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Hi all,

I just thought I'd let you folks know about a charming little game that just came out called "The Book of Living Magic".



Link!

It's made by Jonas Kyratzes who made The Infinite Ocean, Phenomenon 32, Last Rose in a Desert Garden and a bunch of others. His work's very intriguing and satisfying and I think it's a shame he doesn't get as much attention as other indies. His site is here.

The Book of Living Magic is a point and click adventure game set in the Lands of Dream and follows the adventures of a lonely little girl who lives in a boring world who one day has a wonderful dream about the Book of Living Magic and sets out to find it. Some people won't like it because it's light-hearted and optimistic and centres around characters who care about others and who help each other. Some people will find it too moralising and simple. But I think the game exhibits a real sincerity and generosity, and it was really wonderful for me to step out of the world of grim and gritty FPSs for an hour or so, and step into a world created with nothing but love and optimism.

And what love it's made with! The writing is excellent, each location is hand-drawn in a charmingly childish wax-crayon style, and absolutely EVERYTHING on-screen has an item description, often an in-joke or reference, or just a very amusing comment. Jonas must have spent a lot of time on this, and it really shows. You can tell it's a labour of love.

So, please have a go and tell people what you think of it! I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

I know I shouldn't double post but nobody's replied so I think a bump is in order.

Also, it's now on both Kongregate and Newgrounds! Which is very unexpected.

I'll try it out later today and post back. Thanks for the info and link.

I like the attention to detail in the drawings and the writing style is quite cool, but I don't like these sort of games. Just letting you know at least someone checked it out, but it's not the style of game I like at all.

Cool, enthralling, very well done, and rather short. Just the way I like it.

If you don't like to read, this isn't for you.


~Plystire

I played it, it was worth it . My kind of humor.

Hey, that's fine, thanks for posting! I think the game is definitely not for everyone: it's sentimental, its design is streamlined to the point of simplicity and there's a lot of text. I think it's a love-hate game.

The thing about that, though, is that those who love it seem to *really* love it. If you look at the various bits of feedback for it on Jonas' blog and JayIsGames, these positive reviewers clearly adored it. The fact it has a JayIsGames rating of 4.8/5.0 from 270 people kind of says it all: it's never going to please everyone, but those who like it have a really positive reaction to it.

That's basically why I posted it: so people could try it to see if it was their kind of thing. If it's not then that's totally fine; there are lots of games other people love that I just don't really get. But I just hope that some people who played it were uplifted by it.