While many understand that games are hard to make, most don’t understand the full scope of it. Management problems, technical issues, and crunch time are common staples that lead to the most dire of consequences, cancellation. But what if you could play a game that ponders the idea of these reprimands in the actual gameplay? Meet The Magic Circle, an experimental adventure game in which you’ll explore abandoned environments, story threads, and characters. But does this idea not only pan out, but sustain in the newest Playstation 4 re-release? Let’s take a look.

Gameplay:

The main gameplay element of the game focuses on reediting creatures to complete specific tasks

The Magic Circle certainly takes a long time to start, but this isn’t an issue like it might be in other games. Instead, this allows the game to let you fully take in it’s creative premise, as well as the gameplay features up it’s sleeve. These include such elements as trapping and re-coding creatures to suit your objectives. This isn’t that interesting on it’s own, but the game adds many elements to combat this. The most prevailing aspect isn’t graphics or the disjointed story, but it’s character.

Story/ Design:

The game starts off with puzzles, but these don’t really continue that recuringly

Playing the Magic Circle and experiencing the Magic Circle are two different things, as pretentious as that sounds. By this, I mean that the game is surprisingly fluid in it’s deviations from what would be considered normal. Exiting parts of the game in intentional bugs is really gratifying, and seeing how certain characters react to how the world around them raises new questions about artificial intelligence and faith. Although some of it is a bit too much, the less than grounded ambition subsides into something that is worth playing just for the tricks the game will occasionally pull and not the actual gameplay itself.

Presentation/ Visuals & Audio:

One of the game’s prettier moments

Although The Magic Circle is theoretically an unfinished game, there are still some places where it deserves a knock or two. An example of this is it’s rather unimpressive graphics, that don’t have much to go for, even when the player infuses them with color. They not only feel dated, but out of place. Thankfully, the voice acting is a different story, and manages to envelop the game into high stakes, more than one would expect. These make the scenes with it truly one of the more pleasant and memorable moments in the game.

Conclusion:

The Magic Circle brings a lot of new things to the table, and while not all of them work, it’s still mentally absorbing due to it’s scale. Other games may play with this topic now, but there’s something to be said for how the Magic Circle did it first, something that will likely cement it as a true cult classic in the coming years.

The Magic Circle: Gold Edition gets a 7/10 (Average)

We’d like to thank Question Games for sending us a code!

If you’d like to read more features and or reviews like this, please check out The Cube on Medium.com, or our Twitter @TheCubeMedium for more updates.