Yesterday a good friend of mine gifted me a game on steam called ‘Magical Diary‘ which I had heard of vaguely but wasn’t really familiar with on any grand scale. This game is considered to be an ‘otome game‘, and I love games that involve a lot of story so I was pretty excited to play.
Little did I know.
I started playing at about 1pm, planning on just dipping my toes in for an hour or so before moving on to World of Warcraft or some other game. By the time I came up for air I realized it was 6:30pm and I really needed to get some dinner made. I had SUCH a fantastic time playing this game, it was unbelieveable.
You might laugh when you hear the premises. You’re a 16 year old human girl sent to go to a school of magic, much like Hogwarts, actually. You’re a Wildseed, a human with magical abilities, but not everyone there is, some have magical parents. You meet two roommates along with a lot of classmates and professors, and you have the choice to go to classes or not. You can study, relax, go to the mall on Saturdays, and you get a weekly allowance. Along the way you get sucked into the incredibly complex and interesting storyline of individual people, and you make choices based on certain activities. Because every decision furthers your personal story in a different way you can replay the game quite a few times for a bunch of different results.
It’s not just the interesting stories and personal play that kept me interested, either. There’s a great combination of ‘other stuff’ going on, like learning spells and taking exams. Your exams tend to send you to a dungeon (a puzzle) that you have to solve using your spells or another creative means. So far I’ve failed three of them and only passed two. You earn demerits for each time you fail, as well as any other ‘bad’ things you may do in the story line. I don’t want to give too much away so I won’t get into a lot of detail, but needless to say I am not a good student and I’m sitting at -40 demerits. Oops.
I’ve really enjoyed playing so far. It’s a relaxed pace, without having to worry about any of the usual game issues that I experience while playing an MMO or a ‘regular’ single player game. Sure it’s not going to be a game for everyone, but it IS on sale on steam right now, so if it sounds interesting you should pick it up.
As always, happy gaming, no matter where you find yourself!