Near-Mage

TLDR: Nice game but it has no real puzzels. So if you are looking for a point and click adventure you might get disappointed. === Love the graphics (looks really like an old point and click adventure) and the story is also good. BUT It feels more like a visual novel because you are just running / fast traveling from a to b and talk with the NPCs. No puzzle solving involed as you might know from other point and click adventures. Some quests can be solved multiple ways, depending on your answers and the spells you have but nothing where you have to actually put some brain juice into.

Witty dialogue and intriguing story so far, I have to admit that I'm more than a little curious what lies ahead. Nice interface, nothing overcomplicating matters, or distracting. A pleasant mix :-). I'm more a fan of point & click in this kind of adventure, so I can't comment on other control features... Yet ;-). Music & graphics are good and remind me of some older adventure games I've played, I like that, nothing wrong with a classic feel to a new adventure. All in all, I'm enjoying this so far, looking foraward to discovering more :-).

I did buy Near-Mage for myself, and am absolutely enthralled by it. A beautiful, highly polished, clever and very well-written game in an intriguing world is something I can rarely say no to. What I did not however expect was my 6 years old daughter to be drawn by it, and to actually join me in playing through Near-Mage making a ton of choices and offering puzzle solutions herself. Can't recommend it strongly enough.

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.