It’s always heartwarming to see indie developers trying to up the ante on what their lower-budgeted games can deliver, trying to make their titles stand out with many features you’d expect from larger AAA titles, but this is a really tricky and risky situation. You need money, manpower, and experience to come up with a deep adventure on a shoestring budget. Adding in features and influences from bigger games in an indie game can occasionally be its actual downfall. One such example is the oddly-named Mirage 7, an action(ish) adventure developed by Drakkar Dev and published by Blowfish.

Well Nadira, it certainly wasn’t a mongoose.

Mirage 7 calls itself a mixture between Ancient Arabic fantasy and sci-fi, though the latter is barely noticeable throughout the vast majority of its runtime. It starts off with a modern-day drone crashing in the desert and awakening a mysterious figure that reminded me of SHODAN from System Shock 2. After that, the plot is shifted to a different time, where you meet our protagonist, Nadira, as well as her pet deus ex machina lizard, Jiji. Her story is driven by the search for her sister, culminating in her ending inside trap-like caves, exploring temples, and trying to make sense of the connection between her and the annoying SHODAN-esque figure that shows up from out of nowhere to deliver lines so weird, they almost feel like they’re haikus.

It’s a story-heavy game, but that might be one of its biggest weaknesses. Mirage 7 is not a well-written or acted title, with poor, borderline robotic performances delivering lines that either sound plain amateurish or otherwise nonsensical. There is a lot of voice acting, with Nadira talking to herself more often than Aloy from the Horizon franchise, but very rarely does she say anything that is actually meaningful. It’s not like the setting isn’t interesting, because it is. I simply did not care for her, her sister, and any other character I’d eventually meet. Okay, I did like the lizard, not only because he’s cute, but because he is not particularly useless during gameplay.

This still may look somewhat decent, but let me reiterate: Mirage 7’s combat is pretty bad.

Sadly, the gameplay is also quite rough. Mirage 7 wanted to be a bit like Uncharted, a bit like Prince of Persia, and a bit like a traditional adventure game, one with puzzles to solve and whatnot, but I don’t think a lot of its gameplay-related elements work. Nadira moves around like a robot who’s just learned how to walk; she doesn’t feel nimble or fluid, with the terrible collision detection almost always bringing her momentum to a halt. She’s also pretty terrible at being able to interact with an object, as the prompt to do so takes a while to show up onscreen, even when you’re right in front of an interactive object.

Platforming is very clunky – you don’t have a jump button, but a context-sensitive button to allow you either climb small ledges or jump over gaps in a very bizarre manner. The combat is the most “whatever” system I’ve ever seen in an action-adventure game, possibly ever. Automatic lock-on feature, a simple roll, and Nadira can either use a dagger or a slingshot. Enemies are spongy, barely react to your attacks, and have the IQ of an oyster. Thankfully, combat isn’t as common as I expected, because each and every moment where I had to face an enemy felt like a boring chore, not an adrenaline-fueled change of pace.

SHODAN, is that you? Why are you speaking in cryptic haikus?

I will admit that, every once in a while, you will come across a puzzle section that actually felt… decent. It’s not like the controls and mechanics do these sections any favor, but you can see that Drakkar Dev was trying. Some of these puzzles aren’t as obvious to solve as you’d initially expect, requiring careful attention, both from your analysis of the environment around you, and your (sparse) inventory. You will even need to combine items together on occasion. Again, it’s clunky, but Mirage 7 shone the brightest whenever you had to deal with an ancient puzzle to complete, not its pathetic combat sections.

I guess there’s only one thing left to talk about, and that would be Mirage 7‘s graphics. Again, they tried. There is a unique mesh of historical periods, and Drakkar Dev tried to add a bit of dark fantasy elements here and there, but the assets look somewhat cheap, and their animations are just… ancient. For a game trying to emulate bigger-budgeted greats, these character models are just unacceptable. Environments are hit-or-miss, but they feature decent lighting at the very least (you can thank the engine for that), but characters… nope, just nope.

Outstanding statement, Nadira.

Mirage 7 tries to be bigger and bolder than its small budget would allow, and I guess this is its biggest weakness. Its developers tried to fly too close to then sun. This game tries to be a puzzler, an action game, a story-driven adventure, but it never truly focuses on a single elements in order to make it feel less shallow. You can’t just make something that tries to resemble Uncharted and Prince of Persia in such a shoestring budget, and with such poor controls. I commend the developers’ ambition, but this just isn’t very good. And I doubt patches alone would solve all of its problems.

Mirage 7 is available now on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

Reviewed on Intel i7-12700H, 16GB RAM, RTX 3060 6GB.

A copy of Mirage 7 was provided by the publisher.