LifeisXbox’s Mira’s Brush preview | Mira’s Brush, developed by Duckbill ProDucktions and published by Angel Star Studios, entered Early Access on Steam a little while ago. Presenting itself as a cute color-based platformer brimming with bizarre enemies, lateral thinking puzzles, and intriguing gameplay experiments. With a fun and original idea, Mira’s Brush could just be a wonderful platformer to keep an eye on. Of course, I checked it out for you guys, so allow me to share my thoughts on the game so far.
The story behind Mira’s Brush
Mira is just your average girl doing a million things at once. One of the things she’s best at, however, is being a house painter, but not just an ordinary one! Mira uses her magic brush to clear colors from a host of enemies in order to use these colors to jump, dash, and figure out her way through Chromaland where she has to restore color across 8 worlds. She’s up against the evil colonel Blump and his cohort of artistic villains who have stolen all the color from the Rainbow Castle. A cute story, and an original one at that, which I found very intriguing.
Gameplay, graphics, and sound
In Mira’s Brush, you’ll be traveling through several levels in order to collect colors and fill in rainbows in order to cross them. You’ll be facing enemies, but you’ll also need to focus on precision platforming, and a lot of backtracking is involved as well. Find the secrets in every level and become the best possible Mira!
You’ll immediately notice that this is a very bright and colorful game. Even though everything is looking quite simple, it still has its charm and I’m sure once you start playing, you’ll really enjoy the environment and everything the graphics have to offer. What’s even greater, is the soundtrack. It’s so upbeat and happy, I absolutely adored it. I feel like it completes the entire experience and definitely fits in with the graphics in the best possible way.
Mira’s Brush doesn’t hold your hand, so be aware of this. The game definitely has a lot of potential as the gameplay is quite fun, the art style is unique, and the soundtrack is banging, but some things need further development in order to really recommend this one.
Improvements
The tutorial starts off a bit rocky, I’m afraid, so try not to be discouraged by that. Text and instructions float around in the worst possible way and sometimes, text even partly disappeared from the screen. It was very confusing, and even a bit frustrating at times since you’re still learning about the game. On top of that, the font that the developers choose doesn’t sit right with me. The first time I played Mira’s Brush, I was a bit tired already from work, and I had trouble reading everything. I didn’t really encounter this problem the second time I put on the game, but I still think that text should be accessible whenever and if you can barely read instructions, you might just give up right off the bat.
When actually playing the game, you’ll also notice that precision jumping is quite difficult. I often could not jump high enough, or not precise enough, and this led to me falling down quite often.
Another thing the developers have to work on is the keyboard function. The game is a lot more playable with a controller, but it’s a PC game so the keyboard should be working perfectly as well.
In conclusion
I really think Mira’s Brush original approach has the potential to become a wonderful game. With vibrant graphics, an amazing soundtrack, and compelling gameplay, Duckbill ProDucktions offers a unique experience. Some more optimization is definitely needed, but I am convinced this won’t be a problem.
Head of PC team. PC, Switch, and Xbox game reviewer. Also a marketeer, concert and animal lover, and photographer in training 🙂
Steam: Mauitje
Xbox: Mauitjexo
