Vapourware The Magic Circle, a puzzle exploration game set inside vapourware

[Infinitron]

SO META http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2...puzzle-exploration-game-set-inside-vapourware

The Magic Circle is a puzzle exploration game set inside vapourware
BioShock 2 director Jordan Thomas turns the immersive sim inside out.

It's fashionable for game developers to show their working these days, so it's no huge surprise when Irrational alumnus Jordan Thomas reveals that his first game since going indie, The Magic Circle, is about the clash of interesting systems in an unfinished setting. But this is no alpha version and you're not invited to contribute to the game's development. Instead The Magic Circle is set in a fictional unfinished game world, and you play an unfinished hero rebelling against the developers' lack of progress.

That might sound like a departure for a man best known for his contributions to the BioShock series - having masterminded Fort Frolic in the original game, Thomas was creative director on BioShock 2 and returned to Irrational to help make Infinite - but another way to look at it is that he has spent a lot of time working on interactive dystopian allegories, which actually seems like quite a good way to describe a game set inside development hell.

"Speaking only for myself, from outside the industry game developers seemed larger than life to me," Thomas explains. "All that old hyperbole about 'Game Gods' - I bought it hook, line and sinker. They had taken on the seemingly impossible task of manufacturing a plausible alternate reality and convincing me to live there for a while. The truth, of course, is far more flawed, far more human - and I would argue more interesting.

"Candidly, it also just struck me as funny to engage in one of these quixotically ambitious, eternally revised projects from the game's eye view. And the idea that you are not in good hands, that the game's designers do not have your back this time (and in fact can't even decide on your powers, so you have no direct way to influence the world at all), so you're going to have to un-FUBAR the world yourself, held a kind of promethean scrappiness that really appeals to me."

But forget all that. The Magic Circle will undoubtedly have a lot of the developer's experience and worldview balled up inside it (and that of his partner at Question Games, Stephen Alexander, another Irrational man, and AI specialist Kain Shin, who worked on Thief 3 and Dishonored), but those layers are likely to be subtle and more fun to pick over afterwards. Your immediate business as the player is with a first-person puzzle exploration game that has a unique art style and a fantastically cool central game mechanic.

The Magic Circle is set inside a high-fantasy remake of a fictional 80s text adventure, also called The Magic Circle, that has been in production for many years. The original was made by Ish Gilder, "a mild-mannered game designer who won't let us call him a genius" in the words of a fake website for the game. An audio diary early on (of course there are audio diaries) reveals that The Magic Circle has been in production for two decades. It's vapourware. The environment resembles a whiteboard outline that has been erased and redrawn - a beautiful, sinewy vision of sketch lines and uncertain clouds, with only occasional flashes of colour showing live elements.

 

[Crooked Bee]

Ah, so this is the project he was teasing on Twitter. Sounds pretentious

Should've set it inside the world of Grimoire, though.

 

[Kz3r0]

The name of the main character is Cleve perchance?

 

[Infinitron]

Haha, I love what happens when you mouse over links on the game's website: http://www.magiccirclegame.com/

A tale so epic, it took twenty years to perfect. The most anticipated game VAPORWARE of all time. The Magic Circle is the long-awaited modern successor to the classic text adventure of the same name.

It's like if Grimoire was a Zork spiritual successor instead of a Wizardry one.

 

[agentorange]

deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

 

[sexbad?]

I like developer commentaries and in-depth interviews about how games work and all that, so I'm interested in seeing how this turns out. It would probably be more fun, though, to explore a game about extended game development under the meddling hands of big, directionless publishers.

I hope it won't just turn into a bunch of internet meme references.

 

[Jasede]

deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

???

it's not trying to be deep

 

[Kane]

deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

???

it's not trying to be deep

he forgot the 'r'.

 

[Angthoron]

Why is this not called The Magic Circlejerk? I thought the devs were trying to be hip.

 

[WhiteGuts]

This is so deep I can't even begin to

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/...ild_a_darkly_comic_game_about_development.php

Excerpt:

The Magic Circle marks the debut of Question, the indie studio co-founded by Thomas and his fellow Irrational Games expat Stephen Alexander after Thomas’ departure from 2K Marin last year.

Thomas and Alexander both have extensive experience designing first-person ‘immersive sim’ games -- Alexander worked on both Bioshock and Bioshock Infinite alongside Thomas at 2K Games.

They also share an affinity for talking about games as conversations between designers and players. The pair describe The Magic Circle as an attempt to explore that concept: it's a puzzle game with open-ended challenges meant to afford players some choice in how they go about using non-violent abilities to subvert the development of a (fictional) vaporware game from the inside.

The conceit is that players guide an avatar of mysterious origins through the virtual landscapes of a long-delayed game as it’s still being developed, sucking up life-sustaining memory that leaks from objects in the world and expending it to make changes to the code -- rebuilding deleted structures, for example, or editing the form and functions of creatures by swapping simplistic behavioral descriptors like "my enemies are THE HERO" to "my enemies are NOTHING" or sliding meters like "Health" up and down.

It's an ambitious initial offering from a two-man self-funded studio. Thomas affirms that he and Alexander "were probably screwed" by the scope of their game, at least at the outset. They've since brought on Kain Shin -- an experienced gameplay programmer who previously worked on first-person immersive sims like Dishonored and Thief: Deadly Shadows -- to help out as a contractor, fortifying their code so that it bends to accommodate a player's tweaks without breaking too badly.

"We intend for people to break this game, to a certain extent," says Alexander. "Your solution to a puzzle might not seem pretty, it might not be perfect, but...fuck that, as long as it works."

The project bears more than a passing resemblance to Double Fine's Early Access game Hack 'N'' Slash, which challenges players to solve puzzles using cheats, exploits and reverse-engineering tools to edit the game as it's running. Alexander and Thomas say they haven't played it, but are eager to do so now after hearing the comparison from multiple sources.

The Magic Circle seems a bit more narrow in scope than what Double Fine is building, and a bit more cathartic for its creators. The pair are trying to build a puzzle game that directly communicates some of their feelings about AAA game development, yet affords players more freedom in how they go about solving problems than a more traditional narrative-driven game like Kentucky Route Zero.

They also seem unwilling or unable to build a game that's as broad in scope as the big-budget immersive sim games they've spent years of their lives making -- the fact that the hero of The Magic Circle seems incapable of wielding a weapon precludes you from taking a "guns blazing" approach, for example, though you could theoretically convince a gun-toting enemy to blaze away on your behalf.

 

[Angthoron]

"First-person immersion sims", wow.

I have to say though, out of all the "immersion sims" mentioned, Bioshock 1 is the best by the virtue of actually having water.

 

[JudasIscariot]

Sounds interesting :D

 

[Infinitron]

RPS preview: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2014/10/07/the-magic-circle-release/

Excerpt:

I’d been concerned that The Magic Circle – aka ‘what Jordan Thomas did after assorted BioShocks’ – might disappear too deep down the self-referential rabbit hole. A game about games development, made by someone who’d been in the Ion Storm trenches, who’d steered difficult sequel BioShock 2 into being, who’d tried to get the multiply-rebooted jenga tower that was poor old XCOM: The Bureau back on track, who’d been drafted in to somehow get the out-of-control ocean liner that was BioShock: Infinite to its final destination. Someone who’d seen games reach dizzy heights and tortured lows. Someone with scars, someone with stories they can’t share, someone who probably cannot ever be someone who simply plays a game again. Would The Magic Circle be closed and baffling to anyone who’d never been inside the system themselves?

Thankfully, it appears not, at least in the couple of hours’ worth of demo build I’ve played. The dev stuff is fairly light of touch and errs towards black comedy, not reliant on jargon and self-reference, so that the drama and tension as unseen game-makers bicker and worry broadly finds universal concepts of hubris. A game hyped beyond all measure, but yet to appear years after its announcement. A lead designer who’s poured his own money in to keep the project alive, now at risk of poverty as a result. Great creative thinkers forced to compromise, their dreams of convincing artificial life dragged down to simplistic attack-on-sight behaviours. The stage may be behind-the-scenes game development, but the theme is humanity. Specifically, pride, and what invariably comes after it.

Perhaps more importantly, at least if you’re for any reason put off by the idea of unseen developers’ booming voices agonising over the world you’re adventuring through, The Magic Circle also manages to be a power fantasy. No guns, no specific player identity (at least, not yet) and no permanent death for anything (at least, not yet), but it’s still very much playing with concepts of conquering. Almost any creature can be trapped and reprogrammed, whether to do your bidding (e.g. tell it that The Player is an ally, or that a specific enemy is its enemy too), to be neutralised or to have its abilities – movement, attack type, special attributes such as force field neutralising or a just pretty glow effect – stolen to be later applied to something else.

You don’t ever fight directly, other than to ‘trap’ creatures in a third type of magic circle, one that freezes them and enables editing, but make no mistake – this is power. Were I a betting man, I’d wager the power will at some point be subverted when the true gods of this place finally cotton on to what’s going on in it.

Something which should also be said, in defence against any misconception that the The Magic Circle is a slice of lo-fi shoegazing, is how impressive it looks. This is a game of scale, populated by misshapen monochrome architecture and sinister statues (or are they characters yet to be animated?0 which tower above you, of chopped-up floating roads and mighty volcanoes, and of glitches and placeholder messages that somehow look less like graphical errors and more like another universe seeping in. It also visits other places, more familiar places that it would not be fair of me to reveal now. In short, what I played was full of visual surprises, in addition to the novelty of rewriting AI behaviour.

The Magic Circle is about games, and about how games can go wrong, and about the agonies of making them, but it is very much a game. Quite a special one, I think.

There’s no release date for The Magic Circle as yet, but next year is likely.

 

[Gentle Player]

so you have no direct way to influence the world at all

Just like Bioshock then.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.destructoid.com/the-magic-circle-tackles-game-development-with-clever-satire-286461.phtml

Excerpt:

As you travel to different areas, from fantasy to sci-fi genres, recruiting monsters and other NPCs, you'll assemble an army of creatures so totally and stylistically different from one another (some of which are rendered in different graphical qualities), you'll feel like the game has completely lost its mind. Between fighting a giant alien hive queen with a squad of feral wolves and insects, and visiting a space station that seemed to be populated by the dumb robots from RoboCop, I can totally see why The Hero was recruited to put an end to this madness. With that said, I got pretty close to my Cyber Rat, which I found in the abandoned Space Station. Even though he's not much use in combat, it's always nice to have a mascot around.

I had a blast playing the beta build of the title, and with such a rich subject to explore, I'm excited to see what's in store for the final release. Though that's still a ways out, there's a lot of discussion to be had for this game. It's not too often we get to experience comedy games, especially ones that put the spotlight on the chaos of game development. As gamers, we've perhaps unintentionally added a layer of mythology to game creation, making them feel that they're more than they really are. While that's not bad per se, the human element can often be lost in that.

With The Magic Circle, the focus is placed on the humor and insanity that game development can inspire. Granted it's a very absurdist and surreal take, yet there's an inherent and relatable element to it. In this trek through a game world gone out of control, its refreshing to have a title that presents players the opportunity to take charge and fix the damage done by its indecisive developers. And to be totally honest, it might just be the game we need now.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

This is now available at Steam Early Access:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/323380/

 

[Infinitron]

Cleveland Mark Blakemore For maximum meta-irony points, this is the next game you should waste your time playing instead of working on Grimoire

 

[grudgebringer]

We would strongly advise you [...] to purchase it without seeing a demo.
- Gamebeard

No way

 

[Infinitron]

RPS preview: http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2015/05/18/the-magic-circle-review-alpha/

He doesn't like it.

 

[Infinitron]

Eurogamer preview: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2015-05-19-debugging-the-hero-narrative-in-the-magic-circle

The Magic Circle, now available in Steam Early Access, delights in two things: messing with the typical hero narrative and playing inside baseball. Starting a new game feels a lot like dropping round a friend's house an hour before you said you would: the place is a mess, they're not especially happy to see you, but they're trying their hardest to be courteous all the same.

The same flustered 'oh crikey there you are' attitude seizes Ish and Maze, the game's fictional creative directors, as they try to ease you into the stereotypical fantasy game they've built for you to test. Their opening cutscene, still very much in the storyboard phase, grinds to a halt as they bicker over the necessity of a skip button. Moments later, you awake in a world of placeholder art and washed out colours. As you take up the sword to begin your quest, Ish and Maze resurface - as giant floating eyeballs - to have a full-blown argument over whether combat ought to be cut from the game entirely. So it is that, mere seconds after being armed for a fight, your only weapon is deleted from your hand with a sigh and an apology.

It's an arresting thing to experience as a player: ordinarily, we're used to worlds unfolding at our touch, purpose-built to serve us. As soon as you arrive in The Magic Circle, however, it becomes apparent they not only don't have a finished world, but its creators simply don't know what you do with you. Maze, focusing on the user experience, gamely tries to protect your right to agency within the world. The Molyneux-esque Ish, meanwhile, refuses to let anything - even the player - compromise his creative vision. Development on the game, you come to understand, has been in a state of deadlock for a long time now because nobody can agree on what they want to make. The traditional hero narrative is shattered; your presence, far from being the spark that brings the world to life, becomes an irrelevance instead.

The tension driving The Magic Circle offers an interesting peek at the stresses of game development. As the creative wonts of the developers run up against the necessity to entertain the player at all times and, potentially, at all costs, you get a real sense someone is speaking to you over and above the exaggerated characters supposedly in charge of the game. At points, it strays close to being heavy handed: as I watched Ish rant about the player as the "lonely mute who can't even lower his killing hand", I felt like a small child watching their parents argue. Something was wrong, I was powerless to help and yet somehow I felt like it was all my fault. It left me wondering how much the developers at Question used The Magic Circle to get something - or a whole host of somethings - off their collective chests.

Your onward journey through The Magic Circle calls up ghosts of the role you were once canonically destined to play. Violins, reminiscent of the screeching strings of Bioshock's soundtrack, are counted in with a soft whisper, only to die off a few seconds later when someone makes a mistake or notices this isn't the right part of the score. It soon becomes clear you're no longer a hero, you're a trespasser in a broken game. But how, then, are you supposed to make headway? It's simple. You break the game further.

The Magic Circle's signature mechanic allows you to cast a circular trap that immobilises enemies, allowing you to edit their behaviours. Typing that sentence, I honestly only just realised that's probably why the game is called The Magic Circle and now I feel stupid. Anyway, you can pick apart the component elements of each creature - their loyalties, attack type, special ability and movement pattern - and recombine them to suit your needs. At one point, for example, I found myself stuck on one side of an impassable river of lava. Previously I got past this same puzzle by granting fire resistance to one of the game's larger creatures and riding it across like some kind of meat raft, only this time the river was too deep to allow the same tactic. After a frustrating few minutes, I remembered I could edit my creatures to give them an ability called 'teleport to other'. Throwing a newly modified cyber rat across the ravine, I jumped into the teleportation beam of the creature next to me and - hey presto - popped out on the other side, next to the rat.

Dipping in and out of the options menu for each creature is pretty intuitive, but it's the sheer variety on offer that makes it satisfying. Turning the game's systems against themselves, cheesing soon becomes your sword, meta-gaming your shield. Little by little, as you cobble fantastical new creatures together out of the failed dream of Ish and Maze, a new hero narrative is built up. You still have the chance to be the saviour of The Magic Circle, only you're no longer questing to defeat some canonical big bad. Instead, the world you inhabit becomes both your greatest enemy and your Princess In Another Castle at the same time. It's tremendously empowering as every advance you make in-game is down to pure, unadulterated skullduggery. Pitting The Magic Circle against itself, I felt a bit like Han Solo. The game cried 'you're not supposed to be able to do that here' and I, smirking, shot back 'I know.'

 

[Crooked Bee]

This game really hasn't sold much: http://steamspy.com/app/323380 Even Serpent in the Staglands has sold twice as many copies in its first couple of days.

I guess they went a bit too meta on this one.

 

[Infinitron]

This game really hasn't sold much: http://steamspy.com/app/323380 Even Serpent in the Staglands has sold twice as many copies in its first couple of days.

I guess they went a bit too meta on this one.

Well, it is still in Early Access. And since the only version available is labelled "Deluxe Edition", I guess lots of people might be interpreting that as the final release being cheaper.

 

[Wirdschowerdn]

Are there guns or knives in this game? Can I creep behind bad guys and whack them out? No? Then who gives a fuck???

 

[Infinitron]

PC Gamer preview: http://www.pcgamer.com/the-magic-circle-review-early-access/

According to the developers of The Magic Circle, their game will be in Early Access for only the next few weeks, which feels like a bit of a shame. As their unfinished adventure game is about exploring an unfinished adventure game, I think it would be a fine joke to keep it in Early Access indefinitely. On the other hand, The Magic Circle has plenty of humor to spare, and some clever and satisfying concepts.

As a beta tester, you enter The Magic Circle, a game long in development yet clearly years away from being complete (and here I'm talking about the game within the game, not the gameitself, which feels pretty darn done). The unfinished fantasy game is built on the bones of an even earlier sci-fi game, and that futuristic setting juts through the cobblestones and castles of the overworld. There are all sorts of jokes about gaming: cutscenes, crowdfunding, story, combat, and characters all get a nice ribbing. "Look at our hero!" the developer, represented as a hovering eyeball, cries at one point. "A lonely mute who can't even lower their killing hand." There's also number of gentle digs at gamers, game developers, and yes, game reviewers.

As you explore the overworld you come across half-finished entities, deleted content, placeholder quests, and code notations left by the developers. One note mentions that players are having difficulty locating the correct route to a new area. You can see the temporary and rather sarcastic solution below.

Though the game world is a shambles, it provides you, the tester, with some excellent tools. As if by magic, you can burrow into the game's code and edit the properties of most of the entities you come across. So if you're attacked by a howler (it's like a little wolf) you can trap it and edit its properties to make it view you as an ally from then on. If you'd like your new friend to attack some other creature, you can simply list that creature as an enemy. You can also completely strip an entity's qualities, leaving it inert, and add those qualities to your library to be applied to other entities.

This is how I wound up with a giant gold key following me around like a faithful dog. After using the key to rescue a Mushroom Wizard who was trapped in a jail cell, I wondered if I might need the key again later, and didn't want to carry it around. So, I gave it the movement qualities of one of those little wolves, and it followed me everywhere. I also animated corpses, made rocks hover and fly, made a robot hate several other robots, and made a baby shoot lasers out of its face. Soon I had a menagerie of helpful followers trailing me everywhere and doing my bidding, as well as a library of attributes I could swap between them. All of this editing is done to solve puzzles, defeat monsters, and gain access to new areas.

Being able to edit entities you come across is the highlight of The Magic Circle, and there's a lot of clever uses for it as you try to figure out the best way to tackle a problem using your new allies and their swappable skills. I feel like The Magic Circle could have taken it a few steps further, as there were attributes I never once found a good use for, but that may simply be because I came across other solutions. My other issue is with one particular enemy-turned-friend, which was so powerful it wound up being the key to pretty much every situation I ran into near the end of the game.

And, for a game that pokes fun at cutscenes, it gives you a hell of a long and not terribly interesting one to sit through near the end, disappointing considering how light and playful the writing and comedy had been to that point. On the plus side, at the very end there's an enjoyable section where you get to put your own game design skills to the test, and you can return to the overworld when you're done to track down any secrets and hidden areas you might have missed.

Verdict
With the exception of a dull and draggy scene at the end, The Magic Circle is fun, funny, well-written and performed, and mostly makes good use of its clever concepts.