The Magic Circle is a meta-game, an interactive commentary on the industry, targeted mainly at fellow game developers or those interested in playing through a critique of the history, current state, and future of this thing called video games. – in order to subvert them, and not just in its writing, but most importantly in its gameplay.
In light of that, it comes as no surprise that The Magic Circle builds on the industry trends, new and old – “notgames”, walking simulators, linear corridor exploration, pointless collectibles, quest markers, auteur-developer cults, etc. It is coming from a very specific design perspective, best encapsulated by terms like “player freedom” and “emergent” (or tool-based) gameplay, associated with the names of Doug Church, Randy Smith, Harvey Smith, and Warren Spector. That is what makes The Magic Circle's commentary on the industry so interesting, but also ultimately so old-fashioned and so, dare I say, aligned in an important way with RPG Codex's sensibilities. Jordan Thomas, Kain Shin, and Stephen Alexander, making up a studio called Question, come from Ion Storm, Irrational Games, and Arkane, sharing what is ultimately the Looking Glass Studios design philosophy. Fly or fall, fight or fuck, they burned that word into its head and said ‘Go.’” – Old Proīy now, you should have discerned the game’s pedigree. “If it’s alive in this world, everything it does is a word of god. “What does it mean for a game to be perfectly finished?” and “What does one player matter?” are both questions that The Magic Circle asks.
#The magic circle audio logs pro#
In that, you are assisted only by an in-game character by the name of “Old Pro.” You enter the game world at a point at which you can only walk around it and re-write some of its basic behavior, and then slowly build up your powers by manipulating it in creative ways that the developers, whom Old Pro refers to as “the gods,” never intended in their desire to control the player instead of giving her tools. It was the unattainable dream of chasing a perfect game, coupled with the team’s in-fighting, that got development into this sorry state, and it is now up to you to somehow sort out this mess of truly industrial proportions – to figure out the game’s, the team’s, and even the game industry’s backstory and to disrupt the antagonists’ not so much malevolent as too idealistic plans. You are a play-tester of sorts – though where exactly you come from is actually a major, if optional, plot point – who must now re-construct the game from point zero by hacking into the objects and creatures you encounter and restoring cut content. You, on your part, come in just when the team is hastily throwing together an E4 demo, completely unrepresentative of the state of the game. The Starfather has gone sterile, the development team has gone crazy – and they are now your antagonists. “Once proper RPG skills finally get implemented…,” dreams one team member, but the game makes it clear that this will never be the case. Starfather) to be a sci-fi System Shock-like game, but has become vaporware, not to mention the desperate switch of setting from sci-fi to fantasy. It was originally meant by its creator (Ish Gilder a.k.a. The RPG, also called The Magic Circle, has been in development for over twenty years, giving Cleve Blakemore’s Grimoire a run for its money. To be more precise, it is an adventure-exploration game in which you find yourself inside a Looking Glass-style first-person RPG with unfinished “RP” and “G” parts.
The Magic Circle is an RPG without the “RP” or “G”.
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