Sheppard's Video Game Pie - Mage Gauntlet

MAGE GAUNTLET
Platform: iOS
Publisher: Rocketcat Games

Mage Gauntlet is a tribute to the video games of yore, an action-RPG with 16-bit-style sprites and bippy chiptunes music. It's also an iOS game, available for both the iPod Touch and the iPhone, which is unusual because up until now I haven't reviewed any of those. (I played it on an iPod, for what it's worth.) It is, finally, excellent, or at least excellent by my metrics. Whether my existing metrics are applicable to mobile gaming in general is a topic for another venue. (Watch this space.)

Anyway.

Lexi is a girl allergic to magic in a stereotypical fantasy kingdom where magic is common and mages are… OK, I'll stop with the exposition. There's a spell-absorbing gauntlet and a quest and a lot of monsters. The only other comment I'll make here about the story is that Lexi is a great name for a protagonist in a game like this because it is both a legitimately cool name and one I don't think I've seen for a video game protagonist yet, and also sounds exactly like the sort of names game protagonists used to get in the 8- and 16-bit eras.

It plays like… I want to say Secret of Mana, but that's both inaccurate and probably overly obscure this far into The Future. It's a sprite-based overhead brawly thing, and everything is sort of cartoonishly stylized. That by itself is enough to appeal to my Super NES nostalgia, but it's also hugely cleverly designed.

The problem here is that a description of how the mechanics of the game work isn't going to do them justice, because the joy of the game is in the little things. You can only carry four spells, which you collect by smashing rare items throughout the environment infused with magic, but if you already have four spells, smashing a fifth item gives you the always-useful Shield spell. Same with collecting a health vial when you're at full health. As a result, the answer to "Should I smash that thing and continue on, or should I leave it there and come back to it later when I might need it more" is pretty much always smash it and move on.

There's almost always a haste spell at the end of side-paths, which at first confused me because it meant I'd always find them after fighting my way through a group of enemies, but then I realized the haste spells aren't there for fighting—they're there for running back to the main path more quickly. The dialogue is snappy, delivered in short exchanges, and the story is entertaining but simple and easy to keep straight. This really helps keep the game appealing in 15-minute bursts during bus rides. These are all things that go into a game designed by people who put serious thought into everything that might bring down the experience of playing it, and then take steps to counteract the negatives.

At every level the game shows the sort of polish you only find from talented and self-critical designers. I wish mainstream console titles sported this level of introspection. It's a nigh perfect translation of traditional gaming into a mobile paradigm; if you've got an Apple-branded omnigadget and you like video games, you need it.

_This review is based on a copy of _Mage Gauntlet_ purchased on the iTunes app store. Also, this review was composed entirely on an iPad, which I guess makes this the Steve Jobs memorial edition of Sheppard's Video Game Pie._

Previously - Dark Souls