My wife needs money to get a wheel chair, disability has reached a point she cannot reasonably move without one.

learned there was an incredible dearth of small saga content on e621. immediately drew something to add to it. unfortunately i cannot post within a week of creating an account. [popuko holding hammer over cuckoo clock] your life ends 1 week from now

The Magic Circle is an interesting game to really examine and pick apart, as most games-about-games are. They’re games that examine certain aspects of videogame culture, be that game design, the relationship between player and creator, or the general perspective of videogames. The Magic Circle definitely tackles all three of the aspects that I described, though it’s definitely most examining game design, the process of making games, and development hell. And while I think the game is very interesting, I do wish some aspects of it were different, though the game, at the end of the day, is still really good.

Mechanically, without a doubt, this game is spectacular. It focuses on taking, replacing, and shifting around characteristics of enemies or environmental objects to solve puzzles. And as it sounds, it’s really fun! I didn’t find every single combination, though there’s an absolute number of interesting combinations out there. The game is also extremely open, once you know the mechanics of the game, it presents you with a problem and tells you “Okay, create the solution”. There’s so much you can explore in order to find said solution, even though it’s pretty easy to find once you know where it is. After that chapter of the game, the next two sections are also really fun, and yet again allow you to flex your creativity. It’s a game that mechanically is all about creating unique solutions to every problem, and it’s just an absolute fun time.

As I said prior, this is very much a game-about-games. It examines the nature of game development, and games being in a sort of development hell. The levels of indecision that come about from working in gigantic teams, or how games can become drastically different from what they were around the time of their conception. The creator wants things to be perfect, though that definition of perfection is ever shifting, making things take much longer than they originally planned to be. But this game is something people have been dying for, for years now, and the game, even after all this time, just doesn’t exist.

But it does more than just look at development hell as well. Another major theme throughout the game is the ownership of an idea, a story, and the relationship between the fans of the story, and its creator. And this is where some issues begin to appear. In the world we live in, outside of The Magic Circle, there are many games and franchises that have been left in the absolute dust, either stuck in development hell, or just haven’t been touched in eons. There are people who are desperate to see those series continue in some form or another but even if they have the love and drive to continue the series themselves, aren’t able to. And for series who have remained dormant, untouched for so long, and the creator unlikely to ever create a new game for that franchise, it hurts not being able to breathe your own life into it. The Magic Circle, in the world of the game, is a franchise like that, a world that people want to breathe their life into, but just can’t. At the point where everyone is able to do so, all hell breaks loose, and the world of the game becomes undone. There’s definitely an argument to be made that when something becomes public domain, there will be an influx of bad projects using that public domain thing as a selling point. It happened when Winnie the Pooh became public domain, it happened when Steamboat Willie’s Mickey Mouse became public domain, and it’ll happen over and over again. However just because there is an influx of bad projects, a franchise or character being public domain will ALWAYS be a good thing. It allows anyone who has that spark of creativity to well, create something! Even if all of the public domain creations are bad, creating something bad is better than creating nothing at all, and everyone at least deserves the ability to create. The game doesn’t really feel to mention that, and it feels as if it says that a franchise being completely public domain is equally bad to a franchise being dormant. And that’s just something that I don’t personally agree with.

I also think the story can be a bit too obvious, and on the nose at times. While it has some absolutely great moments as the game nears its conclusion (especially with a certain monologue), it also doesn’t always feel confident in letting the player come to their own conclusions. I wish the game was a little subtler, so that I would find the meanings more for myself, instead of having it feel fed to me. I definitely think there’s place for stories whose themes are blatant and obvious, but I don’t think that works for a game like this, and I think it’s too obvious here regardless.

But even with my issues with the story and general themes of the game, I still can’t deny just how solid the game is mechanically. The story at its highs is still very high, even if I don’t agree with some aspects of its themes. I just think the game is mechanically, so refreshing, and it allows for a ridiculous amount of customization in problem solving, that not many other games replicate. Even with my issues with it, I still think it’s a game worthy of recommendation, maybe my reading of the game is just warped, and you will be able to get something out of it that I did not.