Thank you Ankama Games for providing us with a review code!

The French web comic, Maliki, has been around since 2004. With its manga-themed art-style, it’s been dubbed “Franga”. The series is pretty popular and warranted its videogame release of Maliki: Poison of the Past. Prior to this game, I was not familiar with this comic series. Thankfully, the game is beginner friendly and fills you in on the character backstories as you play through it.

Maliki: Poison of the Past begins with your character, Sand, walking through town, when all of a sudden tentacles start spouting everywhere and attacking everyone. Humanity is in danger! Just as Sand is about to be attacked, time freezes and she is transported to a place called the Domaine and is expected to join the battle with people she has never met before. Luckily, Sand has a knack for fighting and adapts quickly. When the dust settles a bit, introductions are made and explanations are given.

The Domaine is a tranquil place that is typically not impacted by the concerns of the world. There’s a tree that is crucial to the Domaine’s survival, and Maliki asks for Sand’s help in growing the tree to unlock new areas to explore. As you travel around the Domaine, you’ll be able to harvest and plant various crops. Farming is encouraged and cooking dishes can boost your stats for battles.

The battles in this game are turn-based, and there’s a timeline on top which shows the attack order of your allies and enemies. With each successful attack, you can earn points that allow you to alter the timeline to change your attack order to pair up attacks or give your teammates multiple turns. Each party member has upgradable gear that will improve your defenses, but will also give you a weakness to certain attack types. Enemies have weaknesses too, so be sure to exploit them to defeat them faster.

The time altering abilities can restore health and technique points, but it takes a while to accumulate enough points to alter time. There are inventory items for healing, reviving, and restoring TP, but their quantities are limited. There are numerous Steam reviews complaining about the game being too difficult. The boss battles are especially brutal and take a lot of health away from your party. Having different difficulty levels would be a nice feature.

Another limitation worth noting is the lack of cloud saves. Steam Deck compatibility is nice, but it would be nicer if my PC game save was waiting for me on it. You can find the save files in a folder called Blue Banshee Games inside of the AppData\LocalLow user folders.

On the flipside, Maliki: Poison of the Past does a lot of things right. While there isn’t any voice acting, the background music is excellent. The graphics are colorful and cute, and I like the art style. Given that this originated as a web comic, it makes sense that the visuals are top-tier.

The story stays true to the web comic with the same characters, love stories, and nemesis. The main love story is a lesbian relationship/marriage.

There is some cartoon violence, but I didn’t notice any blood. While it’s not voice acted, there is some minor language, including words like hell, d*mn, and *ss. There is also one instance of OMG. Lastly, there are references to drinking and drunkenness.

Maliki: Poison of the Past is broken down into five chapters, and as the title suggests, you’ll be traveling through time in order to stop their nemesis, Poison, from erasing Maliki’s existence. Along with the main story, there are several side quests, such as retrieving lost cats and chickens. If you’re not a completionist, this game can be finished in under twenty hours. The asking price is a reasonable $29.99, but I have seen it on sale for $17.99. If you’re still on the fence, there is a demo available to try. Fans of the web comic should definitely give it a go. If you don't like LGBT themes shoved down your throat, I'd avoid this title.