Magirune 2

Excellent maze game !

At first, I was not so excited because of the graphics but the more I advanced in the game, the more I felt reliving my old nintendo classics. It's a kind of ''Zelda'' with dungeons filled with puzzles and labyrinths, where thinking, logic and tactics are required. The mazes are still complicated to solve and if you can do it the first time, I would be really surprised. Sound effects and background music is quite nice too!

A very enjoyable sequel to one of my favorite games. The monster designs were great, and the expanded world and story was very fun to explore. I would have maybe enjoyed some kind of 'ultra-hard mode', since I managed to beat the game on hard without dying with over 40 potions left over.

This is a very well designed throwback to a Nintendo Zelda era.

A hidden gem, and a joy to play.

Magirune is a puzzle dungeon crawler reminiscent of early PC games like Chip's Challenge. It's grid-based, so there's some sokoban type challenges involved, but those take a backseat to what I consider the star of the show - which is the blended combat puzzle system. In a typical dungeon crawler or metroidvania, the major upgrades in or between the dungeons are what serve as the keys to unlock new portions of the world and prompt backtracking. Magirune still does this, but in addition every dungeon has its own meta-progression in the form of XP-based combat. In order to reach key rooms or switches, you need to farm enough XP to become strong enough to kill tougher and tougher monsters. Enemies require a [u]fixed[/u] number of hits to kill based on your character/weapon level, each hit causes a [u]fixed[/u] amount of retaliation damage, there is a [u]fixed[/u] number of potions in the game, and there is a [u]fixed[/u] amount of XP to be harvested - but enemies [u]respawn[/u] between rooms. Since you only get XP on the first kill but healing is finite, you have to strategize [b]how[/b] you are going to move thru the dungeon to most efficiently conserve life. This makes the combat simultaneously the only way forward but also something that has to be approached cautiously. You can't haphazardly kill everything in your path because you might have to trek back thru that area later, at which point you've already expended your potions. But becoming stronger will open up new paths and make the backtracking less costly because enemies can be killed in fewer hits. This is a formula that comes all down to execution. If the level design is too simple, then moving forward is a tedious, riskless, linear process. But Magirune is VERY competent in its design - you will frequently have to stop and think and reference your mental model of the dungeon. Not just to save time in aimless wandering, but to survive. And the difficulty curves well, where new mechanics are gradually introduced to ramp up the complexity as you yourself grow more competent. We're not talking Baba is You or Stephen Sausage Roll level sorcery, ofc, but it is surprisingly well designed. My recommendation is to play Magirune 1 (which is free) on the Normal difficulty. This gives 1XP for repeat kills, which adds a forgiveness mechanic for mistakes / careless planning but can be exploited to trivialize the puzzle element. If you like it enough to see that experience thru or close to the end, then pick up Magirune 2 and play on Hard, which is true finite XP and IMO the ideal way to experience this game. The combat puzzling is what makes this shine. Magirune 1 is a bit rougher around the edges - in hindsight it feels more like a POC for the finished product of Magirune 2, but really that's a completely viable development path and it being a free download jives with that. It's competent in its own right and is uniquely aggressive with key conservation esp in the early game, where you can straight up softlock yourself. It's intentional - the game warns you and has a built-in dungeon reset option, but 2 seemed to be much more forgiving with the keys in favor of a longer, more robust adventure. 2 also has an NPC that can give you a single potion whenever you are completely exhausted. You can probably softlock yourself in 2 if you muck up bad enough, but it's going to be harder. Lastly - for anyone who does pursue Deathless Hard mode, the teleports cure poison. The game does encourage you to use them liberally (they can be a key part of the meta navigation, esp in 1 where it feels expected) but the "cures poison" has to be intuited and can save big on potions in the early game, helping to avoid a dead run.

Absolutely a wonderful game despite of few reviews and guide. You will grasp the mechanic of the game and key items soon enough and it took 10+ hours for all the achievements. You will also enjoy banging into every wall, investigating every floor to find the secret passages. As people say, it's a real hidden gem.

Simple controls and Nice Dungeons design. Get addicted in trying to find out the most efficient route to collect everything with using the least amount of potions.

Cool game, it uses a similar sistem to the first one, but expands upon it in all ways, the small story became bigger, the battle sistem was expanded, the puzzles are more and better, and there are also many novelties, such as side quests, bosses and secrets. All awesome. The only point that blocks me is that I can't solve a couple of the optional puzzles, but that's on me.

It's good and worth $5 for sure, but despite being dramatically longer and more loaded with gimmicks, it does feel less substantive than the first game. Magirune 1 was a VERY tightly designed game, and required some careful planning and likely a few attempts to optimize your path and survive for the true ending. This game is much more open ended with multiple required and independent paths, and is much more generous with resources to the point that it's pretty brute forceable on the first run, even on Hard. I never really felt like I was on the edge of my supplies like I CONSTANTLY was in the first game. I never once ran out of keys or really ran low on them at all. The moment you can break barrels you get flooded with all the potions you'll ever need, even if you never do the sidequest that will just give you freebies if you run out. By the end of a Hard playthrough, I had almost 20 potions and a couple dozen keys left over that were only used on the final secret in the game. Compare to Magirune 1 which has very few spare keys at all, and an optimal run will literally have you down to your last few HP by the time you get the sword. This is still a recommend, just be aware it's much more relaxed and far less of a puzzle to survive.