The Magic Circle

[Vasari]

http://www.magiccirclegame.com/

 

http://store.steampowered.com/app/323380

 

 

This came up on the last podcast, but I've been following it for a while. In terms of gameplay it's got alot in common with stuff like Hack n Slash or Glitchspace. You can dive into the code that controls creatures and collect different attributes, then create new combinations to solve puzzles.

 

 

I guess technically it's early access right now, but the game itself has all the content. They seem to just be doing EA to deal with localisation and hardware configurations.

 

[SuperBiasedMan]

It is narratively consistent for this to be in Early Access.

[Vasari]

It is narratively consistent for this to be in Early Access.

 

When I first downloaded the game it crashed on startup. I briefly enjoyed the meta nature of my problem before I realised it meant that I actually couldn't play the game.

[rujuro]

Hey Vasari, I'm one of the devs, and we've seen this once or twice but never gotten a good test case.  Could you let me know if you still can't start the game?  We are suspicious that this is solved with a reboot, related to DirctX drivers being installed, and would REALLY like to know that this is the case.  We hate to think someone who wants to play can't.

[Vasari]

Hey Vasari, I'm one of the devs, and we've seen this once or twice but never gotten a good test case.  Could you let me know if you still can't start the game?  We are suspicious that this is solved with a reboot, related to DirctX drivers being installed, and would REALLY like to know that this is the case.  We hate to think someone who wants to play can't.

 

Oh, hey, I should've said that I actually did get it working, restarting my computer solved the problem. 

[rujuro]

THANK YOU! That is really good info for us to have, hope you enjoy the game.

[Vasari]

THANK YOU! That is really good info for us to have, hope you enjoy the game.

 I'm really enjoying it, thanks! Glad I could help

[mikemariano]

FYI, the demo for this ends with you entering a System Shock 1-esque space station underneath Stephen Russell narration.

 

I have never whipped out my credit card faster than tonight.

[rujuro]

That is awesome to hear!  Steam's data is telling us that 0 people who have played the demo have bought the game even though a bunch of people have told me the demo sold them.  Really happy to hear that is a bug, I want to believe that providing a demo is the right way to do things.

[mikemariano]

That is awesome to hear!  Steam's data is telling us that 0 people who have played the demo have bought the game even though a bunch of people have told me the demo sold them.  Really happy to hear that is a bug, I want to believe that providing a demo is the right way to do things.

 

After I purchased the game through Steam's overlay while in-demo, I decided to stop and quit the demo.

 

When I did that, I saw that the demo had been removed from my Steam Library with no full game to replace it.  I was showing "Installed" games only, so I switched to "All" games in my library, found The Magic Circle, then had to install it from scratch.

 

Luckily as promised, the game continued from when I left off in the demo.  I'm not sure if what I went through was a fluke or a victim of Steam Logic or what.

[rujuro]

Interesting. Sounds like the steam "demo to game" system is not without its kinks.   Glad to hear everything worked ok though.

[thefncrow]

Ended up playing the demo of this after hearing Jeff Gerstmann talk about it on the Bombcast this week. Ended up buying the game as soon as the demo ended, looking forward to playing more.

[Erkki]

I also purchased through the demo, then had to install from scratch.

[rujuro]

Hopefully your progress was still preserved though?  The full game is a different package than the demo, so you do have to install it.  We just want to make sure you get to pick up where you left off (if you made it past the intro)

[Ninety-Three]

I finished the game, found it pretty disappointing. It felt like it completed the tutorial then ended, a couple hours in with all the gameplay potential left unexplored. Having gotten all the abilities in what felt like a basic Zelda or Metroidvania "Use fireproof on fire door to unlock shield, use shield on shield door to unlock ~...", I geared up to ghost the Sky Bastard with an army of flying, railgun-equipped insects, and it turned out that was massive overkill, all I would've needed is an inanimate anything with a railgun on the outlook, and a flying platform to get out there. Having beaten that, I was funneled through a bunch of heavily scripted, low-interactivity plot stuff, and eventually the game ended. As the credits rolled I was thinking "This better not be the end. This is a fakeout, right? Then the real game where we get to explore these mechanics starts?" 

 

Was the point of this to be some artsy statement about game development that went over my head because I just wanted to play a game? Is it actually a fakeout and I have to do something to unlock the rest of the game like get a 10/10 on the level designer or 100% the collectibles?

[Erkki]

While I can understand your point of view, for me it was well-balanced. Instead of getting repetitive and tedious with the object re-programming features, they were used a few times effectively. The scripted content that followed was not that great, but the final thing

where you designed a game for the AI to play

was kind of brilliant in my opinion.

[Ninety-Three]

While I can understand your point of view, for me it was well-balanced. Instead of getting repetitive and tedious with the object re-programming features, they were used a few times effectively.

 

I wouldn't call it repetitive or tedious, it just seemed like a tutorial where the real game never started. Now you have repulsor, here's a gap you need to be repulsored over. Now you have shield, shield a creature and have it kill the hiver queen. I never built something that felt like it was my own, never even felt like I was solving a puzzle, just putting a series of abilities into a series of ability-shaped keyholes.

 

 

The scripted content that followed was not that great, but the final thing

where you designed a game for the AI to play

was kind of brilliant in my opinion.

 

Boy, was that part dull for me. Eager to get back to the interesting creature mechanic thing, I figured out the system very quickly and built a corridor out of ten identical tiles, then populated it with a repeating series of things in a straight line. Top marks. What did it do for you that it felt brilliant?

[Erkki]

My intention wasn't to start an argument about who'se impression & opinion is "correct", just to show that the same game can be viewed very differently as well. But since you ask, I think (and it's all spoilers, you should also use the spoiler tags):

 

The whole reversal of the roles where the game plays itself and you are trying to design it felt like an awesome idea, just by making the player think about the other side of things. Someone could make a full game like this, it could be a tower defence where you try to only barely kill the hero. I didn't try to "figure out the system" to get a 10/10 and I don't think that was the purpose there. I just tried to make something I could ship. My first successful attempt got a 2/10 I think and before that I had a few attempts where the hero didn't make it. Maybe your first attempts went too easily? The fact that it can be completed more or less "correctly" with identical straight corridors (IMHO doing it that way is asking to be disappointed, though) is not that important. I wasn't expecting the game to invent AI that would be able to absolutely judge human creation in a way that would feel right -- that's asking for the impossible.

 

I'm sure all of the sections could have been done a little better (yes the Sky Bastard part was a bit weak), but it seemed like the game made it's point in a lean way and to me it didn't need more filler to make it a complete game. Games are too long anyway.

[Ninety-Three]

My intention wasn't to start an argument about who'se impression & opinion is "correct"

 

I didn't mean to imply that you were "wrong", I was genuinely curious about what you found interesting. In light of that, I think my issues with it came partly from the fact that I immediately figured out how the scoring worked and developed a degenerate strategy, and partly from the fact that I just wanted to get back to the creature mechanics part of the game.

[rujuro]

That is fair, we tried to combat most degenerate strategies, and I regret that we never got in a good way to penalize overly repetitive tile choices.  It is something we still talk about adjusting, but it is dangerous to mess with that stuff at this point.  We are hoping to expand that part of the game if we can afford to do it, and it might be that we can address it at that time. I'm pretty sure we got VO for that case, just finding the right balance of "judgement" vs. allowing for player freedom of expression is a thorny problem, when that is really what that section is for.

 

We know we are far from perfect, our hope is that there is enough that is fun, unique and interesting that the imperfections (many of which are a result of the extremely open ended nature of the design, which we consider one of the game's primary strengths) are outweighed by the overall experience.

 

Thanks for playing in any case! 

[namman siggins]

I'm hooked on this game; well, I'm hooked on it's narrative, concept, and metaness/po-mo.

 

When a games go this route and just completely deconstruct themselves, the nature of their fans and everything surrounding them, I'm a sucker for that. 

I'm really not a fan of the editing and "fighting". I just want to enjoy the narrative without having to take these side-trips, or worry about allies or creatures and the like. 

 

I'm still constructing my thoughts on this game, but I'm really am enjoying it.

[rujuro]

It's interesting, everyone latches on to different things, you are the exact opposite of a lot of players, who just want more editing and couldn't care less about our story and concept.  To us  it is all of a piece, but that is certainly the risk of making something that is trying to be so many things.  Some people will only be into a portion of what you made.

 

Glad you are enjoying it though, always great to hear!

[malkav11]

I wouldn't call it repetitive or tedious, it just seemed like a tutorial where the real game never started. Now you have repulsor, here's a gap you need to be repulsored over. Now you have shield, shield a creature and have it kill the hiver queen. I never built something that felt like it was my own, never even felt like I was solving a puzzle, just putting a series of abilities into a series of ability-shaped keyholes.

 

The puzzles, because it's an open environment and you have few restrictions, are not terribly difficult, which might be the real root of your feeling. but I can assure you there are no ability-shaped keyholes because that's not how I solved either of those puzzles. In fact, I literally never used repulsors and while shield was very handy in a different encounter, I am pretty sure that my victory over the hiver queen was accomplished via parasite. ...or maybe mindswap. Hell, I solved the one literal key puzzle with the key, but you can arrange to just teleport in, among other approaches.

[Ninety-Three]

The puzzles, because it's an open environment and you have few restrictions, are not terribly difficult, which might be the real root of your feeling. but I can assure you there are no ability-shaped keyholes because that's not how I solved either of those puzzles. In fact, I literally never used repulsors and while shield was very handy in a different encounter, I am pretty sure that my victory over the hiver queen was accomplished via parasite. ...or maybe mindswap. Hell, I solved the one literal key puzzle with the key, but you can arrange to just teleport in, among other approaches.

 

This is something I thought of as I was writing it and probably should have elaborated upon. I get that there's lots of possible solutions, but in the order I encountered things, there was always only one or two ways to do it, because of the limited set of abilities I had. Because I had one power that could oviously address the situation, it led to the keyhole feeling. This was compounded by a sort of recency effect: "New puzzle, I bet the ability I just acquired will be useful here." As you said, I think the issue might be more about the difficulty: I wasn't solving puzzles, just plugging in a relevant ability in the obvious way, that tutorial-section feeling.

 

Looking back, I'm pretty sure you can get the railgun before you beat the hiver queen, in which case you can then beat the hiver queen and have Maze come in to talk to you, then make a railgun pet set to hate Sky Bastards, and it should shoot her. The only reason I haven't tried is that I'm almost certain the game won't let me attack her and I don't want to spend an hour running through the game to be disappointed. Did anyone else try something like that?

[rujuro]

It is one of our disappointments that we were not able to support that and had to cheat with her in that case.  We tried to handle it by making Maze far away (outside target range) and unreachable (no places nearby for waypoints), but I am sure some enterprising player could find a way to get close.  Wanted to save you the trouble of trying, because you are correct, you cannot hijack Maze (although I really wish we had been able to allow it).

 

Really came down to what we could support properly given our time and budget. Sorry about that.

 

Also, puzzles are a funny thing, we have watched way too many players repeatedly stall out at various challenges when they had multiple means of overcoming them (which is an incredibly painful experience for a designer).  Much of it depends on how quickly you take to the "language" of the game. Some people speak it like complete naturals, others have to break through a kind of mental wall to get there.