Maliki: Poison of the Past Demo Showcases Unique & Challenging Gameplay

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Ever since I discovered the French company Ankama—with its English release of DOFUS in 2005—I have been transfixed by their commitment to stunning visuals within clever gameplay formats. But if there’s one thing I wasn’t ready for, it was Maliki: Poison of the Past. I was familiar with Maliki as a webcomic and admired its art style, but I had never expected it to go from a graphic novel to a game. So, when development studio Blue Banshee revealed they were developing an entire traditional turn-based RPG based on the Maliki franchise with Ankama on publishing duty, I was psyched!

After playing through the demo, which covers roughly the first hour of gameplay, I came away with some strong impressions. Let’s start with the visuals!

The 2D character portraits and looped animations are divine. Taking the still art from the graphic novels and putting them in motion is so great. This form of the character Maliki is distinct from what I’ve seen in the earlier work, given her face is half-covered with a mask, and she seems a little unhinged. I dare say I prefer this version of her, visually. The other protagonists in the crew also look amazing, including the athletic Sand (the character you start as), Fénimale the fairy, Becky the farmer, and Fang the inventor/engineer.

That said, the game is largely presented in a 3D realm with chibi-style character designs. This visual style is simple but effective for all of the gameplay. It reminds me of Pokémon: Brilliant Diamond & Shining Pearl, but with more expressive character art and a world with action RPG interaction (puzzle-solving, etc).

This demo is jam-packed with introductions to the game’s various systems, throwing a lot at you at once. Combat is important, but it is not the only aspect of this title. I loved learning about it, and I am eager to see how useful and intuitive these systems are across the course of the Maliki: Poison of the Past. Gardening, cooking, and various forms of object manipulation for puzzle-solving are all here. To that end, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom fans may find the exploration and puzzle-solving elements enjoyable!

Moving onto battles, the turn-based combat is fun and has the potential to be surprisingly difficult. Playing to strengths and responding to enemies’ movesets immediately is critical if you don’t want to game over. Maliki‘s combat system is pretty wild: characters can literally jump out of the combat timeline to heal, and manipulate time to align their next turn with another party member to perform a combo, or with an enemy for a face-off challenge. The amount of focus I needed to keep my party alive in this demo alone gives me hope that Maliki will be a challenging and rewarding game.

Maliki: Poison of the Past Gameplay Behind-the-Scenes

Before we wrap up, this is the perfect place to share today’s brand-new behind-the-scenes gameplay video, so take a look:

Maliki‘s story seems to be primarily about time travel and the dangers of messing with time, as the world-threatening entity known as “Poison” appears to be utilizing time travel to ensure everyone is doomed at every point in history. Entering the story as protagonist “Sand,” you have no idea what’s going on. It’s quite jarring, and the way the demo introduces Maliki (the character) left me wondering… who is actually behind this Poison?

A quick note about sound: the music in Maliki gives me some strong Atelier series vibes. Both the vocal tracks by French duo Starrysky and the jaunty, rhythmic acoustic jams keep things fresh. As an avid VGM collector, I am curious if Ankama plans to publish a soundtrack, and if so, what its total length will be. I am hoping for something good on this front!

The Maliki: Poison of the Past demo covers a linear 60 to 90 minutes of early game content. I want more, and I am hopeful that the high-quality visuals, sound, combat, exploration puzzles, and story found in this early segment are all maintained, if not strengthened, across the length of the full game. We’ll all have the chance to find out when Maliki: Poison of the Past drops on April 22nd for PC and Switch! In the meantime, check out the demo for yourself as part of this month’s Steam Next Fest.