Format: Online Flash Game
Price: Free
Release Date: August 2011
Target Age Group: unspecified
Publisher: Jayisgames.com
Genre: point-and-click adventure
What kids are learning: The Book of Living Magic lets players explore an imaginative fantasy world filled with allegory, storytelling, and myth. There's no educational content that directly connects with the people or events in the real world, but the stories and the missions which players must complete to finish the game generally encourages seeing the world through multiple perspectives and empathizing with others. What The Book of Living Magic lacks in gritty realism and shiny graphics, it makes up for in heart.
Overview
The Book of Living Magic is a short, but charming point-and-click adventure which, while not overtly educational, nonetheless conveys a message about the power of stories and of history to give direction to our lives and to shape our world. Developed by Jonas and Verena Kyratzes, it is a game set in a world of fantasy, but is very clearly an allegory for our own world. The game is illustrated by colorful and childlike graphics, albeit somewhat inconsistent in their quality and appeal. While the game themes are G-rated, stories and puzzles are text-driven, and many of the games jokes and references will likely fly over the heads of younger players.
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The minimalist graphics of the land of the Dull drives home the bleakness of Raven Locks's world. |
Gameplay
Gameplay is point-and-click at its simplest: the mouse is the player's sole means of interacting with the game environment, and clicking on certain objects and characters in the game triggers descriptions or dialog menus respectively. The dialog interface for conversing with characters a bit clunky, as clicking on a conversation topic did not immediately trigger the dialog. Rather, players must follow the selection by clicking the "talk" button to initiate conversation. It was easy enough to figure out, but seemed one step more than was necessary in such a simple game. Where the game shines, however, is in the number of objects in the environment that the players can observe, and the charming and often clever descriptions given about those things. Exploration of the details of each lushly marker-colored scene is clearly encouraged.
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Puzzles aren't overly obscure or difficult to solve, but those who get the game's many clever references will likely experience a pleasant sense of gaming nostalgia. |
Most puzzles require multiple steps to complete or involve interacting with several characters, however, the game provides enough clues that players should rarely feel stuck or overly frustrated. There's also a notebook that players can select which keeps track of the tasks that players need to perform, but I never found myself needing to consult it. Instead, the game does a good job of encouraging players to talk to characters and pay attention to their stories in order to solve puzzles. In cases where players or locations need to be revisited to solve a puzzle, navigation in the Land of Dreams is easy and direct enough that such backtracking never seems burdensome. The game doesn't try to artificially lengthen the overall play time at the expense of the player's patience or sanity.
Educational Content
The game is not intended to be overtly educational in the sense that there is no attempt to teach any specific facts or subject matter. And while there are many references and allusions to real-world people, texts, and classic video games in The Book of Living Magic, the setting of the story is pure fantasy. But it works well as allegory, and makes the game fit easily into a category of educational game that I recently discussed, which I like to describe as mindful gaming. In the case of The Book of Living Magic, the emphasis isn't on factual content, but in advocating a way of thinking. In this case, the main ideas seem to be fostering empathy, encouraging players to listen to the stories of others, and to consider both sides of every story.
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Stories range from the silly and playful to the touchingly bittersweet. |
The primary way in which the game encourages players to listen to stories is most obviously in the quest/puzzle solving portion of the game. Players must talk to characters about various different topics, sometimes more than once, in order to trigger a quest or find the solution to a puzzle. In the course of doing so, they learn about the character's backgrounds and find some to have pasts that are complicated and bittersweet. On the surface, this doesn't sound different from most adventure games: well-designed games always contain some in-game clues as to how a puzzle can be solved. However, in this game, puzzle are usually more than arbitrary obstacles, and solving the puzzles isn't an end in itself. There are no points to be earned or achievements to unlock by solving puzzles, rather, the reward of puzzle solving is to advance the story and to hear the stories of the characters in the world. Moreover, by listening to the stories, Raven Locks's understanding of the world changes, as not everything is as it appears in the Land of Dreams.
For the savvy player, the game is also satisfyingly packed with a humor that lovingly references classic video games like Zork and Zelda, as well as making some slightly more highbrow allusions. Players find books on Dr. McShellfish's shelves with titles that should make scientists and academics alike chuckle, like "The Voyage of the Darwin, by Peter S. Beagle," and "Curing Lacanian Brain Damage (Sokal, Briemont, et al.)," and a philosophical monkey who likes to extol the virtues of Dutch philosophers like Koerbagh and Spinoza. Understanding such references isn't necessary to finish the game, but they can be great conversation starters if young players work through the story with a parent or graduate student. There is a certain sense of satisfaction to be had in getting these in-jokes, and they perform admirably as subtle reminders of just how deeply connected the Land of Dreams is to our own world.
Conclusion
Over the past ten years, adventure games have been denigrated and declared dead and buried numerous times. For all the criticism that have been hurled at adventure games, I found the The Book of Living Magic to breathe new life into the potential of the genre. They game plays out like an interactive fairy-tale, and while the gameplay mechanics won't win any awards for innovation, the emphasis on child-like wonder at the world is definitely complemented by the art style and the soundtrack, even if the graphics an interface seem a bit rough-hewn at times. The Book of Living Magic is also refreshing in how it eschews the use of obscure riddles and extreme lateral thinking in order to complete the game. The satisfaction of playing the game doesn't come from figuring out puzzles that require extreme leaps in logic or an overly intricate sequence of triggering events. Rather, the satisfaction comes from revealing the next layer of the story, whether it's the story of a demon's change of heart or a misunderstood lobster scientist.
The final message of the game may come off as a bit saccharine for some player's tastes, but it is a fairy-tale-like ending that suits this fairy-tale like game well. I was happy to forgive a bit of romanticization in the game's numerous gestures toward the importance of history, philosophy, and of seeking knowledge and understanding from the world, from others, and from ourselves. These are values that I think most of us hold dear, but which rarely serve as the central message of a video game. Overall, I found The Book of Living Magic to certainly be worth the short but satisfying 20 or 30 minutes that it takes to play.
Pros: An endearing story, simple gameplay mechanics and puzzle solving, a unique game that subtly expounds on value of creativity, compassion, and scholarly inquiry
Cons: Graphics are somewhat inconsistent in quality, game is short, little replay value
Score: B+
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