Mula: The Cycle of Shadow

I have a soft spot for the games that almost nobody covers, and Mula: The Cycle of Shadow is exactly that kind of game. It is a 2D side-scrolling hack-and-slash platformer built by Boozer Game Studios, a small outfit out of the Philippines, driven largely by one person's childhood love of fantasy action and a genuine conviction that art and sound can carry a short experience further than most people expect. The whole thing took two years to ship, and not everything the developer envisioned made it into the final release. That honesty matters when you're deciding whether to spend an evening here. The setup is simple and a little melancholy. You play as Wave, a survivor who is chosen - or rather, fated - to become the next guardian of the land of Mula, with the understanding that this role costs him everything. It's a cycle, not a victory. That cyclical sadness gives the game a quiet weight that punches above its word count. The world itself is built around dark dungeons, scaling enemies, and a scattering of secret rooms that reward curiosity with items that actually change how the rest of your run plays out. Boss encounters include named creatures - the Tengu, the Manticore, the Minotaur - and they feel genuinely threatening rather than perfunctory. The mechanical hook that makes repeat playthroughs interesting is the randomised primary item. Each run hands you one of three starting weapons or tools, and whichever you get shapes your approach through the early stages before the game's difficulty curve tightens and balances out toward the end. It's a modest roguelike idea grafted onto a linear platformer, but it works as an invitation to try again. Achievements are designed as clues rather than trophies, pointing you toward hidden rooms and story threads you may have walked past. Playing with a controller is genuinely recommended here: the vibration cues signal things in the environment that a keyboard player would need to watch for visually. The controls themselves are described by people who've played it as tight and responsive, which is the baseline any action platformer needs to earn. Where Mula asks for patience is in its obscurity. There is almost no critical coverage, the Steam community is effectively silent, and the store page raises more questions than it answers for first-time visitors. The game is short by design - an evening, maybe two if you chase all the secrets - and some content was cut before release, so the world can feel narrower than the lore implies. If you need social proof before committing, this is not the game that will provide it. But if you're the kind of player who finds something almost beautiful about a small, sincere project that set out to prioritise handcrafted art and a carefully considered soundscape over feature bloat, there's a genuine mood here worth sitting with.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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