















Game Details Developer/Publisher: Question

Platform: Windows, Mac, Linux

Release Date: July 9, 2015

Price: $20

Links: Steam | Official website Question: Windows, Mac, LinuxJuly 9, 2015: $20

There are surprisingly few video games about the process of making video games. Critically acclaimed movies likeanddramatize the work of Hollywood. Authors often love nothing more than writing about the struggles of fictional authors. But games have been slow to take that self-referential look at their own creation.

This is slowly beginning to change. In recent years, we've seen titles like Hack 'n' Slash and Code Hero turn the tedium and minutiae of computer programming into an actual game mechanic. We've also seen Game Dev Tycoon and Game Dev Story look at the making of games through a light-hearted business lens. The Magic Circle takes a bit from both camps, telling a fictional story of a troubled game's development from within that troubled, fictional game itself.

Even writing about The Magic Circle requires getting incredibly meta from the get-go. The game you play, The Magic Circle, is presented as the alpha, test version of "The Magic Circle," a massively multiplayer fantasy world that's been in development for over a decade by the time you get to it. The game-within-a-game is in incredibly rough shape, despite the development time, full of blocky, colorless graphics, placeholders where epic quests should go, animations controlled like puppets by human guides, and "puzzles" that are an insult to the name.

After a quick ten-minute trip through that alpha world, you dive in again in "Pro" mode and start to learn how the game-within-the-game got to this sorry state. The "live testbed" world you play in is overseen by members of the development team, who take the form of giant, unblinking eyes that float through the world and observe your actions. They're omnipotent gods here, but they're also flawed and fractured human beings in the real world, evidenced by the sounds of them squabbling through headsets while they monitor the test.

They include Ish Gilder, the aging genius who had an unexpected text adventure hit dozens of years ago and has driven himself half-crazy in the years since trying to meet the promises he made for the overambitious sequel; Maze Evelyn, the eSports pro turned jaded developer who's trying to get herself fired out of the contract from hell; and young Coda, a fresh-faced intern from the fan community who's a bit too excited to have been chosen to turn all of her fanfiction dreams into Magic Circle realities.

Then there's The Old Pro, an ultra-cynical, self-aware entity that's been trapped in the game through its entire development. He's a constant voice in your head, pushing you to beat the developers at their own game (here, literally) and wrestle control of "the Magic Circle" from their incompetent, squabbling hands. To that end, he grants you the ability to break away from the controls imposed by these gods and manipulate the world yourself.

That means you can trap characters and reprogram them on the fly. The mushroom that attacks you with a limp, little jump can become a flying, gun-toting ally that is immune to fire and hunts down specific enemies. This power isn't unlimited; each ability you give to a character has to first be stripped from another character, and some enemies are immune to these manipulations, temporarily or permanently.

Even with that limit, the reprogramming mechanic leads to some incredibly clever puzzle-solving. In the great style of Metroidvania games, you often need to find and take an ability from one enemy in order to defeat another enemy you saw earlier, or to open a door, or to create a stepping-stone path across a previously impassable hazard. The game encourages you to experiment with these characters' intentionally glitchy interactions to your heart's content (the game-within-a-game is still an "early alpha," after all). Much of the time, there isn't a single "right" way to solve a puzzle, but a lot of potential solutions you can kludge together. The Old Pro's early advice to players proves sage: "If your way does the job, it's more right than [the designers] will ever be."



As you wander around the rough world these developers have cobbled together with duct tape, you find development notes and "commentary" tracks that highlight the problems that have beset the project over the years. Everything from the game engine to the presence of weapons to the color of environments to the plotline to the game's very genre has been endlessly debated, changed, and prodded over during the too-lengthy development cycle, with no one stepping up to make any decisions. The result is a world that's an unfinished amalgam of dozens of half-baked ideas—and in no shape for an upcoming E3 demo needed to secure more funding. Once-lofty goals about a game that truly lived and breathed, with realistic human AI that learned and grew with the player, seem long forgotten in the blocky, colorless, unplayable mess that currently exists.

The developer characters are often blunt caricatures of game-developer tropes, and there isn't much character growth on display as the game continues. After the first 30 minutes, you pretty much know what makes them tick and where their character arcs are doing. Still, some sharp writing and nuanced vocal performances give some life to the stereotypes. There's plenty of subtle and not-so-subtle commentaries on the complex world of modern game development to go around in the game's extended allegory. Anyone who's read about (or lived through) troubled projects like Duke Nukem Forever will find a lot to like in the behind-the-scenes take on a similarly troubled project

But as you slowly unravel their game world and take a measure of control for yourself, the game takes a dramatic, 180-degree turn in its final third, giving you almost more power than you know what to do with. I'm being deliberately vague to avoid spoiling some great plot twists, but suffice to say that the game's allegory for the world of game development gets quite literal at points. It builds to a truly despairing take on the tragedy of the commons, that seems to find barely a glimmer of hope that anything truly worthwhile can be derived from the meat-grinder of modern game development.

The Magic Circle's execution is a little direct and unsubtle, in parts, and the game itself often feels as if it was stitched together from disparate parts in much the same way as the game-within-the-game. But for all its lamenting about the near-impossibility of creating interesting games, the makers of The Magic Circle have made a truly interesting take on making truly interesting games. For all its navel-gazing and cynicism approaching self-hatred, The Magic Circle is one of those rare games that has something worthwhile to say and a novel, thought-provoking way of saying it.

One thing's for sure; after playing The Magic Circle, you'll be much less likely to write off a game design decision with a flippant, 'Why didn't devs just do things another, better way?" This game's lasting message is an answer to that question, one that only an interactive story can tell: Making a game is never as simple as you think it should be.

The Good

Interesting "behind-the-scenes" meta-story

Novel "repogram the bad guys" puzzle mechanics

Strong writing and performances

Great, late plot twist that turns the entire game on its head

The bad

Characters are easy-to-read, stereotypical tropes

The game can be a bit too blunt with its message, at times

The Ugly

For a game about testing a glitchy game, it feels a little glitchy—and not just in a meta way

Verdict: Try it if you're at all interested in game development or industry meta-commentary.