Memories and thoughts on Mirror Magic, literally an essay's worth of writing

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RAP
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Joined: Sat Jun 19, 2004 6:44 pm

Memories and thoughts on Mirror Magic, literally an essay's worth of writing

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Introduction
Earlier this week, I decided to finally complete Mirror Magic, both Deflektor, and Mindbender, in order of playing. But before saying my thoughts on both of those games it was based on, I have some memories to share on this game:

Memories
Mirror Magic, it's the other game that Artsoft Entertainment, more specifically, Holger Schemel, has made. In the early or mid-2000s, some time after making Rocks'n'Diamonds work finally (a topic for another time), I decided to play this, mainly because "Why not?" and out of pure curiosity. The thing is, I was too dumb to figure out how to beat these levels beyond maybe the first level. I had to just enable the option to skip levels or be able to browse any level in the levelset. I had a lot more trouble beating Mindbender's levels compared to Deflektor; the latter I managed to beat quite a few more than the former. Had to call it quits at that point, but at least I had good memories with the music that was used in the game: memorable and enthralling, the music giving a magical otherworldly feeling.

Deciding to finally playing it properly
Past forward to today, Mirror Magic 3.0.0, was released on 2018 April, after for so, /so/ long, it's been updated to be more accessible today. I did checked it out a month or two after it was released, but I bounced off yet again, although it's more buggier interface-wise, but I don't think any of those bugs were mentioned in the forums even remotely since no one seems to have interest in the game, welp.

This time, because mainly to distract myself from other things in my life, I opened up Mirror Magic and decided to play Deflektor first, because it looked like it has less elements to deal with. What mainly helps it is being able to play it windowed and scale the window to something more comfortable for my eyes, and the solely needed recording tapes feature that Rock's'Diamonds has as proof that I beat those levels properly. Before talking about it and then Mindbender, there's one glaring thing about Mirror Magic that Rocks'n'Diamonds has in comparison: There hasn't been any further support such as more user created levels if at all. This was one of the main reasons I bounced off from the game in the first place, because there isn't any hands-on tutorial similar to how Rocks'n'Diamonds does it later in it's lifespan. Surely there has to be usermade levels existing out there beyond just the forums, I seriously can't believe there would be a video game that has a built-in level editor that absolutely has no additional usermade levels, that would ideally happen only to unreleased video games.

When playing both of these levelsets based on the original games, there were two things that were constant: The first thing is that expect a bunch of guess work and trial error on how you redirect your laser as you navigate it through the levels. Fortunately, most of the levels has more of a palatable kind of acceptance for me; not too much guess work, it's kinda like taking your time to unwrap a piece of candy for it to be consumed, but mainly because for the most part, you can brute force it by having to rotate the mirrors constantly until it points at the right direction. The second thing is having to wait for the heat to cool down if it hasn't reached to the game over part of the level that I have to restart, I can either just risk it and juggle the heat while trying to progress through the level, or just wait for the heat bar to cool down, though there's some levels you may have to completely cool down because of how they're designed.

Mirror Magic's Deflektor
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Took around 140 minutes to finish it from start to finish, 60 levels, which I finished on November 16.
  • The first 40 levels took 80 minutes.
  • And the rest of the 20 levels took 60 minutes.
There were less elements, thus I had a much easier time playing through the levelset, but there's one recurring type of level that gives that zinger of pain that I had to grudge through, levels where it involves using the red refractors, leaving it up to luck:

(((SPOILERS FOR DEFLEKTOR BEGIN)))
  • Level 6 seems innocous, but it's a hint of things to come because of the laser being repeatedly redirected every frame from that red refractor.
  • Level 14, another hint of randomness, you'll have to figure that you can hold the auto-rotating mirror to increase the chances of the refractor hitting the final required round cell piece.
  • Now, level 21, that's where the random cranks up the ante, as in even after hitting all the round cells, you'll still have to redirect to the exit order to finish the level, which for me, after 2 minutes, took 3 more minutes to finish that level, that's a whole 5 minutes. I would have to rely on two refractors to be able to finish the level. Twice the luck!
  • Level 22 continues that but you'll have to use the mirrors and rotate it when the laser would eventually randomly come into contact of them.
  • Level 26, more randomness, but at least it's more controllable randomly with manual mirrors to use.
  • Level 39, probably the most bearable after the initial hints before that pain back then.
  • Level 46, oof, 2 red refractors to get the last round cell piece, just waiting.
  • Level 51, oh no, another hill of pain, the same pain as level 21, although it isn't nearly as bad; to get to the exit, you need to angle the two mirrors in a way that's viable for the laser if by chance to through.
  • Level 60, last level, even though it's still luck based, the way it's laid out makes it feel that each cell being hit by the laser, there's progress rather than having the last one be long and drawn out.
(((SPOILERS FOR DEFLEKTOR END)))

Now, keep in mind, the ones I didn't mention in a negative light, I didn't really have anything worth to say, or rather, there's a set of levels where it has a certain layout of mainly mirrors and the needed round cells in a grid, but it just seems to be more or less the same stuff rearranged.

So, Deflektor from Mirror Magic is downed, not bad, not bad, just mainly a fair amount of levels being left up to luck. How difficult would Mindbender be compared to Deflektor?

Mirror Magic's Mindbender
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This one meanwhile took notably longer than Deflektor, 178 minutes, with 51 levels (level 0 counts as a level), finished it on November 19. To break it down:
  • Level 0-10 - 13.5 minutes.
  • Level 11-20 - 40.5 minutes.
  • Level 21-30 - 36 minutes.
  • Level 31-40 - 40 minutes.
  • Level 41-50 - 48 minutes.
This one doesn't have as many of those random refractor parts; I mean, it has it's own refractor but only redirects the laser one at a time. It has more elements to play with around and to keep in mind, but it has their own set of problem levels that's hard to categorize:

(((SPOILERS FOR MINDBENDER BEGIN)))
  • Level 17 stuck out more than a fair bit of the levels because it requires a bit more specific laser pointing at the latter part, it took more than a couple of times to beat this as this is the first time I lost the level.
  • Level 18 meanwhile, this is where having to decipher where you'll have your laser escape from the initial area is at their strong difficulty spike so far.
  • Level 19 on the other side gives another aspect of difficulty as it requires quicker reactions in which you'll have to kill the muncher that's trying to go through the amoeba and going to eat those required magic kettles. You have 7 seconds to be able to do it or else you'll have to retry it again.
  • Level 25 is sneaky! You think that you'll have to collect those keys when first seeing in the first area, but they're a trap, because it makes having the laser get to the next area impossible. The final area is cruel because you have a limited amount of keys to be able to reach to the exit with the laser, and what makes it agonizing is waiting for the blocks to be pushed away in order to access to the final area. This is trial and error in a bad way because of the amount of time being spent on doing retries if you make a wrong move.
  • Level 30, ugh, just ugh. Spend time having to untangle the two-way polarizers in order to have to deal with the 4 munchers circling around, with 2 required magic kettles exposed to them. If you laser at the wrong time, the munchers will just eat them...whoops, have to repeat it again...
  • Level 32, uhh, super horrible; you'll have to make sure that the munchers will eat up the amoeba to get access to the needed magic kettles by pointing at the ice walls they're trapped with the lasers, and also kill them with said lasers with quick reactions.
  • Level 35, now this is where it requires a lot of thinking, how to reach the exit after getting all the magic kettles. All I can say is I felt so smart figuring it on my own without checking the provided solution tapes.
  • Level 36 needs more thinking, although it may require a bit more unfortunate trial and error because the pushable blocks have to be pushed in a certain way, especially in a way that hasn't been done before that's required in this level.
  • Level 40, I don't necessarily hate the level, it's just notably more time consuming when it comes to figuring out in sequence, especially when releasing the munchers and making sure they don't eat the necessary magic kettles.
  • Level 43 meanwhile not only is it time consuming, it's also luck based in not only trying to collect all of the magic kettles but also making sure you don't accidentally release the munchers and let them consume those magic kettles the blue wizard needs. Note that in every level, all the mirrors that can be rotated is randomized, and in this instance, it makes it luck-based.
  • Level 47 is the last problematic level, it's also time consuming but less luck based, because there's a few rotatable mirrors, and it's surrounded by a lot of these fixed mirrors. Again, the randomized mirrors make it partially luck-based.
  • Level 49 is not bad at all, just time consuming on trying to melt through the ice walls.
(((SPOILERS FOR MINDBENDER END)))

Yeah, the different problem level types and more elements makes this take longer to do, but it's actually more memorable and relatively more enjoyable despite being 10 levels less than Deflektor yet packing more stuff to stew over mentally and physically. I really hated those levels that require quick reflexes, but I somehow still liked the levelset overall at the end, because at least it isn't the potentially time wasting luck-based levels from Deflektor.

Other things
The main thing I thought while playing these two levelsets based on the original games is how much did Mirror Magic capture. Back then in the early 2000s, there was no such thing as YouTube. So I legit assumed this was it, it's like the originals. Well, this is before across a small amount of YouTube videos of people playing Deflektor on the Amiga 500 and Mindbender on the MS-DOS. Speaking of MS-DOS, there's a link to be able to play Mindbender for the MS-DOS through an internet browser on the website MyAbandonware. Seeing this additional content, there's gameplay differences minor and major that didn't get emulated in Mirror Magic. When I saw that, I thought, "Oh." That means I just played a different version or interpretation of Deflektor and Mindbender and not necessarily the real deal. One of the major differences for both of those games is that it had to be played through only the keyboard, and not the mouse (as far as I know from watching those videos and playing a bit of the game from that MyAbandonware link), and this is important because having to navigate and rotate the mirrors is more difficult than using the mouse. The other major difference specific to Deflektor is enemies that move randomly, don't align to a grid, and can attach to mirrors to rotate them for a certain amount of time to annoy and distract the player from finishing the level in time. That might've explained why it took less time to finish Deflektor due to the lack of enemies. With these revelations, I may have to make a dedicated post trying to detail the minute differences here or in a dedicated topic on it's own.

The other thing was the level editor itself. Before I fully came back and finished both of those levelsets, I was confused on why the level editor seems to be more restrictive than how Rocks'n'Diamonds lays out the selectable objects you can choose. Coming back now, after fiddling around the level editor to see if there was something I was missing, it turns out you have to hold Shift (or any keyboard key equivalent of 'Shift' on Windows) and left click or right click on the object that's placed in the level to rotate it clockwise or counter-clockwise. But, why? The player characters, the blue wizard and the laser cannon have their orientations pre-rotated and having their own slots in the editor, and not the other objects? What? That's pretty unintuitive and that may explain why there wasn't any additional usermade levels made compared to the hundreds of usermade levels in Rocks'n'Diamonds. Sigh. Well, I would like to make more levels, but I have a conundrum with myself whether to make them despite those levels not emulating the original games' quirks or have it act as Mirror Magic levels, with combing two of the games' objects together. While I want to to make levels, I really would like to try playing the originals, because of a chance of making levels only in that style, since I got myself a lot more specialized in Emerald Mine playing-wise and making-wise, and straying further away from making and maybe playing Rocks'n'Diamonds levels.

Conclusion
Revisiting Mirror Magic has been a surreal and somber experience. I say "surreal" because I never antipicated touching it again and actually finshing it, within a week! It just came out of the blue, or more specifically, I was looking through a folder of the video games I want to play, and Mirror Magic was buried in there. I've been playing video games that people may see as casual, mainly match-3 games. This game was one of them as the folder was gradually shrinking with games I played and beaten.

Beaming at the other side, I say "somber" as well because unfortunately, there's just these 2 levelsets, no user created levels at all, most likely not even one levelset that isn't just those two, in the unintuitive's whole entire existence so far, sadly because of the level editor being more uninutitive than Rocks'n'Diamonds. It made me ponder what would've it like if there wasn't a design decision that happened like that...

Besides fixing that level editor problem, maybe it would help to have Mirror Magic grow to similar ideal proportions to Artsoft's other major game, perhaps maybe if there's similar laser and mirror puzzle video games out there to emulate or be based on, something that Rocks'n'Diamonds did, getting DX Boulderdash, and Diamond Caves 2's game elements. Or maybe have their own objects unique to Mirror Magic, that isn't found anywhere else, just like Rocks'n'Diamonds. Or alternatively, also take a page from Rocks'n'Diamonds to have custom elements up the wazoo of possibilities. However. considering it hasn't been updated constantly unlike Rocks'n'Diamonds, I'm not sure if there's going to be effort placed on that any time soon. This is one of the very few topics in a forum that's all about Rocks'n'Diamonds and the countless games based on Boulder Dash that's dominating over Mirror Magic pretty much virtually.

Mirror Magic gave me a fun varied time of manipulating the laser with mirrors with my computer mouse, whisking myself away from the usual match-3 games I've been playing lately, which also uses said computer mouse. Despite the experience being short, similar to playing a relatively medium-sized Adobe Flash video game played on the internet, it was a special one for me because of the circumstances and my personal feelings towards the game many years ago.
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