Magic Wand

released on Aug 06, 2016

Machine to process your sensations into trains and fields the monster people moving 'cross are getting lost and found again. An exciting capsule toy JRPG for you.


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It's fatal flaw is just that navigation is kind of the hardest thing in the world, when textures blend into each other so well that depth perception is impossible and you have to keep rotating the camera to tell where you're moving and where you're about to move. It's kind of a mess, both in a loveable Catamites way but also in a "how do I interact with this piece and why am I bothering when it's so difficult" way. Honestly though, I'd love to see them do something like this again, but tidier and maybe with lighting. I can imagine something in this style but with the visual processing of an Octopath Traveler being insanely cool and fun to play around with.

This game is such a nonsensical visual diarrhea mess that I'm surprised the dev who made Space Funeral made this. This game lacks any of Space Funeral's fantastic cohesive surrealness, atmosphere, and comedy; feels like another dev desperately trying to be weird in a similar way but failing. Seems like this game is only an hour but I don't want to suffer another half hour of the crappy camera and level design so I dropped it. Disappointing, need to try catamites' newer games to see if they're better than this.

The one thing that holds this back from being quite as amazing as something like 10 Beautiful Postcards and Space Funeral for me is that I really don't get why there's no fullscreen option, playing this on a 1080p monitor was a slight pain since it made some of the structures I had to traverse feel like they blended together so it was a bit hard to tell where I should be jumping in this world filled with so many Things crammed into a small window with no way to even resize it. Outside of that though, this is another banger from thecatamites with a hell of a lot of charm, a visual direction that absolutely pops and a great soundtrack to vibe to, and even with that caveat the game's short enough where if that aspect was going to become truly fatiguing at some point, it's over before said moment would hit. More games need to be weird facsimiles of RPGs tbh

~Once I got that sweet poor memory (meeeemmmoryyyyyy) and -- capsule toys!!!~

A capsule venture that fits in thee pocket! A smile never left my face. More things should just be completely compartmentalized happiness,, or just there needs to be more things that are just this. Well, there's always worlds of untold joy around the horizon, isn't there?

Maybe it's oft in ye westernly directione. Letus takethflight!

Just feels like the worst bits from the 2 other catamites games I've played. It's not as funny as Space Funeral and it's not surreal and eclectic enough to be all that interesting (unlike 10 Beautiful Postcards). The art direction isn't great but it works (not helped by the fact that the game is stuck in a tiny window that can't be fullscreened), the music isn't great but it works, there isn't anything to latch onto as far as a traditional story or plot or characters go, aside from a couple running gags. It's just all around kinda mediocre, which for a catamites game is just kind of a shame really.

The control scheme isn't amazing and it gets kind of fatiguing kind of quickly, but by the time it starts becoming an issue the game is basically already over.

Maybe check it out if you like other thecatamites stuff and you got it as part of a bundle, but frankly, it just didn't speak to me like Space Funeral and 10 Beautiful Postcards did! go play those ones before even thinking about this one!