Sort of Magic

The worst game of its genre I've played unfortunately. There are many small and big faults that compound and make it a frustrating and unsatisfying game experience. 1. You can not pick up an item that has been registered by the game as being in the correct spot. This is a small issue on its own but you will see how in concert with other issues it's so much worse. It makes most magic spells useless. When you need them the most you can’t use them because you need an item in your hands that you have already put in the right spot. 2. You can not properly organise the potions. They look different but the game does not differentiate them. Again, once you put them down you can't reorganise them. Worse, the amount of each potion is random. In the first level (if I’m remembering) there is a 4 x 6 space for 3 types of potions. There should be 8 of each but there isn’t. 3. The book colours.The worst issue in my opinion and I have no idea why this was done. This issue gets progressively worse each level. All aspects are randomised: colour, symbol, book sets, and shelf type. In my level 2 I had 2 shelves that had red books and all 3 had the same set of books too. I realised I was putting my books in the wrong spot despite being red, having the correct symbol, and the right title because they were sticking out. I didn’t notice that they had different piping, silver and white. It gets even worse. I could not pull the books out that were sticking out at odd angles because they were in the wrong spot because the game was simultaneously classifying them as correct and incorrect. You may think this is the end but oh no. In level 3 I had 3 green book types, same situation silver gold and white piping. I was putting my green and silver books on but had the same issue of some sticking out. And then I found duplicates. There was another bookshelf that was identical. I stopped playing. 4.Lighting and colour. On the surface it looks nicer than other games of its genre but these games have stark white lighting for a reason. The low light and sunset colours make it difficult to tell book colours apart and nearly impossible to tell silver and white piping apart. The colours all blend together and cause eye strain. No hope for you if you are colour blind. 5. Every level has the same items.The rooms get bigger and the only difference is there are more book duplicates to ruin your fun. 6. I can’t change keybinds and I don’t like E as the pick up and put down button. It made me put potions on the shelves where I didn't want them when I wasn’t even looking at it. I don't know how you can screw this up so badly. I know these games are transparently shovelware but come on. This is next level laziness and stupidity. I’m upset I ran over the refund time. Don’t make my mistake.

This is a no with a tentative possible yes - but I want to see how active the devs are about taking feedback from the community before jumping to get a refund - so I need the devs to try and hear me out. And like I've said with other games - if the devs take some time and start working on things to improve the game and show they are willing to listen to criticisms and realize they are meant to benefit and not hinder them, I will come back and complete the game in full and give an update to my review reflecting my playthrough. It's gonna sound like I'm nitpicking this game to make it sound like people shouldn't buy it, but these are honest criticisms, and I hope the devs will address these concerns. And let me make it clear that I would like to see this game succeed, otherwise I wouldn't take the time to write all this out. And I think a dev team has to put in the extra effort, especially when they're already charging $2+ more dollars than all the other games in this genre - when they do that, they have make sure your game sticks out and gives a reason to earn that extra money that the others aren't charging us for. Before I get into the cons that need addressed, I will say - visually, this is a very cute and charming game, and it seemed to be running well with no hickups on my computer. The art direction of this is a nice break from the others in this genre....and I've been playing *a lot* of these games. Which is why I'm going to be a bit more critical is bc I've seen a vast range of what can be accomplished and the why's and where's they often fail. My first and biggest gripe, and I've been coming down much harder on new games in this genre lately about this, is give us the option to rebind the keys. There is absolutely zero reason to not have this as an option for these games. When I see the time wasn't taken to add something so simple, it honestly just feels lazy. And I know I'm not the only one who feels this way having talk to others about it. I rebind all my sorting games to the same buttons and to keep me in the comfort zone, a flow state, of playing these games when going from one game to the next instead of trying to remember if it uses something different. (And I'll also add this advice is that I read reviews on these types of games all the time and one thing I see requested so often is the ability to use controller - so you might want to consider adding that as an accessibility feature.) I don't know if it was a fluke, but when I opened my game, all of the video qualities were preset to every possible worst setting. I had to go through and change every single one of them so that the game didn't look like a pixelated mess. Once fixed, the game actually looked adorable. But I've never once had a game do that before, so I don't know what was going on there. There's also no clue/objective to show you'll gain the ability to carry mixed items. That was something that almost made me want to quit because my first thought when I couldn't pick up two different items was "are you seriously going to make me run around with only one item bc it's the last one and there's nothing else to match it??", but I pushed through and lo and behold, you spontaneously gain the ability to pick up a variety of items instead of only like-items. I would suggest adding an objective to show that's going to be unlocked so that we don't feel like we're going to be tortured. I would also recommend rethinking the visual/placement of the big round bottles, you have the labels facing off to the side instead of towards the screen so you either have to drop them and walk around them to see their label or once again only read the description in the bottom corner of your screen. Not all players want to be stuck staring at the description box the whole time they are playing and putting stuff away. What we want to look at the adorable game and art style. A lot of people like me like to be able to see the items in their hands and figure out where they