You are Sofiya, a cute pink haired witch out to save the day in this 2D side scrolling 16-bit styled platformer.  Run, double jump, and use magic blasts to defeat enemies in this game available on PlayStation consoles and Switch, but reviewed on PS4 here.

Controls are super simple.  Move left and right with the control stick, jump and double jump with the X button, and fire magic blasts with the square button.  One thing the game doesn’t tell you is that to pick up health and magic refills, you must press down over them.  Sometimes you must flip switches to open paths, but most of the time the game is pretty straightforward.

I do like the 16-bit styled graphics and ActRaiser-like music, and the main character looks cool.  But the rest of the game has a whole laundry list of problems.  If you die, you must start at the beginning of the area, which can be tedious if there are a lot of switches and enemies to deal with.  There are a lot of blind jumps into instant death spikes or pits, and gameplay is slow and dull.  Most enemies just walk back and forth and don’t even attack you (except for the bats).  It’s just not that fun.

Kid Factor:

Sofiya and the Ancient Clan is rated M for Mature with ESRB descriptors of Violence, Blood, Sexual Content, Nudity, and Strong Language.  The main part of the game isn’t that bad.  You do fire magic blasts at enemies who just fade away when defeated, and you just fall over if you lose your energy.  But you can unlock pictures in a gallery mode, and each one is more naughty than the last.  And it’s not even that great of artwork either, like the bottom of the barrel DeviantArt type stuff.  They could’ve taken this part out of the game and had a much lower ESRB rating.  Definitely not for kids.

Tags: Game Reviews