[Pig Wizard:] Phew, another successful quest.
Boy, stealing dirty socks from peasants is
exhausting.
Time to go take a nice hot bath after a job
well done.
What?
What?!
[Bird:] This is Magicmaker and it’s amazing and
I’m gonna talk about it, because there’s
a looooot to talk about here.
First off a little warning: I’m gonna spoil
some stuff here.
I’ll try to spoil as little mechanical stuff
as possible, because experimenting with the
magic system is the entire point of the game,
but I will talk about the entire main plot.
I don’t think spoiling it will seriously
diminish anybody’s enjoyment of the game,
but I’ll definitely warn you before I go
into that stuff in case you really care.
Here’s the abbreviated history of Magicmaker.
Magicmaker is a 2014 computer game developed
and published by US indie game development
company Tasty Stewdios.
Probably a hot contender for the best company
name ever
It is a 2D side-scrolling action platformer
with procedurally generated levels.
The core feature is a customisation system
that allows players to design magic spells.
Tasty Stewdios were founded in 2011 by Chris
“Laddo_D” Hutchinson, Nick “Woah Constrictor”
Paavo, Splilinka, and Paul “MavenStar”
Witt.
Development on a game called “Generator
Quest” began the same year, likely before
the founding of the company.
Generator Quest was a 3D top-down shooter.
Eventually the concept was reworked into a
2D action platformer and renamed to Magicmaker
In March 2012, Magicmaker was opened up for
free alpha testing.
In August 2012, the Steam Greenlight platform
was launched and Magicmaker was added to Greenlight
the same month.
The public Alpha continued all the way until
the game’s official release in September
2014.
October 2014 saw an Update that added a special
Halloween mission and in December 2014 a
New Game+ feature was added to the game.
Magicmaker has received numerous smaller updates
mostly for bugfixes, balancing issues and
quality-of-life-improvements since then.
The game begins with the nameless protagonist
standing in a town that looks like it was
hit hard by some kind of horrible recession.
All the shops and businesses are closing down,
everybody is unemployed.
With no other option available you hit up
the local Wizard Temp Agency, where you are
assigned a job as a security guard at Dörwall
Community College, a school for magic, to
replace their former guard.
You are then immediately teleported to a training
and testing course.
This is of course the game’s tutorial.
It’s fairly short and teaches the mechanics
in a pretty effective learning-by-doing way.
You are introduced to how to create and use
wands and magic spells by being presented
with obstacles that can only be removed by
combining the available tools and magical
materials.
For example to get through here, you need
to hit a target through a wall with your wand.
You are given the Rock material, which allows
projectiles to pass through walls up to a
certain maximum distance.
You use that on your wand and there you go,
you can now hit the target and proceed.
You also learn how the platforming controls
work annnnd yeah here’s the first problem
the game has: The platforming is… the weakest
link here.
it just feels terrible, it’s incredibly
easy to constantly fall off ledges and have
to work your way back up and the game loves
to knock you about with spell recoil or enemy
attacks and it can get incredibly tedious
just maneuvering through the levels sometimes.
It’s a fortunate thing that you can eventually
skip all that.
More on that later.
The game then introduces gems.
4 optional gems can be found in every level.
Each gem immediately heals you by your maximum
HP, restores all your Mana and unlocks a chest
at the end of the level.
Collecting all four opens a special chest.
In addition to end-of-level chests, you can
find chests within levels as well.
Chests contain materials.
Enemies can also sometimes drop materials.
You use materials to customise your equipment.
Simple.
At the end of th-
[coughing]
At the end of the tutorial you fight a plant
monster and then advance through a treasure
portal to cash in your gems.
You are then given your Security Guard License
and a chance to futz around with spell design
before being sent on your first mission.
The Headmaster of Dörwall College sends you
to the Forest Zone to investigate suspicious
activity and establishes that he is fantasy-racist
against goblins, who are, according to him,
too dumb to cast spells.
But people have reported spellcasting goblins
in the forest so you’re gonna check out
what’s going on.
He also reveals the previous security guard
didn’t live very long.
As you can probably see, the game doesn’t
take itself very seriously at all.
The setting is mostly defined by everything
being pretty awful, everybody being completely
incompetent and/or immoral and everything
is generally presented as pretty whacky.
So you run around a procedrually generated
forest area, shooting magic at monsters, collecting
materials and searching for gems, when you
run into this green-haired lady, who introduces
herself as "Azazel".
She then decides she probably shouldn’t
have done that and tells the Goblins she’s
been teaching magic to kill you and disappears.
You kill the goblins and with your main objective
met, you head to he boss area.
Every level ends with a boss that has to be
defeated to finish the level.
This entire first mission is pretty easy.
It’s perfectly doable even if you didn’t
assign any materials to your slots, which
is good, because the chances for a beginner
at the game creating some weak or even downright
useless spells is pretty high.
One boss later, the portal opens and you claim
your rewards.
The big 4-gem-chest in this case contains
"Jharni’s Socks of Jumping", your first Artifact,
which makes reaching high places a lot less
annoying, thankfully.
The headmaster tells you that he apparently
fired Azazel for complaining about Dörwall
College’s “no Monsters” policy.
And then you finally arrive at Dörwall College
itself.
This is the game’s hub where you can experiment
with your spellcrafting, talk to various wacky
NPCs, change what you and your spells look
like and choose missions to go on.
I’ll go into spellcrafting later in greater
detail, so let’s focus on the other stuff
first.
The NPCs all have things to say but it’s
pretty much endless jokes, exposition about
how terrible the world is, how incompetent
and immoral everybody is and so on
and so on.
Gets a bit tiring, honestly, but you can
just… not talk to people, so it doesn’t
really matter much.
The cosmetic character customisation in this
game is actually pretty great.
You can change the shape of various body parts
and add clohtes and accessories in any colour
you like.
I decided to be a pastel goth lich queen because
why the hell not?
Five portals on campus take you to five different
zones.
This is where you go on missions.
Missions come in four difficulty levels, with
easy missions unlocking harder ones.
In harder missions, enemies deal more damage
and have more HP, but the materials you discover
are generally of higher quality as well.
Every zone has a different kind of boss and
every mission ends with you fighting a procedurally
generated boss assembled from various parts
and given a random name.
For example every boss in the Desert Zone
is a Sand Wurm with three phases, how the
Sand Wurm fights during a given phase depends
on what body parts it has, so you can predict
how it will act if you know what each body
part does.
It’s pretty neat.
Further, each Zone has some special rewards
that can be unlocked by opening 4-gem-chests.
These rewards can be new Artifacts like Jharni’s
socks or special items that improve your spellcasting
ability.
All-in-all you can gain an additional slot
each for your wand, your spells and your robe
as well as one additional spell slot, allowing
you to have two spells to switch between.
These are always the first special rewards
you get in their respective zones.
Missions, once successfully finished cannot
be replayed, but finishing them allows you
access to freeplay of the given difficulty
where the only task is to kill the boss, so
you can’t lock yourself out of those special
rewards even if you fail to find all gems
at some point.
And that’s basically it.
That’s how the game works.
Now let’s talk MAGIC
All magic in the game uses materials which
are put in slots.
There are 45 different materials in the game
and each one comes in 5 grades, labelled A,
B, C, D and F. The higher the grade, the stronger
the material’s effects.
What exactly a material does depends on whether
you use it in a wand, spell or a robe.
The order in which materials are slotted into
your equipment doesn’t matter, but using
multiples of a material will generally strengthen
the material’s effect.
Material effects on your robe are generally
passive or reactive effects that don’t really
interact with each other.
No matter what other stuff you have in your
robe, using a quicksilver gear in it increases
your movement speed, for example.
Using higher grade or multiple gears or both
results in a stronger increase of your movement
speed.
And other effects work similarly.
Guillotines raise your max HP.
Ectoplasm raises your max MP.
Rock causes you to create a shockwave whenever
you hit the ground.
Fairy Dust allows you to double-cast a spell
every few castings…
There’s lots of stuff and choosing the right
materials for your robe can make the difference
between life and death.
Wands and spells work very siilarly to each
other, with the difference being that wands
do absolute *piss* for damage and spells cost
mana per use.
So you can always use your wand, but if you
run out of Mana, you cannot cast any spells
until you regain some.
I just…
I just wanna gush so hard about all the intricacies
but I don’t wanna spoil too much, as this
stuff is best if you explore it yourself.
The possibilities here are freaking endless
and materials do often affect each other in
really interesting ways.
I can spend extended periods of time just
experimenting with different combinations
and seeing what works and what doesn’t,
it’s amazing.
Okay I’ll give one simple example.
A complete default spell with no materials
fires exactly one projectile that deals 100
damage to whatever enemy is hit by it.
If we add Fairy Dust to it, we get a spell
that fires multiple projectiles, but also
reduces the damage per projectile.
So we now have a spell that is easier to hit
with and that can hit multiple enemies at
once, but that also deals reduced damage to
those enemies.
If we now add a crystal ball material to it,
the spell’s projectiles become homing projectiles,
meaning they change direction instead of flying
straight outward.
This allows us to hit the same enemy with
multiple projectiles, which deals quite a
bit more damage than the default spell would.
In short: A lot of materials have both advantages
and disadvantages and using other materials
to circumvent those disadvantages is the first
basic step to effective spell design.
Some materials are a bit more esoteric.
Rift Crystals cause a spell to also teleport
you forward a short distance with every casting.
This is by the way what I meant when I said
you can skip the platforming in the game eventually.
The Rune material inflicts enemies with a
status effect that causes them to drop mana
crystals when killed.
You can collect these mana crystals to replenish
your mana.
There’s tons to see and play with here.
Finally, you can mark a spell as an enchantment.
Enchantments don't deal direct damage on a hit
but various other effects are strengthened
and the teleport distance of Rift Crystals is increased.
You begin with three slots each in your wand,
your one spell and your robe.
As previously mentioned you can unlock a second
spell and an additional slot for all your
gear.
Four slots give you a lot to work with, but
it never feels like it’s enough.
You always feel like you could make your design
that much more useful if you just had one
more slot.
Well, here’s the good news: You can get
a second additional slot in New Game +.
New Game + or NG+ is a feature some games
have where after beating the game you can
restart from the beginning while keeping some
of your progress.
Often, the game’s difficulty is also increased
in the process.
In Magicmaker NG+ you keep all your Artifacts
and materials and you can re-earn the items
that give extra slots to your gear, which
means you can get a total of 5 slots now.
Enemies get tougher and deal more damage to
sort of make up for that.
And after that?
You start NG++.
And then NG+++.
You can get up to 7 slots this way.
And just so you can see what kind of difference
that makes…
This is what the game looks like on a New
Game.
And this is what it looks like on NG+++.
It’s almost a completely different GAME!
And that’s amazing!
Here’s the bad news: Even 7 slots are unsatisfying,
because you always feel like you could improve
upon it with just one more slot.
At least for me that feeling never went away.
But regardless, 7 slots gives you a lot to
work with and I found myself spending extended
periods of time not even doing missions but
experimenting with spell design at the hub.
I’m going to take this opportunity to talk
about customisation systems again.
As I previously mentioned in my first video,
customisation systems are a favourite of mine
and I got thoughts, so here we go!
A tricky subject in general, but especially
where customisation systems are concerned
is balance.
Some people will tell you that balance is
always super important and that everything
needs to be as balanced as possible at all
times, but that’s not entirely true.
Certainly, some games, especially PvP Multiplayer
games do often require certain things to be as balanced
as possible.
Any underpowered hero in a game like Overwatch
and any sub-par fighter in a fighting game
is unlikely to be played by a lot of people
and what’s the point of having something
in the game if nobody uses it?
Obviously the meta-game plays into that as
well, but let’s not get into that right now.
But it is important to note that strong balancing
is not a universally good thing.
There are in fact games that would suffer
from strict adherence to balancing.
Unbalanced game elements offer various opportunities
for game design.
They can for example be used to allow players
to set a desired difficulty or challenge level
without resorting to one of these horrible
things right here.
Dark Souls is known for being challenging,
but it is also, on top of that, juuuust unbalanced
enough to allow the savvy player to make the
game a lot easier on themself by picking different
options for their character build.
Sorcery and Pyromancy are well known in the
community to make the game a lot easier.
A dex-build allows the use of bows to selectively
aggro enemies or simply kill them from afar
and if you have the patience and know-how
you can totally use them to kill the toughest
boss in the game without having to actually
fight him.
I personally like to play Dark Souls with
minimal armor and a huge sword in melee, but
that’s definitely not the easiest way to
play.
If you ever bounced off of Dark Souls due
to the difficulty, maybe give it another shot
with a Pyromancer next time.
There is no shame in using what the game offers
to get the experience you want.
So does that mean that non-PvP games are best
with as little balance as possible?
Well, no.
A limiting factor here is challenge.
Part of the fun of most games, at least most
games with a skill or strategy component lies
in overcoming adversity and challenging situations.
Make a game too easy and it may become boring
despite being otherwise well-made.
Make the game too hard and it becomes frustrating,
which is not something everybody likes.
Yeah like me.
I don’t like being frustrated and I frustrate
easy.
leave me alone, Bennett Foddy.
[Bennett Foddy:] An orange is sweet juicy fruit locked inside a bitter peel
That's not how I feel about a challenge. I only want the bitterness.
It's Coffee. It's Grapefruit. It's Licoriche.
[Bird:] Hey! Hey Bennett! Y'know what those things have in common?
THEY'RE ALL FUCKING DISGUSTING,
DON’T @ ME
Disclaimer that Getting Over it with Bennett
Foddy is a fine game it’s just not for me
An unbalanced game runs the risk of being
at the same time too hard AND too easy.
It takes some really stellar game-mechanical
engineering to get players to purposefully
handicap themselves to tweak the challenge
to their personal optimal level.
So you need… a sensible balance between
balanced and unbalanced.
I wrote that.
Oh well you know what I’m trying to say.
Okay let’s look at balance in customisation
systems.
By this I mean stuff like roleplaying games
where you can level different stats or abilities
and combine them with items to create discrete
character builds, but also stuff like crafting
systems a la Mercenary Kings and well…
Magicmaker.
Finding that delicate balance between balance
and imbalance is probably one of the most
important considerations to make here.
A significant part of the fun in games like
these is attaining system mastery, the skill
to cleverly combine game elements to create
effective builds.
But for this to work, there needs to be a
difference between a good build and a bad build.
The possibility of making poor choices
needs to be designed for.
It needs to be built into the game for system
mastery to mean anything.
If you could just take your build and swap
out any one element with a random other one
and end up with a build of equivalent utility
and effectiveness, then your choices don’t
matter as much.
You can just throw anything together and it’ll
work. Boring!
In contrast, there is a very special kind
of joy in finding a build, a combination or
a recipe that’s stronger than average, or
even just stronger than your last one.
Improving on something and finding it to be
tangibly better afterwards is just really
incredible and it can only happen if it’s
possible to make a bad thing to then improve
upon.
So ideally, the customisation mechanics in
these games should be designed to be balanced
enough to allow for even masterful players
to be challenged but unbalanced enough for
system mastery to affect performance.
So where does Magicmaker fall on this scale?
Weeeeelll about...
HERE.
And I’m strangely okay with that.
Okay I know that kinda goes against half of
what I just talked about but hear me out.
Magicmaker’s spellcraft system is so robust
and gives so many options that the game is
fun even if you completely ruin the challenge.
About halfway through my first playthrough
I had stumbled upon certain combinations that
turned the game into a cakewalk.
I was just strolling through even the most
difficult levels completely annihilating all
opposition with little difficulty.
And it was so much fun!
It’s a power trip.
I admit it.
Just complete and utter power fantasy shit,
but it was exhilarating and it remained fun
for several playthroughs which, incidentally
became shorter and shorter because the game
does not scale nearly on par with how much
more powerful you can get.
So yeah, I love it even though it’s… extreme.
But obviously there are also problems.
It’s easy to fall into a bit of a rut with
the game where you have identified the strongest
spell combination available to you and then
just… use that forever.
Why experiment with new stuff if what you
have works?
The game clearly wants to encourage experimentation
in the player, but it fails by allowing the
player to make spells that always always work.
The extreme lack of balance makes it impossible
to design challenges that force players to
change up their builds.
Don’t get me wrong the different bosses
are certainly more vulnerable to different
strategies and builds, but what does it matter
if there’s even a single build that completely
destroys all of them?
So it’s important that if you choose to
play Magicmaker, you do what the game fails
to do and motivate yourself to keep experimenting.
Because that’s where most of the fun is.
And that’s it isn’t it?
Of course it isn’t.
I haven’t even spoiled the whole plot yet.
Which I will do right now, so if you don’t
want to hear spoilers, please skip to whatever
timestamp this is.
All right, so on several missions, you run
into Azazel doing… stuff… and sometimes
ruining your shit, for example by stealing
a magical gem you’re supposed to procure.
Once you have done all the story missions,
which are conveniently marked orange, a new
portal opens in the headmaster’s office.
There you can access the final story mission.
The headmaster explains that the end of your
first month as a security guard is coming
up and that means you’re about to get paid,
so he sends you on a totally not suicide mission.
But before you can stupidly accept this obvious
ploy to save money and get yourself killed,
Azazel teleports in and saves you the hassle
of going anywhere by blowing you the fuck
up where you stand.
What follows is… honestly my favourite level
in the game.
Just… look at this.
It’s so very pretty in how minimal it is.
Stark contrasts, simple lines, all those neat
particle effects!
As you go, you find power ups and your attacks
keep getting stronger and more devastating,
as you essentially gain more materials which
are immediately slotted into the one attack
you have.
And at the end, you find a portal.
“It’s time to go back.
You have a job to do.”
And it takes you back to the world of the
living.
Here you find out that Azazel abducted the
headmaster.
You get another chance to get yourself kitted
out and then it’s off into Azazel’s dark
tower thing, which turns out to be a magic
school for monsters.
This level is not procedurally generated and
is full of Goblin Wizards and also puzzles
that are easily completely bypassed by teleporting,
which is good because this part
looks like a pain in the ass!
At the top of the tower Azazel reveals that
she transformed the headmaster into a Goblin
as punishment for his anti-Goblin stance.
Azazel then turns into a monster and you fight.
And then the tower collapses and you fight
some more on your way down.
You hit the ground hard and some rubble crushes
all your materials out of you as well as ALL
OF YOUR BONES AND ORGANS.
Azazel is stuck in a tree and with only your
unaugmented wand left to you, you shoot her
until she falls and dies.
The day is saved.
The rest of the cast fall from above and land safely.
Then you get crushed to death by more debris.
Roll credits.
WOW holy shit what an ending.
Okay so much for the summary, let’s talk
about the story and what it says.
As previously established, you play a security
guard working for Dörwall Community College
which is a Magic School that explicitly excludes
monsters.
Your boss, the headmaster, makes open racist
remarks about goblins and would literally
rather see you dead than pay you for all the
work you do.
And what is that work you do?
Oh y’know a whole bunch of good stuff like
stealing magical lanterns, shooting ghosts
for no sensible reason and setting fairies
on fire.
The main antagonist is Azazel who is mainly
characterised as someone who thinks monsters
should be allowed to learn magic and succeeds
at teaching monsters magic.
You oppose her because you work for the school
that refuses to teach monsters magic..
Oh my god…
I’M the asshole.
It’s ME!
Dörwall is the anti-monster establishment.
Azazel wants equality and believes in the
mental capacities of monsters.
You work for the establishment.
Your boss is a racist.
Your colleagues are all greedy, selfish wankers.
You spend all your time killing just absolutely
ridiculous amounts of monsters.
But not only are you a willing tool of the
murderous wizards, you’re fucking DEDICATED, too!
When Azazel blows you up (understandable since
you’re the only competent one around) you
literally come back from the dead to do your
job.
The job, I might add, you have never even
been paid for doing!
You’re the biggest dope in history, you
do the bidding of amoral shitheads for no
pay whatsoever.
They’d rather literally see you dead than
even give you a fucking slice of the pie they
hired you to protect.
You’re not one of them.
You’re just some working class guy looking
for a paycheck you will never ever get.
And yet here you are going above and beyond
to save them.
Oh but uuuhh what about that whole thing where
Azazel turns the headmaster into a Goblin?
Is that just reset to normal when she dies?
Nope.
The headmaster is still a goblin.
Perhaps this changes his outlook on life.
Perhaps Azazel’s fight wasn’t in vain
after all?
Well fuck.
So, what did I think of Magical dipshit cop
simulator 2014?
I love it!
I mean this is probably no surprise I kinda
gave that away, but how can you blame me?
This game’s fantastic.
The gameplay is kinda wonky, some levels are
absolute torture on the first run
Looking at you, Temple Zone!
but the core systems
are so powerful I can easily see past all that.
And what i at first thought to just be a nihilistic
excuse-plot is, in the end, surprisingly resonant.
At least it resonated with me.
It’s not deep.
It’s not subtle.
It’s not even executed with any kind of
finesse or particular cleverness, but it works.
It’s a farcical condemnation of blind obedience
to authority and status quo and I’m fucking
*here* for it!
I have a bit of a problem with the framing
of human-monster relations being analogous
to race relations, but that’s a topic for
another video.
By this point it should be clear to you that
I’m angling to get people to give the game a try.
Why else would I avoid going into mechanical
spoilers so hard?
So be aware of this and make sure you only
get the game if you can easily afford it or
after you’ve checked for a second opinion,
maybe.
Don’t make financial decisions based on
my opinions alone.
I don’t want that responsibility.
That’s pretty much all I have to say on
this today.
Thank you for watching and I hope you enjoyed
it!
