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Magicka Sequel Planned, Console Version a Possibility
Indie action-adventure game Magicka has been an unqualified success since its launch in January. While work is still underway on the original game, the CEO of publisher Paradox told Joystiq that a sequel is not in doubt: "When we — and I'm not saying 'if' — but 'when' we are doing a sequel to this game, it's going to be done on a totally different technology. It was super buggy at release. We addressed most of them in the first week, but there are still issues with laptops and a few other things. It's due to the engine that we produced the game on." He also indicated that console ports of Magicka are a strong possibility.
Yes, they rolled their own engine based on XNA, which seems to be very picky about graphics cards. I got it on Steam, but still haven't been able to run it, even though my system is well within the specs (runs Crysis2 just fine etc). Crashes with some Direct3D exception.
What made me angry was their comment on the Steam forums about those isses was (paraphrased) "Do you want us to make the game compatible with a wider range of cards, or add more features? Obviously we opted for more features." If so many folks can't run your game because it's so picky, they don't care about more features, because they're never going to seem them.
1) Slashvertisement.
2) I played the demo - seemed okay, seemed to make good progress, interesting ideas, had to restart from a checkpoint a couple of times but nothing too taxing etc. Bought it on that basis.
Had to re-do everything I'd done in the demo (in fact, in a worse way because there were some vital elements that weren't highlighted in the full game that had been in the demo until they patched them). Then realised that save-"checkpoints" only worked if you didn't quit the game in between.
So you struggle through a level - get right to the end, die. You restart and restart from just before you died but then if you choose to close the game and try again later - bam - right back to the very start of the level. I didn't get past more than about 30 minutes of actual gameplay (after many hours of trying) and the developers have zero interest in changing it because dozens of complaints on the forums.
Yes, if you sit down and wish to play it through in one session after reading up on every spell combination and memorising them all and then just spamming the most powerful ones, you can complete the game in one sitting and never hit the issue. But if you want to PLAY the game and experiment (which is kinda the selling point of the game), then you're stuffed and find yourself re-treading old ground constantly (with extended cutscenes etc. each time) over and over and any progress you make better be a LOT of progress or it won't save between sessions even if you've touched a "save" checkpoint.
And then they sold out and just produce a bucket of odd DLC for it without bothering to fix many of the issues. And that's from someone who had a relatively smooth ride bug-wise because I tried the demo and read the specs beforehand, but it still crashed out on me a couple of times (it doesn't matter "how often", games should not crash out). After the first two days of trying, I literally just left it to linger on my Steam account and haven't tried since.
I never even tried to play it multiplayer because all of my friends steered clear of it but the single-player is all but impossible if you can't dedicate a whole day or two to completing it. Even then, the multiplayer had ridiculous network traffic sizes that made it mostly impossible for four-people on ordinary broadband connections to play together (and there were all sorts of sync issues).
Basically, it was a really, really, cool idea that they buggered up by being too focused on selling instead of fixing. And you should look at the Steam forums and the number of complaints about "my super-duper graphics card can't run this at all".
So does that mean it will now be limited to DX9 with a rumoured DX10 patch in the future? Bah, it doesn't really matter, so long as I can buy a hat or potato skin in the shop. My credit card is ready and waiting!
I bought Magicka and while it's incredibly fun, it's also completely broken. Singleplayer is buggy as hell and multiplayer straight up doesn't work. I tried playing online with a few friends and it was an absolute blast but after a while, events stopped triggering, we'd get stuck in cutscenes, if anyone had network connectivity issues we'd have to start the level over again entirely... you can't rejoin a game in progress. After 4 hours of the first two levels over and over, we gave up. We got to a point where we'd finish a certain battle and then nothing would let us continue. We tried ten times or so restarting the server, restarting the game, reinstalling the game, nothing.
It's so painful because underneath it's one of the coolest games I've played in a really long time. But as much goodwill as that gets from me, it's not enough to overcome the fact that I purchased a game that essentially doesn't work. And not in a hardware, oh my PC setup is weird, thing. It runs beautifully. Graphics are glitch-free, frame rate is high, everything is great on that side of things. This is the sort of problem where actual game logic is broken and there's no way for me to troubleshoot my way around it.
If the developer is going to start planning a sequel before fixing this game, than consider me a customer lost. I very strongly suggest all of you avoid their products as well.
At first I thought (albeit off topic for the normal Slashdot crowd) this was going to be about Puella Magicka Madoka getting a sequel. I know its considered one of the best (non-pornographic) adult anime of the last decade or so but seriously...
Ginga no Rekshiya Mata Each page.
Okay, so the game had little story, got a little easy near the end once you learned some good spells, and it has little replayability. But the spell building mechanic was a brilliant contribution to gaming—something I think will influence many RPGs in the future. I can't wait to see how it gets refined in triple-A RPGs.
And the inside jokes were great. Every so often you hear PR-speak about how a game was designed by gamers for gamers, only to cringe at things you know any gamer wouldn't have done. Magicka was different. You could tell the game was made by people who have truly loved gaming for a long time. Their game was a celebration of it.
I have a lot of games released by Paradox. They make some fun games with excellent mechanics.
Europa Universalis III: Crashes so often it's unplayable
Europa Universalis: Rome: Crashes so often it's unplayable
King Arthur the RPG: Crashes so often I don't dare even try the expansion, despite owning it
Hearts of Iron III: Didn't even bloody start
Hopefully the ones I haven't tried yet but got in a Steam bundle will be more stable. I'm not holding out much hope though.
I'd like to play the game properly, but I'm suffering a high level of stuttering in the game despite having decent hardware, and I'm not the only one according to the Steam forums. Even the developers aren't sure why some people get the stuttering and others don't, but hey - let's move onto the sequel before fixing this eh!
Complaint will be rescinded if they surprise me by fixing this soon. :)
Only 7 people developed Magicka and 2 of them are coders. There have always been one of them in games Steam forum answering questions and taking suggestions. Something what players have never got from hollywood budget game developer groups what includes dozens/hundreds of developers. It is great to see that indie game developers who at least cares about players and does what they can with their knowledge and skills to fix bugs.
Magickas humor is to stick 4 players together where everyone shares their same view, so no one can escape from another. You need to stay together to see ahead of you. If you separate, the front persons does not see ahead at all.
Humans does errors, especially in Magicka where the "weapons" are 5 combinations of elements: Fire, Ice, Shield, Stone, Life, Arcane, Water and Electricity. And you need to enter those in different ways to get wanted effect for specific enemies (usually to kill them) and then launch combination in few different ways (beam, natural, area, weapon, directed, shielded) and when you and your friends (or even random people, it really works! And better if no VOIP possibility) play and make mistakes, the game turns fun.
As the fun part is not just the story, it is funny in first and second time. But the real humor comes when you and your friends are blowing up yourselfs when trying to kill enemies. Nothing is so fun as accidents happening to friends... You know the situations when friend hits head to something and hurts himself (more to pride than physically) and the situation is just too funny? Well, Magicka is about that. Everyone gets good laughs (2-4 co-op) when one guy gets idea to use one specific combination and blows up friends in the pieces or set them in fire and they burn. And everything what you can hear from VoIP (if used) is "Ooops...."
There are two bad things in the game:
a) the game was coded using XNA. The game is slow as hell. It demands more resources than the graphics actually gives to expect. Even the menu takes more resources than most maps. And because XNA you can not play game with laptops or almost any computer what has integrated GPU, even that computer could run Crysis, as integrated GPU's are blocked and game does not start.
b) The game has few too powerfull combinations what players learn at some point and start easily using just them to make playing easier. And that is mistake as it is not fun anymore and it turns just as boring as FPS pipe shooter. And at that point only fun thing is the Magicka adventure. And the enemies should have littlebit more variations for different spells. Developers have done great job to make just enough differences to enemies to have them a different weaknesses but it really should be retought as many use the same 1-2 combinations all the time. SPOILER: Example many always joins beams to cause most effective hit to enemies and when they do it for every enemy, it is boring game to pla... watch.... Or that they just does same area attack to kill in 1-3 fast strikes everyone on that area.
Magicka is worth of its 9,99 price tag if you just have computer to run it. They even managed to rebalance the game well for gamepad owners and keyboard+mouse players. So you can play over online the Co-Op or on same computer. And that if something is rare thing. Example the other great game "Trine" allows 3 player Co-Op, but only on same computer. Not possible over online or even LAN to play the game. What actually killed the game very well from most friends.
For next "adventure" I am expecting they would code the engine with C/C++ or with any other sane language so it would be efficent for laptop owners. Graphics are good enough now but some new enemies and more liking... different kinds what have totally different weakness could be better. And to invent something what would force players to change gameplay tactics all the time so it could not be possible just to hit few same combos (many have started to use macro programs for that, what is cheating) to kill every enemy.
I ha
Really? Unqualified?
"It can still be hard to find a game and the game browser is missing a dozen basic components, but the potential for the perfect game we saw at preview is re-emerging."
"It's long, it's tough, it's huge fun, and it's cheap. But it will never be perfect."
Some of us do read the articles you link...
I've never even heard of this game. The magic system sounds like fun.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Wow, so many non-positive reviews... I simply love Magicka - and have had it for what, like a month now... I've experienced very few bugs, one or two crashes from the first version I had of the game, and it runs perfectly fine on my machine too!
:-)
I will admit that the networking is pooh - who the hell requires you to connect to the Internet to play in LAN mode? Kind of defeats the purpose (and here in RSA we're stuck with poor bandwidth and bad connections - so it makes it difficult to "start" a game - even though its meant to be played in LAN mode)...
But other than that I think it's one of the more classic games I've played. Not too difficult either, and the single player is easy enough to bash out in a couple of hours - its really not that difficult.
Even the DLC has been pretty fun for LAN mode
Hopefully this time they don't rely on Steam for its multiplayer capabilities so they can release a version that is Steam-free. They had to cancel the non-DRM-fucked version because of that.
http://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/showthread.php?527049-Magicka-Weekly-Community-Update-18th-of-March-2011&p=12198554#post12198554
tried it, found the gameplay way too intense.
1. the area one can move in is small, maybe a screen maybe less (depending on the stuff in the scene, like water).
2. enemies moves damn fast!
3. you need to key in the spells over and over. no way to key one in once and have repeat, or even store a couple on a hotkey for quick access. Oh and lets not forget that you can direct the effect of the spell towards yourself by hitting the wrong button.
So here you are, running circles with the enemy barking down your back trying to hammer in the right combo to drop that uber spell and hope you do not hit the wrong button that will turn the spell against yourself and end the session right there.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
It's buggy and the UI outside of the actual game is really unintuitive. It's also brilliant. I'll buy the sequel.
By what criteria was Magicka an unqualified success? The game was so buggy at release it was basically unplayable for any length of time - for some it's still entirely unplayable. I think you'd have to set the bar too low to call that a success at all.
Maybe this time around they won't release a game so riddled with bugs as to be almost completely unplayable, especially in multiplayer.
The game had potential, and was pretty fun at parts, but it was so broken when it first came out that I didn't pick it up again for months, only to find then that many of the same bugs still remained.
That being said, I think I'll pass on any future releases from Paradox Interactive until they have been thoroughly vetted.
I played the game a couple weeks ago. Right in the early part of the tutorial the text had some grammatical errors. They should proof-read it before porting it.