Mulaka turns the Sierra Tarahumara into a playable landscape, and it does so with a straight face. Lienzo’s 2018 action-adventure casts you as a Sukurúame, a Tarahumara shaman, and sends you across northern Mexico to fight back a corruption that has taken hold of the land. The game draws on the indigenous culture of the Tarahumara, the people known for their impressive running abilities, and it treats that culture as a foundation rather than a coat of paint. Mulaka is on PlayStation 4, PC, Mac, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch. It is a single-player, third-person adventure with platforming, puzzles and hand-to-hand combat.
Trailer, via Lienzo Mx.
A Sukurúame in the Sierra Tarahumara
The premise is simple and specific. You are a shaman of the Tarahumara, and the land is sick. Something foul is spreading through it, and your job is to push it back. Lienzo builds the journey around the powers of demigods, which the Sukurúame draws on as he moves through the world.
That structure matters more than it might sound. A lesser game would hand you a generic hero and a generic blight. Mulaka ties both to a real place and a real people. The Sierra Tarahumara locations in the game are inspired by actual sites, and the creatures you fight come out of the region’s mythology.
The Tarahumara reputation for running is not decoration here either. The source material calls them renowned for impressive running abilities and notes the reputation for being superhumans. Mulaka leans on that. A shaman who runs is a shaman whose movement through the world is the point, not an afterthought.
Puzzles and hand-to-hand combat
The game splits its time between two kinds of work. One is solving puzzles in environments built from those Sierra Tarahumara inspirations. The other is heated hand-to-hand combat with creatures pulled from the region’s mythology.
Neither half is a side dish. Mulaka wants you to stop and read a space, then wants you to fight inside it. The combat is close, physical, melee-first. The puzzles are environmental, which means the landscape is doing double duty as both scenery and obstacle.
This is where a game like Mulaka lives or dies. If the puzzles are filler between fights, the whole thing sags. If the fights are filler between puzzles, it sags the other way. Lienzo’s design puts the two in the same rooms, so the player is always switching modes without switching places.
The third-person camera keeps the shaman and the terrain in view at once. That is the right call for a game about a landscape. You are meant to see where you are.
The demigod powers
Mulaka’s combat and traversal are fed by the powers of demigods. The Sukurúame draws on them, and that is the game’s main lever for variety. New powers change how you fight and how you move.
The idea is coherent with the setting. A shaman is not a soldier. He is a figure who mediates between the human world and something larger. Giving him borrowed divine power is a way of making the mythology mechanical rather than just thematic.
It also gives the game a reason to keep introducing creatures. The mythology of the region supplies the bestiary, and the demigod powers supply the answers to it. That is a clean loop: the land’s stories become the land’s enemies, and the land’s gods become your tools.
What the Tarahumara setting buys Mulaka
Plenty of indie adventures use a culture as texture. Mulaka uses it as structure. The running, the shaman role, the demigods, the creatures, the real locations — these are not separate decorations. They are the same decision made over and over.
That is the strongest thing about the game. It has a thesis: northern Mexico’s indigenous culture is rich enough to carry a 3D action-adventure on its own, without being flattened into fantasy-Europe defaults. Lienzo, which both developed and published Mulaka, committed to that thesis across every system.
The result is a game that feels like it comes from somewhere. That is rarer than it should be. Most indie platformers could be set anywhere. Mulaka could only be set here.
Where Mulaka strains
The ambition is real, and so are the limits. Mulaka is a small studio’s 3D action-adventure, and the genre is expensive. Puzzles and melee combat both demand polish, and a game that does both is asking a lot of its team.
The scope shows in the way the game spreads itself. It wants platforming, it wants adventure, it wants combat, it wants puzzle-solving, it wants a mythological bestiary and a power progression. That is a lot of systems for one title, and the seams are visible.
None of that is fatal. It just means Mulaka is a game you admire for its choices as much as you enjoy its moment-to-moment play. The setting is doing more work than the mechanics in places, and the mechanics are doing more work than the setting in others.
The score, and what it means
Mulaka holds a 7.4 out of 10 on the IGDB critic aggregate, drawn from 7 outlets. That is a fair landing spot for a game like this. It is not a masterpiece, and it is not a curiosity. It is a solid, distinctive action-adventure with a point of view.
That number also says something about how the game was received. A 7.4 across seven outlets suggests broad agreement rather than a split. Nobody seems to have hated Mulaka. Nobody seems to have crowned it either.
That is the honest read. Mulaka is good, and its best quality is the one that does not show up in a score: it exists at all, and it exists on its own terms.
Dive into northern Mexico’s breathtaking landscapes with Mulaka, a 3D action-adventure game based on the rich indigenous culture of the Tarahumara.
The pitch is also the review. What Mulaka promises is exactly what it delivers: a Tarahumara shaman, a corrupted land, demigod powers, real places, mythological creatures. There is no bait and switch here.
The case for Mulaka
Here is the ranking of what Mulaka gets right, in order of how much it matters.
- The setting. The Sierra Tarahumara is not a backdrop. It is the game’s organizing idea, and every system answers to it.
- The shaman. Playing a Sukurúame rather than a generic hero gives the combat and the powers a cultural logic.
- The bestiary. Creatures pulled from the region’s mythology beat another round of goblins.
- The demigod powers. Borrowed divinity is a clean way to grow a character without abandoning the premise.
- The running. The Tarahumara reputation for long-distance running is the most obvious hook, and Mulaka uses it.
Put another way: the game’s identity is its strongest asset, and its mechanics are its most uneven. If you came for the culture, Mulaka delivers. If you came for the tightest combat in the genre, you will find it merely competent.
That is not a knock on Lienzo. It is a description of what kind of game this is. Mulaka is an indie action-adventure with a specific cultural argument, and it makes that argument well.
What Mulaka is not
Mulaka is not a history lesson, and it does not pretend to be one. It is a fantasy game built on real culture. The demigods and the corruption are game systems, not anthropology.
It is also not a running game, despite the Tarahumara reputation at its center. The running is a theme and a movement language, not a simulation of ultramarathon culture. Anyone expecting a Tarahumara sports game will be surprised.
And it is not a blockbuster. Mulaka is a modest production with a clear idea. Judged as a blockbuster, it falls short. Judged as what it is, it holds up.
The verdict on Mulaka
Mulaka earns its 7.4. The game’s commitment to the Tarahumara and the Sierra Tarahumara is the reason to play it, and the reason it sticks. Lienzo built a 3D action-adventure where the puzzles, the combat, the powers and the creatures all trace back to one place and one people.
The cost of that commitment is uneven execution. Mulaka spreads itself across platforming, adventure, combat and puzzle-solving, and it does not master all of them. It masters the setting.
That trade is worth making. A game with a real point of view and imperfect systems is more interesting than a polished game with nothing to say. Mulaka has something to say, and it says it in the Sierra Tarahumara, with a Sukurúame, against creatures from the region’s own stories.
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