Magician's Quest: Mysterious Times
Ages: Everyone +10

Welcome to the Magic Academy where you will study hard, learn how to cast spells, make many friends, and perhaps graduate and become one of the greatest magicians of all time. I haven't graduated - still learning..

The game is played in real-time. Each week there is a class in magic, and you are asked to answer questions. You can repeat any class you take but going through the Academy will take a long time - there are 52 adventures and more than 100 magic spells to learn. You live in a dorm with your own room to decorate, there are 150 unique and strange looking characters to wile away the time between classes with and an endless variety of clothing.

Besides the Academy and the dorm there is a town with enough stores to serve your needs, a river and waterfalls for fishing, strange tree houses that some of your friends occupy and a post office for mail and Wi-fi communication. Communicating with friends via Wi-Fi can be done with English text or mysterious symbolic runes.

The professors speak in a very strange authoritarian gibberish - speech bubbles decode the dialogue. Your fellow students are a good mix of nerd, gossip, friend, too friendly types and players will make choices as to whom to pal around with. It feels like a real school. This is not a slow game as much as a measured game. Skills are spread out over a year and in that time I suspect many relationships will be made and unmade. A provocative design for a game.

Fun Factor: Going to school has never been so much fun.
Female Factor: Nice balance. You pick the gender of your character.
Player Friendly: Saves are allowed in the middle of the game.

Reviewed by: Editor - 01/09