Posted on: June 5, 2025
unacomn
Verified ownerGames: 401 Reviews: 7
Very charming
Near-Mage is about as beautiful and silly as it could be. The hand drawn backgrounds are fantastic, some of the characters and various creatures look great, while some are just plain silly. And that's OK. In terms of gameplay, in the traditional adventure game sense it is a bit bare bones, as the puzzles aren't what you would call difficult, but they give you something that most adventure games don't, and that is multiple ways of solving them. Like, imagine if the duck puzzle in The Longest Journey gave you the option to not do something insane to solve it. Well, Near-Mage does the opposite, a lot of puzzles have multiple ways of being solved, some choices have consequences, some have provide moral dilemas, and others you just do because the game lets you and you want to see just how far you can go before someone tells you "STOP BLOWING PEOPLE UP". This isn't a violent game, but I've racked up a higher bodycount already than in most other adventure games, including Monkey Island 3 (Guybrush totally murdered that guy at the top of the cliff). Maybe the only thing that comes close is Space Quest, but that's only because Roger himself had so many creative ways to get himselved clobbered. Here, it's the other way arround. Illy can be a menace to society if you play the game right... or wrong. It's fun, it looks nice, the voices are good, the music is fine, the story is OK, it's got a few rough edges, but for something made by 3 people it is a blast.
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