L.G.C. |Reviews| — The Magic Circle

Your intrepid heroes absorb rainbows, hack creatures, and listen to indie-hipster dialogue. The Magic Circle faces ze CHAIRQUISITION!

Game: The Magic Circle
Webzone: http://www.magiccirclegame.com/
Devel: question (that’s actually their name)
Engine: Unity
Price: $/€ 19.99 – CDN $21.99

Wazzat: In this darkly comedic story, you are the hero of an unfinished fantasy game, and your designers have failed you. Steal the power of a game god – trap their creations, swap behaviors and body parts, crafting your own unique solutions to free-form puzzles. Can you ship a game …from the inside?


 

CHAIRQUISITION:
CHAIR
– Nooope

CHAIRCHAIR– Not sure if want

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Check it out

CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR– Shutupandtakemymonies


Makes with the working

V-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Completely playable at 3840 x 2160 /w a 980.
  • What’s with the hella long savegame loads?
  • I could forgive it if it was using more than one FK mothering core.

J-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

P-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • 8 whole cores and it maxxes one of them at a time occasionally changing to another one.

Total-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


Shiny / Sounds

V-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • 4K 60+ FERPS /w Unity?!!?!
  • Really digging the art style.
  • Even when it went 3D hipster-pixel.
  • The game doesn’t really have much in the way of sounds.
  • Instead, you get above average voice talent #bonussoda

J-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Top notch voice acting
  • I the art style is also really cool.
  • The shift between the artsy sketchy look and the pixelly doom look is a fun juxtapostion

P-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • It’s the second Unity game which I’m never sure if the engine fucking up or if it’s on purpose. Since it put me in the good mood, I’m going to assume just like Hack’N Slash they were intentional.
  • The pixely remains from the “old engine” contrasting with the high-poly count models and textures gave me a right proper headache.
  • The voice acting was spot on.
  • I guess it’s better to stick to what you know and if you know about videogames that’s what you should talk about.

Total-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


Control

V-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • Standard gerbil/keyboard business.
  • Damn thing even works /w the Xclone controlla.
  • I’ll explain why that’s important-sauce in the fun section.

J-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

P-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • I had to create specific profile for this game with mouse because even at 400dpi and with the sensitivity slider all the way down, if I so much as sneezed in the general direction of the mouse it’d turn me all the way around.
  • While that is enough for me to ding it a chair, I still love the fact that the collision detection was frickin’ spot on.
  • If I saw a hole in the middle of a few brambles in that forest early on and I thought I could fit through there, I would fit through it. In other games they’d just have made that an invisible wall and told you to pike off.

Total-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR


FUN

V-CHAIRCHAIR

  • This game comes on STRONG, Brad.
  • The first 30min is pure amazeballs.
  • A truly unique experience that is masterfully crafted.
  • Notice how I said “the first 30min”
  • I don’t want to say I’ve soured on this game but damn if it didn’t lose most of its charm /w a quickness.
  • Seriously, after an arn of exposition I just wanted the game to STFU and get on /w it.
  • This is where controlla support comes in handy.
  • I genuinely believe I would have had a better time playing this on a couch-organ.
  • Sitting in FPS-mode /w keyboard/gerbil at the ready is not the way to play this critter.
  • Think about it. In FPS-mode your entire body-organ is waiting for shite to get real and with the possible exception of a few puzzles, it doesn’t.
  • If I was curled up on the couch /w a nice mug of tea and a few grams of coke I would be infinitely more receptive to a FPStory.
  • Then we get into minion management.
  • Like Hack’N Slash, programming all the little creature thingies becomes tedious.
  • The puzzles are simple enough for a Windows user to sort.
  • The “combat” feels like someone played a console RTS and said “That’s busted as FK all. I’ll have me some of that.”
  • Mix that together /w an overall playtime shorter than my dick.

J-CHAIRCHAIR

  • It’s different.   The good kind of different.
  • Similar in concept to your Hack’n’slashes and your brutal legends
  • The writing is top notch
  • Juggling all of the various abilities is a bit tedious though

P-CHAIRCHAIRCHAIR

  • The typical Unity mouse sensitivity and graphics á lá Saturday Morning RPG make it so I can’t give it 4 chairs for the fun
  • But ignoring that for a bit, this is a very good game.
  • It doesn’t tell you what to do, it shows you. It lets you explore, make mistakes, get your ass kicked and when you do finally come out on top you feel awesome!
  • It takes a bit of metroidvania and puts it in a Portal-esque situation, while everyone around you treats you as a player instead of a character.
  • Is it a 4th wall break if they actually acknowledge right from the start that you’re a person playing a game?
  • Most of the humor is actually pretty good but, like every game that attempts to satirise “gamer culture”, there’s a few cringe-worthy moments. Thankfully it’s just a few of them and I’m almost willing to bet they were intentional.
  • From what I saw, it seems to be a relatively short game. You should be able to finish it in 3 or 4 hours if you don’t much care for exploring everything.
  • There’s a lot of content in this game and given the free-form “puzzles” you can miss most of it and that’s okay!

Total-CHAIRCHAIR


Final –CHAIRCHAIR

 

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