house, plant a few crops and work towards improving my tools, while camps beyond my usual homestead offer up extra decorating and agricultural opportunities.
Knight in the woods
Mirthwood is home to some genuinely fantastic vibes. I love its old painterly style with characters that move like those antique pop-up books, and the bardcore flute soundtrack that makes me want to cosy up next to the fire while drinking some warm spiced mead.
It also feels unique in that I don’t have to totally rely on farming if I don’t want to. In fact, most of my time with Mirthwood has been spent exploring the lands—foraging, fighting, and looting my way through forests and caves to generate money and sustain my health and stamina. Days and seasons tick away but I’m not given an arbitrary curfew I must abide by lest I pass out. As long as I have enough energy to keep myself going, with some extra potion or food-related top-ups, I can easily go days without sleeping.
I didn’t realise how surprisingly freeing it was to not be tied to your typical farming sim-mandated bedtime. I lost a little sense of structure and routine, sure, but it also made me more inclined to explore pretty far out in Mirthwood’s surprisingly spacious map.
It’s got all the trappings of a cosy medieval life sim, but right now the whole thing comes wrapped up with more frustratingly opposing aspects. As it stands, combat feels pretty rancid—I can only attack left or right, enemies constantly jump backwards to avoid attacks which make open-world fight a complete pain in the backside, and unblockable attacks are telegraphed with an incredibly short flash of an exclamation mark, leaving no opportunity to appropriately dodge.
Quests are often obtuse, with easier vague areas marked or nothing marked at all, which has left me wandering around looking for a specific NPC more often than I’d like. I wouldn’t mind as much if I could leave a scattering of pins whenever I came across someone or something, but Mirthwood only gives me a single waymark that doesn’t even appear on the minimap. Progress is also staggeringly slow, and I’ve only managed to upgrade a single tool in almost 20 hours of gameplay.
Mirthwood is definitely a game that needs a little more time in the oven. Bad Ridge Games is doing a pretty good job of putting out some quick patches at the moment, and the duo is active over on the game’s Discord. It’s certainly a game I’ll be returning to, though maybe in a few months when some of the more glaring fun-suckers have been fixed up.
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