I don't understand this game nor will I pretend to. It is supposed to be an artistic experience moreso than anything else. It looks and sounds harsh and you will immediately be overwhelmed by it... but in fact its really just a very linear experience, sort of like a psychedelic picture book.

Its honestly really gorgeous underneath its harsh visuals. The free camera movement elevates the experience and makes the world pop and come alive. The set pieces are seemingly thrown together without rhyme or reason- imagine if different blocks from all your favorite handheld rpgs were mishmashed together as if it were a Minecraft server. This is a unique aesthetic that I really like, though I will admit sometimes the color palettes utilized are quite ugly.

Games like this can be taxing, because it is a natural inclination to try to make things fit and "make sense." But Magic Wand doesn't make sense and to enjoy it, you need to try not to pigeonhole into the idea of a game it is fundamentally not. There's "combat," but its not an action game. There is a health bar, but its not an RPG. There is a capsule gacha, but its not a collectathon. These are just concepts the game uses to make the linear experience more fun and interactive. Once you advance from one screen to the next, you are usually unable to backtrack. This will go against your inclinations to try and make sense of what you have just experienced- everything will be screaming at you to get a second look, to understand. But you don't need to. You just need to experience what the game wants to show you and continue along. Talk to the NPCs and they will make no sense. The "plot" is as freeform as the setting. I think its honestly a game where you don't need to interact with things at all, but this certainly adds to the immersion. There are no puzzles to solve, no items to collect, nothing. You just move around and experience this world.

It is not without flaws. This is an experimental art project first and foremost, and as such, it does not enjoy the quality of life features we have so long associated with modern gaming. There are no options. The game is presented as is. This is the unfiltered artistic vision of the developer. Unfortunately, this can lead to some conflicts for the end user. There is no way to customize the experience to your own comfort. If something feels visually or audibly offputting, you must either power through or just turn the game off. Notably, there are times where very loud, harsh noise is looped ad nauseum. The only thing you can do about this is go to your computer's volume mixer and turn it down.

Going back to that term "unfiltered," that is the best way to describe what you're getting here. You are being held captive to someone else imagination and experiencing it as they want you to experience, on their terms. This is a powerful expression of aesthetic. It is a beautiful pastiche of color and sound. It may not push the art form itself in a meaningful way, but it demonstrates the value of how games can be "experiences" and that their is serious merit to games as artistic expression. And it has an amazing soundtrack.