Steam Deck Verified!Welcome to my review of Mia and the Dragon Princess on the PC. This interactive “buddy-action” movie video game is brought to us by publishers Wales Interactive (Maid of Sker, Late Shift) and developers Good Gate Media (Blood Shore, Night Book) and Dead Pixel Productions (The Complex, Ten Dates). This game was launched on May 4th 2023 so is available now on PC (Steam, Epic Games), PlayStation 4 and 5, Xbox One and Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Android, and iOS.
Doctor… Who?
Continue reading to find out more about the game. You can also check out our previous reviews when you’re done here. This is my first time with an interactive movie from Wales Interactive so I was quite keen to get stuck in.
The Game
As mentioned Mia and the Dragon Princess is an interactive buddy-action movie game. This basically means it’s a movie that has had many different scenes recorded. This way, you control the story as you go along by choosing from multiple-choice options and real-time attribute tracking. Depending on how you choose through the story, you will have one of ten outcomes for your ending. So of course that offers quite a bit of replayability. There are also 18 achievements for players to unlock should they wish to.
This game features many big names in the world of entertainment. Some of these are Marcus Shakesheff who designed the action in this game as well as movies such as Wonder Woman and Guardians of the Galaxy. It also features some fight stunts which were coordinated by Taekwondo instructor Aaron Gassor. Aaron is a content creator with over 700 million views and is also known as the Ginger Ninja Trickster.
Some more are stars such as Paul McGann (Doctor Who, Alien³), MyAnna Buring (Ripper Street, The Witcher), and Brian McCardie (Rob Roy, Time). The game sees Mia take a mysterious woman named Marshanda under her wing after they both meet whilst Marshanda is on the run from the Police. What a legend Officer Gary is!
All Work and No Play
Mia dreamed of adventure but was stuck in the mundane lifestyle of all work and not much play. She keeps working her boring job because of her workmates who have become like a surrogate family to Mia. Not too far into the story we come across a dangerous chap named Walsh (Paul McGann). Along with his gang of thugs, they take Mia and her co-workers hostage at the bar she is working in. All of this is set around an ancient treasure which is hidden… But can you help Marshanda and survive to tell the tale?
Of course, this all plays out a bit differently depending on which options you choose as you progress through the story. It’s quite intense at times, especially during certain fight scenes. Marshanda definitely knows a move or two!
Unfortunately, you don’t have much time to choose each option. This is a shame because each option really needs to be considered properly and you shouldn’t just choose the first option you like the sound of. Why? Because each option could affect whether or not you learn more about the mysterious Marshanda or the group you’re with. One playthrough took me literally less than ten minutes. Another took me just shy of two hours. So it depends on exactly how you choose your story as you progress.
The scenes do come across very well and the story is fantastic. The game itself is rather enjoyable as it has all those different options to choose from, akin to games such as Detroit Become Human.
Look & Sound
So this is a bit odd to answer for a game like Mia and the Dragon Princess. Because of course it is literally acted out and filmed. So the graphics are literally real-life scenes that have been choreographed and rehearsed. However, I can say that whilst there are some scenes that come across as a bit amateur/cheesy it’s all pretty good and you get immersed into the story rather quickly.
The audio in the game is very good because again, it’s all recorded/edited in a studio for the interactive movie. Everything really is decent when it comes to audio, the actor’s voices, the sound effects, and the music. Great work all around for the audio.
Conclusions
As mentioned above this is my first rodeo with an interactive buddy-action game from Wales Interactive and it is pretty enjoyable. I do think some of the acting work could have been done with a bit more professionalism, however, overall it’s pretty damn good. I will mention that I played the game on my Steam Deck with zero issues.
The above screenshots were taken on said device hence why there are crop lines on the top and bottom of each screenshot. It must be noted that these are not present when playing on PC on a normal 16:9 (1920×1080, 2560×1440, 3820×2160) display.
I score Mia and the Dragon Princess an 8/10.
A code was kindly provided for us to review this.
