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Malys Review
- Taylor Rioux
- 5 days ago
- 5 min read
Menaces and Maledictions.
Malys is good.Â
Sometimes I think it’s best to get the most important information out of the way, to clarify that which might otherwise be lost in my meandering writing.Â
Malys is good.Â
I’m telling myself this just as much as I’m telling you. I’m reminding myself because I just got out of a session in which I was meant to take screenshots, but encountered a number of bugs that frustrated me to no end, save when the game collapsed upon itself and brought my computer to a screeching halt.Â
Malys is good.
I think I’m lying to myself.
Malys is the latest title from Summerfall Studios, headed by former Dragon Age writer David Gaider. Thankfully — no, mercifully — Malys differs from many other games in its genre in a few distinct ways. It’s a roguelite deckbuilder with a darker atmosphere and a much heavier focus on its story than your typical deckbuilding fare. When you begin, you start with a choice between 3 different decks of cards and then pick a path to proceed on. Through each run you'll gather cards and items which are used to (hopefully) empower you enough to fight through enemy after enemy until you reach the boss. When you defeat a boss, you move to the next floor and do it all over again. If you finish a run, win or lose, the game will spit you back out to do it all over again.Â
The fact that it has an engaging storyline at all might be one of its most unique aspects, as many games in this genre are light in that regard. Malys leans heavily on its writing, each floor a vignette of your demon hunting endeavors. That comes at a cost, however. Repeated text takes up your screen in every new run, forcing you to engage with it in some way before moving on to the battles. Yes, these walls of text can be skipped, but manually skipping the same text over and over is still work.Â
I wouldn’t be so bitter about it all if Malys wasn’t also buggy as hell, taunting me with slowdown and runtime issues, hitching, and freezing on loading screens.
That is a recurring problem across all systems. Every interaction, every single new screen, requires multiple clicks to navigate through — something that might not be too grating if it weren’t compounded by constantly shifting UI elements, or slow animations and performance woes. For example, whenever you finish a fight, a rewards screen will pop up slowly, with the actual rewards moving into place. If you select the top reward, it will disappear and the second reward will shift upward in the first’s place. Trying to click the reward as it moves does nothing — you’ll have to wait for that particular animation to finish. Clicking on things is hit or miss even when the elements aren’t shifting, as well, with clicks sometimes not registering upon first attempt. Everything just goes so much slower than it should.Â
Even the fights themselves drag on. Enemy stages for the elites and bosses are interesting as a concept in a deckbuilder, forcing you to plan and prepare for additional stages and all the new abilities they bring, but enemy health pools are so large, that the fights can really drag on unless you have a build that can make use of wrath, a buff that increases the damage you do on each hit. That isn’t to say there is no variety in card types available, as Malys has a solid variety of playstyles and supporting cards. Defensive options, regeneration abilities that can also be used to damage enemies, attack-focused decks, and even a summon-based build — any number of these are at your fingertips when you play. All are viable but anything other than a deck built around dishing out damage and buffing your strength is miserable.Â
I wouldn’t be so bitter about it all if Malys wasn’t also buggy as hell, taunting me with slowdown and runtime issues, hitching, and freezing on loading screens. I’ve encountered bugs with enemy intent showing one action, but the demon performing another, runs where enemies were able to attack me after I had already won the fight, and status effects being misapplied across the combatants. One persistent issue is that the game runs progressively worse the longer you play it. Play for more than a few hours and the slowdown becomes almost unbearable, skipping every animation and causing weird side effects to the gameplay. Inevitably, there will be a point you need to exit the game, whether that’s of your own volition or up to the game. And if you leave it up to the game, it’s going to happen mid-fight, meaning you'll have to do it all over again.
I absolutely adore the way this game looks.
Malys had a kickstarter earlier this year to help fund it and that kickstarter did not reach their funding goal, so they didn’t get any of those promised funds. They could have really used it. Aside from the obvious and persistent performance issues, Malys lacks balance. Shop pricing is restrictive, which disincentivizes experimentation, and deters players from donating cash to the shops for forward progression. On top of that, some cards and card archetypes are vastly superior to your other options. It also suffers from glaring writing errors, such as card descriptions not matching what they do in-game, and spelling errors in those little blurbs before each fight.
But Malys is good. Or at least it should be. It could be.
There are some real positives here. The artwork is astounding, accentuating the dark, brooding atmosphere with its bold, menacing style. The elites and bosses in particular have some really great images, full of twisted and creepy demons who loom over their victims. Card art is strong as well, utilizing evocative imagery to great effect. The soundtrack is filled with mostly mood-setting ambient sounds, excepting the exciting vocal boss themes, which work quite well, but begin to wear on you as you play the game. The writing is strong, and I love the way each encounter is treated as its own important event, even against the small enemies.
If this had launched without its major performance and UI issues, it would be one of the surest recommendations I could give for the genre. But that’s not what we got. It might not be what we ever get, either.
Image Credits: Summerfall Studios