The Mildew Children has a lot going for it. The setting is delightfully eerie. The characters are interesting. There appears to be a very deep lore to the game with a lot going on behind the scenes. That is almost my only real gripe that the game drops you in this world with little to no explanation as if you already know all about the traditions and people. A codex would have been nice. This wasn’t an issue at first but as the game goes on you are required to remember more and more things that you will be forced to use later and that combined with the language of the game was problematic. The art style is fantastic. The music is well done. The sound effects are good as well, used often enough to break up silence without being overbearing. The game does a good job of being more than just a visual novel. You move around places, there is an in game map, there is a decent rhythm game element as well as a decent QTE mechanic. The QTE parts are actually pretty challenging as you not only have to contend with keeping the bar in a certain section but you still have to click through the dialogue to further the game. There are two difficulty settings to the mini game as well as the option to turn them off so it should satisfy everybody. One other thing I would like to see changed is when it says you can “proceed” certain places it would be nice if it said where or what that place is. The map doesn’t really list what places are just where you have to go and where you currently are. Sometimes it doesn’t even list that.
I played The Mildew Children on Linux. It never crashed. I did encounter a bug where from chapter six through chapter eleven I had zero audio. No music, no effects, nothing. I tried bringing my save game over to another system and had the same problem. I didn’t notice any spelling or grammar mistakes. There is just one graphics option. There are three audio options to control separate types of audio which is nice. You can manually save whenever you want and there didn’t seem to be a limit on how many save game files you can have. There was also an auto save system although it doesn’t say when it’s saving. The game’s frame rate was pretty low at times and never got even close to my refresh rate. The game didn’t seem to lag at all but it was strange. None of my hardware was being taxed very much to explain the low frame rates. The art style may be very nice but the game doesn’t look like it should be very demanding. I used both my keyboard/mouse as well as a Logitech F310 game pad. I would highly suggest using a game pad for the QTE section as I found it nearly impossible on keyboard. It was still tough but was far less strenuous on the wrist.
Graphics Engine: Unity
Graphics API: OpenGL
Disk Space Used: 1.4 GB
Game Version Played: 1.3.2
GPU Usage: 5-21 %
VRAM Usage: 494-673 MB
CPU Usage: 4-7 %
System RAM Usage: 2.9-4.2 GB
Frame Rate: 46-91 FPS
Overall if the idea of a game that combines a 2D side scroller, visual novel, QTE events, rhythm games, and a really dark lore then I would at least give this free chapter a try. The audio issue I encountered combined with the lack of codex and poorly labeled map made me drop the score a bit. I don’t think The Mildew Children is a bad game but it does have a few warts. I finished the game on Easy difficulty in five hours and thirty five minutes. I paid $14.68 CAD for the game and that felt like a fair price given the length and quality.
My Score: 6.5/10
My System:
Intel i5-12600K | 32GB DDR4-3200 CL16 | Gigabyte RX 7800 XT 16GB | Western Digital Black SN850X 2TB | MX Libretto 23.4 | Dasharo 1.1.1 | Mate 1.26.0 | Kernel 6.10.12-1-liquorix | Mesa 23.1.2-1~mx23ahs