BioShock devs' The Magic Circle fights the user
Taking a page from media like ReBoot, The Matrix and Tron, an ex-Irrational developer's next game will take place inside of the game he's developing. In The Magic Circle by Question Games, players take control of a hero inside of an unfinished game, fighting the (fictional) developers who have failed to complete the game in the two decades they've been working on it. Whoa.
The game inside of The Magic Circle is also called The Magic Circle, and is, in the fictional history created by Question Games, a remake of an '80s text adventure game, which is also called The Magic Circle. Quick, someone get Leonardo DiCaprio in here to make sense of this rabbit hole.
Since the fictional game is unfinished, players will be able to debug and alter the world to make it behave how they want. An enemy's AI could be reprogrammed to recognize the player as its friend, and others of its kind as enemies, turning it into a valuable ally. Or you could try to program in a bridge to help you cross a gap in the environment. The power is in your digital hands.
"Players are constantly talking about how they, personally, would make a game better," designer Jordan Thomas told Eurogamer. "I enjoyed the idea of harnessing that impulse, asking you to solve puzzles by authoring solutions from a big palette of options instead of merely uncovering the designer's intent. So while your solution to a given challenge may be rough-edged as hell and lack the machined, clockwork feel of other puzzle games, you feel like it's your own. The hope is that you're having enough fun that you don't realize you're coming up with your own rules."
[Image: Question Games]
