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[TobiasW]

Hello everyone,

do you know of any unusual games about magic? No, I don't mean Magic the Gathering, I just mean plain-old magic like in "wizardry". And by "unusual" I mean that it's not your 0815-Choose-A-Spell-in-Fightmode-To-Do-Damage-Spell-System, but that it has either has
a) more meaning in the game, like also being used outside of fights, for example affecting environment or
b) has some unusual system of choosing the spells, like - well, I don't remember its name, but there is some old game where you actually play notes to form melodies which are spells.

And while I prefer anything I can play on my PC for free, I don't mind knowning commerical and/or console titles which fit!

Well, thanks for listening to my request, fellow gentleman. Any ideas?

[shig]

Casting spells on Black & White was done by moving your mouse in a certain pattern AND THAT WAS REALLY LAME.

Also, the spells on that game were usually very useful outside of combat.

[mcc]

Does it have to be *video* games? Cuz I was gonna say Mage: The Ascension.

The Golden Sun games for GBA used magic outside of battle in interesting ways. I only played the first one though and it was too easy, so much so as to be boring, and the plot was super generic. The second one was supposed to be harder and sounded more interesting?

"Avalon Code" for the DS (I did not play this) had a REALLY interesting mechanic where you had a book that contained the world, and you did magic by "rewriting" reality. So like you could alter an enemy's stats by changing the "code" that defined them.

"My world, my way" (DS and maybe PSP in Japan?) had a similar reality-altering mechanic where you literally whine until the game gives you your way. Although maybe at some point this isn't a "magic" system anymore.

[TwilightVulpine]

I don't remember its name, but there is some old game where you actually play notes to form melodies which are spells.

Is it Loom?
It is available on Steam now.

Don't remember any game with this outside battle use of magic right now, but I'm sure I played some... I will try to remember and add later.

[Saint]

Magicka had a really interesting system when I first saw it.

Essentially a 4 player top-down brawler with mages played with a XBox 360 controller, you created spells by performing street fighter-style combinations (down - down-left - left) with one of the thumbsticks.

What made it interesting is what these combinations represented. You had some 6 or 7 basic elements, but you also had 3 different targets - push, area and self. Also, each spell could contain up to 10 (or something) of these and the combinations were really cool.

For one thing you could combine elements to create new ones (fire+water = steam), but the really cool part was how you could combine the targets. Using 1 fire and 1 push meant you got a fireball. More fire meant a stronger fireball, more push meant it traveled faster and longer. Substitute the push for area and you got an explosion around you - again, more area and the explosion was bigger. Combine fire, push and area and you get a fireball that explodes and does area effect damage where it hits. It was immensely versatile and fun to try out.

Last I saw it they had removed some of the features presumably to make it easier to pick up, but I thought at least the original system was very deep.

[mcc]

Oh! Eternal Darkness. Eternal Darkness had a magic system used both inside and outside combat, based on runes invoking an Old One. So you'd have  a rune of the name of the god of Strength, and a rune meaning "protect", and a rune meaning "self". And you'd combine them to form a sentence, something like "Strength, protect self". Casting this would give you a temporary shield protecting from physical attacks. Over the course of the game you constantly found both new runes and new "recipes" for spells; you could learn new spells either by following the recipes or just by experimenting. Things were made more complicated in that every enemy was aligned with a particular god, and so that enemy might be strong or weak to certain kinds of magic depending on which god the spell was cast in the name of.

[Destral]

For videogames, Loom is a good example (linked above).
For non-videogames, Ars Magica focuses mainly on wizards and has a really good magic system.

[TobiasW]

Ah, yes, Black & White was pretty nice, though the number of spells were somewhat limited if I remember correctly. I rather enjoyed the gesture-drawning-thingy.

Does it have to be *video* games? Cuz I was gonna say Mage: The Ascension.

Ya, I ment video games. Sure, some P&P systems are doing nice work, but all which is needed to bring at least what I mentioned under a) in my opening post is a good game master. In video games this is so much harder...

Avalon Code looks really interesting! That's the spirit of games I meant! I definitly have too look into it some more. A gameplay video I found isn't really informative, but somewhat fun:



"My world, my way" seems cute. A quote from Wiki: "As the player advances in the game, Elise's selfishness is refined and she gains a variety of different commands."
Though after reading the wiki article it seems to be more like a simple "make it easier for me" than the more refined Avalon Code.

Is it Loom?
It is available on Steam now.

Oh yes, it is! And great, now I can finally play it! :D

For one thing you could combine elements to create new ones (fire+water = steam), but the really cool part was how you could combine the targets. Using 1 fire and 1 push meant you got a fireball. More fire meant a stronger fireball, more push meant it traveled faster and longer. Substitute the push for area and you got an explosion around you - again, more area and the explosion was bigger. Combine fire, push and area and you get a fireball that explodes and does area effect damage where it hits. It was immensely versatile and fun to try out.

This sounds totally awesome - I would love to make something like this! (I ment to say "play something like this" - shouldn't get too big for my boots)
And man, I love the trailer to that game. Where did you try it out? I googled and it seems that it isn't out yet?

The rune system of Eternal Darkness sounds interesting while being easy enough. Pity it's for the GameCube and I cannot try it.

Thank you all for the suggestions so far!

[tiglionabbit]

Quest 64!

[Radix]

Death Gate is an adventure game. It's based off a book series which has a really neat magic system: there is a language of hex-shaped runes, with each rune having a bunch of alternate meanings. To construct a spell you arrange the hexes in a pattern with their relative positions determining context and the shape of your arrangement determining the flow of logic. The difference between a "soothe headache" and an "explode head" spell might just be one hex in a slightly different posiiton. It's a bit like Eternal Darkness' system, but with position being central and unrestricted.

I can't remember what it's like in the Death Gate game, I think it's just a hugely simplified tile puzzle, but it's still kind of interesting.

[gunmaggot]

Loom.

EDIT:  Oops, already mentioned.

Deep Magic 2's seemed pretty cool - the game is unfinished, but it's worth checking out.

[Chaoseed]

Man, everyone already said everything I was going to...D:

Except this: Spellcaster.  The idea is that there are two dueling wizards; each round they each make a hand signal.  Sequences of hand signals form spells.  So do you want to go for short spells, or really long ones?  If you recognize what spell your opponent's trying to cast, can you try to mess with it?

By the way, the great thing about Eternal Darkness is that it's Lovecraftian horror.  Whenever you cast a spell, you're calling on the power of an ancient evil god; you actually hear the deity's voice reading off the runes as the spell gets cast.  "TIER! PARGON! ARETAK! PARGON! ULYAOTH!"  It's completely awesome.

(Wow, I had no idea there was a Death Gate game...)

[gunmaggot]

Oh yeah:

King's Quest III

You are a slave boy who has been kidnapped and confined by a wizard - you have to go around doing his chores while collecting spell ingredients to escape him, but you have to hide your machinations from him or you get killed.  The manual is the spell book, so it also serves as copy protection.

Some crazy people made a free remake:

http://www.infamous-adventures.com/kq3/

One of the better adventure games around - has a couple of real bullshit 'puzzles' but is mostly logical and has quite a few game-y elements (time management/exploration) that make it more interesting than your average adv.

[SirNiko]

I'm currently playing through Treasure of the Rudras, an old SNES RPG by Square that never saw stateside release (but there's an english fan translation).

You have a spell book that has 32 slots for spells. To make a spell, you open up a screen identical to the screen you use to name your characters, and you punch in a word. Every word makes a spell, but a lot of them are useless. To learn good spells you:

A: Find them in treasure boxes, talk to townsfolk, or watch monsters cast them. Words in treasure boxes are usually more useful, but they have missing letters. You might have to guess them.

B: Break existing spells apart into prefixes, suffixes, and roots. You learn early on that "LEF" is cure, and "IG" is fire. You might see a monster use "IGNATES", which is a multi-target fire spell, so a smart player might try "LEFNATES" and you get a multi-target cure spell.

The game ALSO is broken up into three simultaneous scenarios, so the game practically encourages you to play one character, learn some spells, then switch characters and teach the good spells to the other characters. There's some trial and error involved, though, as the game doesn't give you any indication whether "CONTAQU" or "YOUAQU" is the better water spell, since they both seem to do the same thing.

It's a pretty clever concept, and if you generally liked Square RPGs for the SNES you'll enjoy it for reasons other than just the unusual magic system.

Also, Tactics Ogre had a magic system where you started with 0 MP and you charged magic as the fight dragged on, so instead of using your best spells off the bat, you instead had to wait and save up to launch battle-changing spells midway to late through the fight.

-SirNiko

[george]

Except this: Spellcaster.  The idea is that there are two dueling wizards; each round they each make a hand signal.  Sequences of hand signals form spells.  So do you want to go for short spells, or really long ones?  If you recognize what spell your opponent's trying to cast, can you try to mess with it?

There happens to be a mud (multiplayer text game), God Wars 2, based on this system -- not just for spells, but all combat, but you can just check out the spell system easily enough. The hand signal stuff is fun. The whole game is ridiculously sick actually. Play in the browser. Or go to the homepage if you want to get crazy and find a mud client.

There also is a neat IF game, Savoir-Faire, that uses an interesting magic linking system. Mostly (all?) non-combat stuff. Game's IFDB page for more info.

[battlerager]

Arx Fatalis was this first person action rpg thing, and to cast spells you held down the magic button and drew runes you learned before into the air with your mouse. It was pretty fun 

[Desert Dog]

I'm not sure what you mean by unusual, but I've never seen a game quite like Magi

[Chaoseed]

I'm currently playing through Treasure of the Rudras, an old SNES RPG by Square that never saw stateside release (but there's an english fan translation).
...
B: Break existing spells apart into prefixes, suffixes, and roots. You learn early on that "LEF" is cure, and "IG" is fire. You might see a monster use "IGNATES", which is a multi-target fire spell, so a smart player might try "LEFNATES" and you get a multi-target cure spell.

That's pretty awesome.  Of course, Japanese usually uses kanji, which are characters that each have their own meanings.  (Put "origin" together with "sun" and you get "Japan", i.e., "Land of the Rising Sun", because they're farther east than China.)  SO, it could be that "LEF" and "NATES" were actually kanji.  (Or possibly not, I don't know much about the translation.)

But that DOES remind me of Kartia: Word of Fate for PlayStation.  You learned kanji and inscribed them on cards (or did you find cards inscribed with kanji? hmmm...).  Then you put the cards together in different combinations to make spells.  These spells actually meant stuff, like putting together "ice" and "river" to make "Glacier Attack".  (From reading the FAQs, it doesn't seem like the system was very deep, but it's still an interesting idea...)

By the way, I would be remiss if I didn't mention Homestuck.  See, Homestuck is a webcomic that sort of references and/or parodies certain computer games.  There's a system where the player can turn items into cards that have codes on them, and then use codes to create items.  Not only that, but they can perform bitwise operations to combine items into new ones.  Eventually the characters learn to totally hack stuff.  There's a LOT of material to inspire cool game mechanics here.

[alphasmart]

All the ones I was thinking of have been mentioned - Arx Fatalis, Magi, Golden Sun and Treasure of the Rudras.  And Chaoseed, actually I think there was a genius fan translator who basically made up his own system that worked conceptually the same way as the original, but obviously in English.  The fact that water spells are AQU as in aqua, and fire spells are IG like ignite, suggests that it was an anglicisation rather than a literal translation - in effect, the same thing official localisers would have done.  But was a monumental achievement, and a pretty awesome game at that.

I don't suppose the Merlin's Revenge series count do they?  I don't know how "unusual" it is, but it is very well executed and great fun.

Also, while the Final Fantasy series are about as far from "unusual" as you can get, they each have an interesting way of implementing magic, often with it being integral to the story.  Gotta count for something, right?

[Radix]

I was under the impression that the spell system in Rudras used the English alphabet in the original. Has anyone seen the unpatched game?