One of my favourite games of all time!
Incredibly charming game with highly interesting lore, a world that feels more alive than any other game I have played, and some cool new ideas. I had so much fun, I decided to replay it for achievements, just so I could stay in this little lovely Transsylvanian world a bit longer.

Also please note that this is not a traditional point-n-click game with an inventory, but a narratively-driven adventure game with puzzles and slight RPG elements. It's a fresh take on the genre and I can't wait to see what else the developers come up with!

P.S. Would take Samudia home with me any day night, 11/10.

tl;dr Near Mage isn't your classic point'n'click adventure. It's closer to a visual novel with exploration. No puzzles, no inventory. You wander a magical world, meeting people and helping with their problems. Early on, there's no strong central plot, but once the story kicks in, it feels like starring in a whimsical cartoon rather than playing a traditional adventure game.

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I cannot recommend this game if you're looking for a classic point'n'click title with puzzles. Honestly, I almost gave up in the first few hours, but the extremely high ratings kept me going, and I'm glad I stuck around.

There are only a few things I really pay attention to in adventure games: the story, the atmosphere (not necessarily tied to graphics), voice acting, and how the gameplay ties into puzzles and storytelling. That said...

• Some voice acting is dull or completely lifeless, thankfully, tied only to a few side characters who don't play major roles
  
• Illy's (the main character) VA is generally consistent, but her delivery is often overly enthusiastic to the point of sounding fake, out of place, or just plain over the top for what's happening on screen. This was my biggest gripe and something you'll have to live with

• The hotspot highlighter makes objects easy to see, but the clickable area is sometimes off-center. You might have to click around the label to trigger an interaction. Often the "hotspot" is really a "hot-area" covering a large portion of the screen. Probably to accommodate controllers. Unfortunately, this sometimes triggers unintended actions, for example - trying to move Illy but accidentally clicking an exit zone
  
• You can interact with many NPCs, but some just spout random lines with no context. For example, talking to one random NPC makes her say: "I'm not changing my religion if that's what this is" — uh, okay? What does that have to do with anything? Others are genuinely funny ("Can I interest you in some dubiously sourced silverware?") but Illy gives no reaction, making the exchanges feel unfinished or just plain awkward
  
• Scenes are often packed with animated characters, which makes the world feel alive, but also cluttered, since most aren't relevant to the story and many aren't even interactable
  
• Characters and locations can change based on your quest state, which can be a bit confusing. A character might be present and non-interactable at one point, but later become important once the story progresses. Not a major problem, but worth noting

• GORGEOUS artwork and visual style
  
• Art style, while a bit less detailed than Gibbous (mainly due to less shading on characters), still fits beautifully with the game's overall look
  
• Cool, situationally unique animations throughout the game
  
• Visarion's and Raggia's voice acting is fantastic - both quirky, fun, and memorable
  
• Quest system is clear and a great way to track objectives
  
• Spellcasting is a fun little minigame that ties nicely into the story, often giving multiple ways to progress
  
• Multiple branching choices with slight but noticeable impacts on how the story unfolds (with even some "hidden" side-stories)
  
• Decision tracking integrates seamlessly into the narrative. Your choices have consequences, even if they're not game-breaking
  
• Great way of tying the story (and ending) of Gibbous (their previous game) into Near Mage
  
• An ending of Near Mage that ties up lose ends BUT still leaves one big thing opened for a potential 3rd game

Near Mage currently sits at an impressive 100% recent and 91% overall rating on Steam, and honestly, I don’t think it deserves to be ranked that high, especially when some true genre classics are rated lower. That said, if you approach it for what it is (not a traditional adventure game) and can live with Illy’s line delivery, you’ll find a charming, visually stunning, and enjoyable experience - especially since the game gets progressively more interesting towards the end.

I have so many thoughts on this game. TL DR:


There are some really expensive, well-polished games that feel like a committee designed slog with no interesting ideas in them. We've all played at least one game, often a sequel, where all the unique ideas were sanded down to make something completely uninteresting and not fun to play.

This game is kind of the opposite of that. It has the same kind of charm as Hanna-Barbara cartoons, a studio which specialized in cheaply made cartoons that they could make a lot of. What's really interesting to me is that this game clearly had a ton of effort put into it by a team of people who really cared. There are AGS games with more polish than this game has, but very few games at all that have as many little touches put in to flesh out the experience you get.

You get magic in this game. The game doesn't force you to pick a certain spell first, you get to pick. The spells you get aren't mandatory solutions to puzzles, they're possible solutions to puzzles...and they don't give them to you in a set order. There's dozens of spells in this game, and many of them can be used when any can be used, all of them have unique animations, many have extra dialogue, and some of them are the most creative solutions I can imagine writing to the task at hand. One of them has you switching the minds of a man and a dead murderer, which you're not told your spell can do, letting him see the murder committed firsthand instead of only hearing about it from other witnesses or a nebulous sign which is just you casting a different spell. And if the game's dialogue is accurate, there's a non-magical solution to every spell-related puzzle as well! Like, damn! Extra work, but yeah, it's pretty amazing you get all that on top of what's required to beat a puzzle! There's even extra dialogue for spells that don't solve the puzzles! Dialogues even go into a first person perspective to give some big, beautifully drawn character art, rather than just keeping the camera in that whole-room adventure game camera.

The characters in this game are all really interesting, but the direction on the voice acting was...I don't want to say nonexistent, but it kinda feels like the devs handed their cast their lines out of context and just said, "Read this sentence." The emotions and emphasis don't always fit the game's context. There's also a lot of times when a character says the same words, and the devs used the same sound clip, but the character should have said the line completely differently. Not sure who all the voice actors are (I did pick out Yahtzee Croshaw), but they're not acting slouches, I can tell. Every voice actor did their best with the lines in isolation, and only one was cringe (a minor character you only have to talk to once). Great acting cast, bad voice actor direction, but if you can mentally correct emotional inflection in your head, it's not a big deal.

You get to fly in this game (unlocking fast travel), which just has you jumping up into a lotus position and float around in a way that's otherwise the same as walking. The flying bugs out sometimes while you're doing other things, and your character will display the standing sprite and glide around until you stop flying. Characters mostly don't walk on and off camera, the screen just fades out and back. This game is full of stuff like that, but it all felt like limited coding skill, and there's so much effort put into everything, I can tell it's not because anybody got lazy. I loved interacting with the interesting characters and plowing through the storyline.

The last maybe hour is really more of an interactive cutscene, with very little actual walking, but honestly, the story there is neck-deep, with things happening quickly. The pacing works better than if you had to walk back and forth for it all. Look, I could keep typing for hours here, but I'm just going to tell you one more thing: