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 OutBefore 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 ThingsThe 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.