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http://harmonyzone.org/MagicWand.html

EXPLORE A FUSSY COUNTRY FILLED WITH WEIRDOS:
in Magic Wand!

*************************
Hiya RMN,
How are you? I am well. You may not know it but I used to post here and figured I would do it again now that I've made something like a classical RPG. This game was inspired by my experiences using RPG Maker as well as by screenshots of the first Final Fantasy games - I always loved those fussy little squat dudes in the floppy hats, and wanted to make a game which was as fussy and dreamy as they suggested.

Magic Wand is a kind of action RPG made in the Unity engine. You star as Radiget, a crocodile boldly fighting for world peace who gets lost all the time because he doesn't pay attention. He collects capsule toys. In your quest to hook up with an old friend you will be bounced between many opaque persons and conspiracies. But will you find the secret of the enigmatic Magic Wand..?

A mouse rather than trackpad is advised for this game! Controls are listed in the readme. It runs on MAC, LINUX and WINDOWS PC.

*************************

This is a commercial game! But if it seems appealing to you I hope you will check it out regardless. It can be accessed by the link above, and also, below:

Game: http://harmonyzone.org/MagicWand.html
OST (FREE!): https://trashtronix.bandcamp.com/album/magic-wand

**************************

Thank you for reading!

- STEPHEN

Latest Blog

GASP.. FREE review copies here!

"There's no such thing as a free key.. or is there?"
Come with me on a journey into free keys.

What's up RMN, I am hoping to drum up some feedback and reviews (good or ill) from around the place and figured this would be a good place to start!

I have three free keys to Magic Wand, the spectacular block game haunting Europe, and will be sending em to essentially the first three people to ask. This is done on the honor system as they say. We all count on you and I believe you can do it. But for basic reasons I would have to specify that this only applies to persons who've written at least one review on this site already ;/

Anyway if you have written a review here and feel like playing this videogame (and have at least an open mind towards the possibility of writing some thoughts about it afterwards) just post a reply to this blog saying you want to!

I wish you well :)
"You will never discover it - the secret of free keys!"
"My god... Will we ever get out of these free keys... alive?"
  • Completed
  • Commercial
  • catmitts
  • Unity
  • Action RPG
  • 08/07/2016 09:45 AM
  • 08/16/2016 09:37 PM
  • 08/06/2016
  • 17006
  • 6
  • 0

Posts

Pages: 1
Whoa, this looks extremely trippy and disorienting as f*ck!

Do you have a demo available to try out?
Cheers! I don't right now but I plan on making a short free level when I get a chance. In the meantime someone did a video longplay if you want to see how it looks in action! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=InGHtAZ1r0I

EDIT: Oh yeah!! and I also posted a video trailer which shows some of the gameplay features such as coloured blocks and falling off the blocks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t7_Gs73iP2s
Love your stuff, kool to see you put together more wonderfully weird stuff!
Cap_H
DIGITAL IDENTITY CRISIS
6625
Oh man, how could I miss this page (and got to know about it from RPS). Happy release, manocat.
Ratty524
The 524 is for 524 Stone Crabs
12986
It's been ages since I've played a game from you. I'm ready for an experience!
Frogge
I wanna marry ALL the boys!! And Donna is a meanc
18536
Got around to playing this ^.^ I'm two days late, so sorry about that. I'll be uploading my let's play tomorrow. Here's some of my thoughts~

The game is a tough one to review, mainly because there isn't much to it. It mostly just feels like one random event after another, and there's not a whole lot to be criticized. Story pretty much feels unexistant to me. The idea of ''exploring a city of weirdos'' seemed really nice to me, but sadly the NPCs weren't anywhere near as interesting I was hoping for them to be. Most of their dialogue doesn't even feel useful, and they just sound like they are blabbering.

Other than that, while the graphics could work for a 2D game, they really ruined this one. It was mostly really hard to tell what was going on in the screen, especially with maps with depth since the bottom part of the map mixes with the one you are on, leading to the player falling down by accident, or trying to jump to wrong places. I understand why you included the rotation mechanic, but it was pretty slow, and I actually had to get my mouse offscreen most of the time to fully rotate the map. Backgrounds don't seem to rotate unlike the map, making them look really weird. That being sad, some of the maps were nicecly designed(but again, ruined by the graphics messing up the sense of death). It was also pretty hard to tell enemies apart from npcs.

That being said, I do like the music and sound effects quite a lot.

Another major problem I had with it was the jumping. Jumping was almost always working poorly for me. For example, I couldn't jump up spaces that are only 1 block high and sometimes the character ends up jumping too far, making you fall off the map or fall off something else.

I do like the sword usage. Although, from what I've seen, nothing seems to happen after you drop to 0 hp(and less).

That's all I can think of right now. I'll let you know if I remember anything else :) All in all, I'd say it was a meh experience. It did have it's ups and downs. It's definetly not the worst game out there, but also not fully enjoyable without some major changes.
Cap_H
DIGITAL IDENTITY CRISIS
6625
author=Frogge
Hidden content


10/10.
If it sucks, it's good.
I wish I had the time to play it right now. I'm stuck with fanboyant glances instead.
So it turns out I was indeed just before the ending when I stopped playing yesterday.
It got strangely fun and intriguing, but it is fairly "meh" overall.

Short overview:

+Great sense of progression (thanks to music especially, and graphics)
+Nice sounds and soundtrack
+Weird, sometimes fun
+Capsule Machine Collection
->also adding a little bit of 'lore' to characters
+you can break pots

-Slow start
-movement/combat system to get used to
-rotating camera necessary to navigate well
-rotating camera giving headaches easily
-little substance in story etc
-few good jokes/interesting dialogues among the many
-you come across treasure chests, but can open none

Full review here:



Magic Wand is a quirky short blocky adventure. It stars weird species of creatures, a journey into nowhere and an uninvested protagonist.
It is supposedly up to an hour long, but I feel I spent longer simply by wanting to explore every nook and cranny at the beginning. Please do not do that.

If the screenshots already did not give it away, you wake up in a pixelated world of blocks, mumble something about needing to find something, and are then left alone to explore the world by yourself until you stumble upon your desired Magic Wand. Maybe.

It was made in the vein of a "classical" RPG. Now, I mentioned this elsewhere - for me the core enjoyment of the "classical RPGs" has mostly been simply in the sense of progression you can get from them. Leveling up, traveling to newer and grander locations, tension building as you get to special places and meet special people. (you could also say I find most of them rather dull)
And Magic Wand nails this description!

It builds up an intrigue and sense of grandeur with a few core things - one being a central orb as a changing point of pace.
Another just being the music building up from a laid-back piece to more and more intricate impressive ones. So is the change of environments as you go from deserty wasteland over mines to grass and forests to.. many different things. Some inside, some outside of the usual.

I loved the changing music and the sound to breaking pottery was a delight to hear all over and over again. You gotta love pots!

Starting Out

Before you can discover anything, your starting point is .. quite ugly. The blocks look like dark brown mess to get used to (the whole drawing and artstyle is, for the most part, very colorful overall). With low resolution backdrops and no sense of direction you are free to fiddle with the controls for a bit.

Because all characters are very small, it is a little tough to judge distances, jump and attack range at first. It can also be really difficult to see the layout of the map at all, which is why you are able to rotate the camera to your heart's desire.
The controls are rather simple (going by the recommended mouse ones) - wasd for movement, e as a something button, left click for interaction, and right click to drag and rotate the map.
However it was very confusing to me at first that e toggles a blocking-motion of your sword on and off, so I wondered why I suddenly couldn't attack anymore. I couldn't find any good use for the blocking so far, but presumably it negates incoming damage from the direction you are facing? Maybe.
Running around enemies and killing them before they hit you seemed to me a straightforward practical tactic.

I also ended up almost constantly adjusting the map so I can traverse more easily (so you can see where you are trying to jump into, and use the same direction pretty much all the time), which led me to get a bad headache.
It's why I had to put the game down just before finishing (and slept right into the night), as I was feeling simply sick. But therein goes also a point to the game, as it at that point genuinly intrigued me and had me wanting to keep going to see the end even while I was feeling headachy.

Now, all that said. I found the start very dull and felt the areas not aesthetically pleasing, either. I soon learned that while there are all kinds of objects scattered around, you can interact only with a small set of them. The same goes to things turning out to be creatures (you can talk to everything when a "!" appears). Distinguishing between them just by looking is a task to learn.
Distinguishing between friend and foe is too .. you learn it eventually, or you just react quickly enough.
Just going through the map to the next exit (indicated by a blue arrow) and talking to everything along the way has been much more satisfying and I encourage people to not search everything. Or kill everything later on.
Once I just went through the areas, it became a lot more fun.

Another strong moment would be just reaching the train station, because for once you know you are getting somewhere. You have a few fun conversations, learn about different races
(so every purple cloaked mage thingie is a "Dug" of some kind, and the weird wobbly mass of a Ditto gone past expiration date is a "Hamperdan")
and you actually can tell what this map is supposed to depict. It is pretty, too! (I LOVED the moving signs) It was the turning point for me.

Dialogue, Quirk and other Things

The majority of dialogue is a little clustered mess of different things thrown at you. At some places it is amusingly so (I loved my Pocketbaal .. I think it was a something something-Baal, anyway), other times you hear the same thing in different forms, which makes it more interesting again as it complements each other. Like the lil Ditty-creatures being all called the same name and getting upset by that. Most of the time dialogue seems rather dull, though, as it is simply too random without any punch to that randomness. There is moving lettuce. The end.

It also does not help that the dialogue box looks very static and is filled by multiple character's dialogue. The fact it wasn't one train of thought after another (as in - one character speaks, then another) really disrupted the pacing for me and made it less fun. It also is not in full description/narration style, either, which would work well too.

Especially the "background" narration or dialogue with our protagonist seemed off because of that. Our protagonist is a weird goofball for the most part, and seems to not take anything seriously.
There are a few fun quirks, like characters wanting to give you something, but you not having any pockets (the joke didn't really pack a punch ingame tho, both because of the box-system and also lack of sound. I'd wager having a special "tadaa"-sound with a delayed "no can do" would make it fun)

You automatically pick up gold when you find some destroying certain things, and you are later able to purchase capsule-heroes with it. Creatures you encounter throughout your playthrough with a wonderful description of who they actually are.
Now the amount of money you gain per coin seems weird (since it's a 0.something), and you gain too few to even fill half of the collectibles unless you farm for it, but I thoroughly enjoyed this side show. It made me appreciate the creatures I encountered more, too.
You also cannot open chests. Never. Even though a chest icon depicts your most-of-the-game empty figurine collection. That made me a little sad.

As a sidenote - you do not die if you fall below 0 HP. Which is good, because one room would have killed me many times over. Instead, it counts into the negative, and once you are, each room you enter a little angel appears to attack you. You can heal a little bit by slaughtering the little one.

All in All:

Rushing through weird room after room became strangely intriguing and felt like strong progress too towards the end even as you feel your actions impact little at all.
Even with fun moments, this game as a whole has been a little fiddley and dull.







Ah, thank you both so much for the reviews!! I'm sorry you didn't care for it but hopefully there'll be some good memories at least. The "filled with weirdoes" line probably did also suggest a game of many characters when in fact there aren't really any characters at all..

Still planning on making a demo but have been caught up in sending emails etc - when I do I'll post here and you're definitely both welcome to post reviews if you want!
Definitely some good memories there, it is quite densely packed and got quite interesting. I only wished I could get all capsules easily *chuckle*
I also appreciate the fact you could progress it rather straight-forwardly. Searching for random ways to progress is no fun, especially when the environment isn't helping you along and many "weird" games fall into that trap.

Good luck, catmitts!
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