An invitation to takehata's Cards Goetia, trapped in forking paths known only to the old ones. Tread carefully and curate your arcana wisely. At the end lies no mere relief, but the cessation of a nightmare, precipitated by loss. Reality fragments into haze, distortion, and sepia dreams. We're almost beyond the realms of vaporwave or mere "aestheticccccc" here, travelers.
Majin and Sacrificial Girl mainly exists as an interactive art gallery for this baffling, Bosch-ian bestiary, having you fight deeper into the tunnels to meet more of them. Honestly, you could just admire the title screen and leave satisfied. Three funny-looking guys, a world of white noise here and beyond the dungeon walls, and the sense that you're entering a realm of boundless, incomprehensible fantasy. I love this part, and it's definitely what takehata's most proud to display. There's not a whole lot of worthwhile game beyond this point, though it's far from bad. But the execution's lacking in key areas, from generally buggy performance to multiple admissions of defeat in designing this deck-builder.
Others have started on this little freeware exercise's failings, but I'll lead with what it's best at: the audiovisual immersion. Past the potentially iconic opening scene, you'll find rich contrasts between a claustrophobic, Wizardry-esque stone maze and the abstract battle screens you jump into. Like better-known examples such as Signalis or World of Horror, Majin uses a heavy amount of dithering and other post-processing tricks to create this grainy, fragile world you crawl through. The lines of things wobble incessantly, the colors oscillate in and out of certainty, and the barebones user interface juxtaposes with how vividly animated these demons are. takehata chose a spare but fitting set of noveau orchestral pieces to accompany battles, and the brief bits of lore you get on each floor are enough to contextualize your adventure.
This also gets some points with me for being a very easy deck-builder in a sea of brutal challenges. Granted, that's because you can't ever die and can save anywhere at any time. The author wants you to meet every odd thing he's designed in this phantasmagorical zoo, so it makes sense that finding, managing, and using cards is as fast and painless to retry as it is. Battles often boil down to "is my RNG good or bad?", but rarely go too long to become dull or frustrating. The card selection itself is very typical for the fantasy-themed games in this genre, so set your expectations accordingly.
What I'd give for better pacing, though! You spend so much time on each floor not to get more cards or something else important, but to increase your health. Because takehata tied the groovy mushroom man's HP service to what currency you get in fights, you're pretty much fighting everything you see. I even found myself grinding for a few minutes before the final boss just to afford one last useful boost. This means seeing a lot of the same few enemies in a game that frankly has less of them than you'd hope. This means Majin fails at facilitating an effortless trip through takehata's creations, with a playable but minimally competent DRPG deck-builder taking up more of your time.
In key ways, this feels like a mid-1990s Mac/Windows 3.1 hybrid adventure gone wrong. I'd rather be hopping from screen to screen, toying with each setpiece and little puzzle knowing I'd get further invested with all these monsters and their uncanny, uncomfortable universe. Instead I'm stuck in a bog-standard labyrinth, using predictable genre mechanics that only artificially elongate my playthrough. And because the combat balance itself is more than a bit busted, I can't really appreciate that system on its own terms either.
So it's weird how this game defies aesthetic trends with its unique not-too-retro multimedia stylings, then rigidly conforms to a current indie trope-set which only hurts it. I'm not saying this could only work as an adventure without explicit fail-states, but that would be the quickest way for me to enjoy it more. It's annoying to juggle thoughts of "these entities are so baffling and intriguing" and "why couldn't the dungeons and combat be as imaginative?". So, while I can recommend this to anyone wanting a more modern take on the mid-'90s low-res, highly-abstract aesthetics that Haruhiko Shono and others mastered, that's about it.
Completed for the Backloggd Discord server’s Game of the Week club, Feb. 7 – Feb. 14, 2023
Majin and Sacrificial Girl mainly exists as an interactive art gallery for this baffling, Bosch-ian bestiary, having you fight deeper into the tunnels to meet more of them. Honestly, you could just admire the title screen and leave satisfied. Three funny-looking guys, a world of white noise here and beyond the dungeon walls, and the sense that you're entering a realm of boundless, incomprehensible fantasy. I love this part, and it's definitely what takehata's most proud to display. There's not a whole lot of worthwhile game beyond this point, though it's far from bad. But the execution's lacking in key areas, from generally buggy performance to multiple admissions of defeat in designing this deck-builder.
Others have started on this little freeware exercise's failings, but I'll lead with what it's best at: the audiovisual immersion. Past the potentially iconic opening scene, you'll find rich contrasts between a claustrophobic, Wizardry-esque stone maze and the abstract battle screens you jump into. Like better-known examples such as Signalis or World of Horror, Majin uses a heavy amount of dithering and other post-processing tricks to create this grainy, fragile world you crawl through. The lines of things wobble incessantly, the colors oscillate in and out of certainty, and the barebones user interface juxtaposes with how vividly animated these demons are. takehata chose a spare but fitting set of noveau orchestral pieces to accompany battles, and the brief bits of lore you get on each floor are enough to contextualize your adventure.
This also gets some points with me for being a very easy deck-builder in a sea of brutal challenges. Granted, that's because you can't ever die and can save anywhere at any time. The author wants you to meet every odd thing he's designed in this phantasmagorical zoo, so it makes sense that finding, managing, and using cards is as fast and painless to retry as it is. Battles often boil down to "is my RNG good or bad?", but rarely go too long to become dull or frustrating. The card selection itself is very typical for the fantasy-themed games in this genre, so set your expectations accordingly.
What I'd give for better pacing, though! You spend so much time on each floor not to get more cards or something else important, but to increase your health. Because takehata tied the groovy mushroom man's HP service to what currency you get in fights, you're pretty much fighting everything you see. I even found myself grinding for a few minutes before the final boss just to afford one last useful boost. This means seeing a lot of the same few enemies in a game that frankly has less of them than you'd hope. This means Majin fails at facilitating an effortless trip through takehata's creations, with a playable but minimally competent DRPG deck-builder taking up more of your time.
In key ways, this feels like a mid-1990s Mac/Windows 3.1 hybrid adventure gone wrong. I'd rather be hopping from screen to screen, toying with each setpiece and little puzzle knowing I'd get further invested with all these monsters and their uncanny, uncomfortable universe. Instead I'm stuck in a bog-standard labyrinth, using predictable genre mechanics that only artificially elongate my playthrough. And because the combat balance itself is more than a bit busted, I can't really appreciate that system on its own terms either.
So it's weird how this game defies aesthetic trends with its unique not-too-retro multimedia stylings, then rigidly conforms to a current indie trope-set which only hurts it. I'm not saying this could only work as an adventure without explicit fail-states, but that would be the quickest way for me to enjoy it more. It's annoying to juggle thoughts of "these entities are so baffling and intriguing" and "why couldn't the dungeons and combat be as imaginative?". So, while I can recommend this to anyone wanting a more modern take on the mid-'90s low-res, highly-abstract aesthetics that Haruhiko Shono and others mastered, that's about it.
Completed for the Backloggd Discord server’s Game of the Week club, Feb. 7 – Feb. 14, 2023