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Murder.
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GAMES The Magister
The Magister Review
Posted: 4 months ago.
Author: @GrowingUpGamers, @GeekDadGamer and Jo Robertson.
Overview
The Magister is a roleplaying adventure where you play a detective sent to investigate the murder of a fellow Magister. You explore the point-and-click adventure to find clues, follow leads and befriend villagers. But then there's a card game to uncover their secrets before confronting the suspects and sending in your report. It's unusual because you can approach the investigation in different ways: rely on your wits and keen eye, utilize stealth and charm, be tough and intimidating, or come up with your own combination of tactics.
Play consists of exploring the area to examine clues and interview people. To solve the case you need to find someone with a motive, means, and opportunity to have committed the crime. You can keep track of the web of information on your visual investigation board and your journal.
Obtaining the information you need often requires “tactical diplomacy” encounters, which are battles where you play cards to gain empathy and convince the other person to cooperate before they get fed up and refuse to negotiate further. When diplomacy doesn't work (or isn’t an option) "combat battles" are fought with a different set of cards.
There's also a real-time element to play, so that time passes as you move around and some people or places are only available at certain times of the day (or night). This is accentuated by the many distractions on your quest that can eat up time. Other murders to puzzle out, cults to investigate, people to please, locks to pick. Everywhere you turn there is someone or something interesting to investigate or spend your money on. However you only have 14 days to solve the murder of the Magister, so managing your time, money, and relationships is one of the fun challenges of the game.
The result is a unique point-and-click style adventure with unusual card-battle-and-diplomacy interactions. There's a real tensions because of the limited time and the difficulty of getting the information you need from the people you meet. With a new procedurally generated story each time you start again, no two murder mysteries are the same.
Play consists of exploring the area to examine clues and interview people. To solve the case you need to find someone with a motive, means, and opportunity to have committed the crime. You can keep track of the web of information on your visual investigation board and your journal.
Obtaining the information you need often requires “tactical diplomacy” encounters, which are battles where you play cards to gain empathy and convince the other person to cooperate before they get fed up and refuse to negotiate further. When diplomacy doesn't work (or isn’t an option) "combat battles" are fought with a different set of cards.
There's also a real-time element to play, so that time passes as you move around and some people or places are only available at certain times of the day (or night). This is accentuated by the many distractions on your quest that can eat up time. Other murders to puzzle out, cults to investigate, people to please, locks to pick. Everywhere you turn there is someone or something interesting to investigate or spend your money on. However you only have 14 days to solve the murder of the Magister, so managing your time, money, and relationships is one of the fun challenges of the game.
The result is a unique point-and-click style adventure with unusual card-battle-and-diplomacy interactions. There's a real tensions because of the limited time and the difficulty of getting the information you need from the people you meet. With a new procedurally generated story each time you start again, no two murder mysteries are the same.
Game Details
Content Rating: PEGI 12
Release Date: 16/06/2020, updated in 2021
Price: 50% off
Platforms: PC and Switch
Genres: Narrative, Point-and-Click, Puzzle and Role-Play
Accessibility: 27 features
Lists
View our choice of games like The Magister. This game is good if you want to:
Duration
Play Time: This game will take between 5 hours and 12 hours to complete. Play time for each mystery varies widely because they are procedurally generated. It will also depend on how many side quests you pursue, how soon your find the clues you need to confront the suspects, and when you decide you have enough evidence to end the investigation.
Play Style
You can play with 0 players in the same room, but you can’t play it online.
You can play this game in the following styles:
Age Ratings
Costs
The Magister usually costs £13.49.
Does not offer in-game purchases, 'loot boxes' or 'battle/season passes'.
The Magister
Does not offer in-game purchases, 'loot boxes' or 'battle/season passes'.
Accessibility
Our The Magister Accessibility Report documents 27 accessibility features:
You can adjust the speed at which combat actions play out so it is easier to track what is happening. Combat has the appearance of happening in real-time since the card's have times associated with them (such as "1 sec, 2 sec"), and passing your turn costs your a number of seconds, but it is actually a just an abstracted way to measure actions against the opponent.
You can see when it will be your turn again by looking at the turn timer, and how playing cards will affect that. If you stop doing anything, once the opponent has caught up to where you are at in time, the game will wait for you yo take your next action before moving forward again.
Some missions are time critical and can not be repeated, but you have the option for how to spend your days and the world map always shows you the current time of day and what locations you can travel, which helps reduce the cognitive load.
The is no controller map in combat or tactical diplomacy modes, and no ability to remap buttons for keyboard or controllers.
You can adjust the speed at which combat actions play out so it is easier to track what is happening. Combat has the appearance of happening in real-time since the card's have times associated with them (such as "1 sec, 2 sec"), and passing your turn costs your a number of seconds, but it is actually a just an abstracted way to measure actions against the opponent.
You can see when it will be your turn again by looking at the turn timer, and how playing cards will affect that. If you stop doing anything, once the opponent has caught up to where you are at in time, the game will wait for you yo take your next action before moving forward again.
Some missions are time critical and can not be repeated, but you have the option for how to spend your days and the world map always shows you the current time of day and what locations you can travel, which helps reduce the cognitive load.
The is no controller map in combat or tactical diplomacy modes, and no ability to remap buttons for keyboard or controllers.
Video Games Like The Magister
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Board Games Like The Magister
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