Review of the game The Magic Circle: Gold Edition

Review of The Magic Circle: Gold Edition

Platforms: PS4 (reviewed), Xbox One, Windows, Mac, Linux

Developer: Question Games

Publisher: Question Games

MSRP: $19.99

A game commenting/basing itself around the struggles of game development with some (technical) struggles of its own

When I requested to review The Magic Circle: Gold Edition some time ago, it was one of those few occasions where I neglected to view the description of a game in order to surprise myself. Having only knowledge on the most basic concept of it, I expected a game where I take control of the hero of an unfinished game and try to escape it by slaying enemies through an, at the time, unseen world that seemingly held lots of interest and potential. Rather, all expected combat was stripped from my character and I was thrust into a uniquely fleshed out puzzle game centered around engaging characters and conflicts.

Reading certain articles about Gold Edition, I learned that it is a sequel of sorts to a text-based adventure of the same name, minus the Gold Edition in the title. This makes certain characters developing the game more relatable in the sense that it makes their hardships in creating a sequel in-game to this real game made long ago understandable. These developers are Ish, Maze, and Coda. Ish is the creator of the series who’s been working on the unfinished game you journey through for twenty years who cannot stick with one idea and move towards completion with it. Maze is a former pro gamer forced to stay on the project due to her brand and name having been sold to Ish until the completion of the game. Lastly, Coda is an intern freshly brought onto the project who’s deeply passionate about making it the best game it can be. Furthering interest for these characters is their underlying goals which act as foils to the goals of those around them, such as Maze’s will to sabotage the game to get herself fired and re-attain her brand and name as well as Coda’s intent to slowly take control of the game away from Ish and make the game she “knows’ fans like her want.

Within the game these three are developing lies another character besides from you called Old Pro. Old Pro has been trapped in the game ever since it began development. Knowing full well that the game will never reach completion, he entrusts the player (or boss as he likes to call you) to fulfill this goal. Seeing how those within the game react to the actions of those outside of it and vice versa is perhaps the most appealing reason to fully playthrough this game as the direction of the narrative always maintained a level of quality which kept me involved in it and on my toes. On top of that, this quality gradually leading to a bittersweet ending that gives all-too-real commentary on game development made Gold Edition’s narrative even more memorable as a result.

Aside from the narrative, every other aspect of Gold Edition revolves around the theme of this game being in development. Gameplay sticks to this theme by including a mechanic where you can create magical portal traps to hack into creatures and steal parts of them which dictate how they attack, move, and determine who their allies/enemies are and attach them to other creatures due to their coding not being completely worked out. This ability, along with another one obtained later on where you can pinpoint a waypoint for your hacked allies to remain until you decide otherwise, is often used in combination with the aforementioned hacking mechanic to allow players to concoct multiple solutions to each puzzle in the game. It was really gratifying to finally solve an extremely mind-boggling puzzle and see other solutions online I hadn’t even thought of which required parts of enemies I never attained, encouraging me to go back and explore more of this modestly sized world for these parts and be surprised when I find hackable objects which unlock developer commentary by the characters, revealing interesting information about them and the plot.

There are two graphical styles within Gold Edition. One is a black and white ink-like style that is kept interesting with your surroundings becoming colorful with every step you take since you’re apparently bringing life to it, though it’s still a questionable art-style due to some creature models being rough around the edges. The other style is a sci-fi PS1 aesthetic that is really cool as it has the low-poly pixelated look of old-school games with modern day slickness and polish. On somewhat of a side note, although it makes sense narrative-wise, it feels like some potential was lost in not taking the chance to add in other visual styles based on different genres of games. Moving onward from that, music is perhaps the most faithful to making you feel like you’re in a game still in development as most of its soundtrack consists of a “live” orchestra with the composer commenting on fixes he wishes to make to songs in “real-time.” Yet, despite it being the most faithful to this title’s main theme, the soundtrack has no real unique twist like the graphics, gameplay, or narrative do in order to make it interesting to experience.

You know what’s arguably more important than making an interesting experience? An enjoyable one. Clearly, I enjoyed Gold Edition, but I was most assuredly not a fan of the two prevalent technical errors which degrade the quality of this game to some degree. The first, and perhaps the worst technical error, is the fact that loading a save file or booting up the game takes up to 1:30; why that’s bad should be obvious. The second is a seemingly uncapped framerate which does more harm to the smoothness of the game than aid it as more often than not, the framerate is either low or wavering between being smooth and slow as a snail. While this doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things since this is a slow-paced puzzle game and is also understandable considering how many creatures can be onscreen at once, it still ruins the overall flow of the game.

The Magic Circle: Gold Edition absolutely nails its theme of being a game in development by basing all of its aspects around it. However, some of these themed aspects like the soundtrack and ink-like graphical style could have used a bit more polish in order to make the game that much better (please just make my life easier and pretend I’m holding up two fingers close to each other in order to better emphasize this point). Although not themed, this applies to the technical aspects of the game as well. Despite these parts of the game making the general experience less enjoyable, they don’t detract from the immense enjoyability I had with the fantastic puzzles. Most importantly; however, they don’t overshadow the memorability of the narrative and its commentary on the hardships in developing games that gave me a newfound appreciation/point of view for game development as a whole. I highly recommend you purchase this title as while it’s length may not be the longest, it’s satisfyingly challenging puzzles and unforgettable narrative make it a must-buy, keeping in mind the annoyances of some factors.

*This game was reviewed courtesy of a download code provided to me by the publisher through Evolve PR

*This review was originally posted on my blog, but is also being posted here so as to get more feedback on my writing