Magical artist is the third game I've played developed by Prudence Interactive, a Chinese developer that specializes in developing mobile accessible audiogames. When I went into this one, I had high hopes. As I said in my review of Call Of Fate, a lot had been improved from the first game they released. So I hoped that Magical Artist would be even better, as they applied everything they'd learned over multiple games to this new release.

Unfortunately, I was disappointed. That's not to say nothing was improved at all. Magical Artist doesn't require you to go through the screen reader instructions and do the audio test on every game launch. However...that's really the only improvement I can highlight. Sadly, even the accessibility suffered some regressions. The game no longer uses your default voice, instead always using Samantha. And if you change the voice speed, your changes are not saved between launches. So I'm afraid to say that one annoying thing has been swapped for another equally annoying thing.

As the game starts, it plays like some sort of cooking game. You're breaking eggs, flipping pancakes, and making food for your customers. It's a fun mechanic, if a bit too easy. Unfortunately, instead of building on that, this mechanic will never come up again. Suddenly you get accepted by a master, you pick a craft (cooking isn't an option), and you start getting lessons in your chosen craft. At this point, the game becomes what it really is, a resource management game. You'll be filling your warehouse, managing your employees, selling crafted goods, and so-on. In spite of the bait and switch, it's a fun idea!

However, it's completely ruined by the game's major flaws. As I dive into criticism, I need to state up front that a lot of the criticism aimed at this developer is xenophobia and racism from the western blind community. That makes it hard for the realistic issues to be either heard or addressed, as we're either lumped in with or drowned out by the bigots. I hope the fact that this is my second review of a Prudence Interactive game, and that I've played three different offerings from them, will serve to show that I really am sincere. But at the same time, I'll acknowledge openly that I'm a western man who grew up in western society, and almost certainly have internalized xenophobia and racism of my own.

The first flaw that has to be addressed is the translation. I realize that this sounds harsh, but Prudence Interactive either need to hire professional experts in app localization, or pivot to focusing primarily on the Chinese market. Games like Mist World did the former, creating professional sounding English voiceovers and high quality translations, while games like Dreamland did the latter. Either approach is fine; it's still possible for an English player to have some fun with dreamland using machine translations, by realizing this game isn't for us, and setting expectations appropriately. But the middle road that Prudence is on is entirely untenable. The way things stand, the tutorial calls most interface elements different names, with no relation to how they were actually translated. You can usually figure it out...until you can't. Now I'm on a quest where I'm completely stuck, because I can't find anything in the interface that even sounds similar to what the tutorial quest is telling me to do. This also applies to all of the documentation and help text in the game: it almost never translates the interface elements the same way they were actually translated in the interface itself. It also took me ages to figure out that there are two interface sections named "home building". The first section called "home building" lists the buildings in your town. The second section with an identical name is where you build new buildings in your town. I assume there was an inflection or conjugation in the Chinese text that was lost in translation, leading to both functions being called "home building". While the translation in Call of Fate wasn't particularly amazing, it was at least accurate and workable. In Magic Artist, however, Prudence is effectively marketing a game to English speakers that is unplayable to us, as the game is rampant with these kind of flaws. It was nice that they included a western character, but less nice that his/her pronouns switched multiple times, that she didn't have a western sounding name, and that his story arc was nearly incomprehensible. Something about challenging the main character to a fight, but she meant to request guidance and accidentally challenged them instead. I can only assume this hinges on another quirk of the Chinese language that isn't reflected in English.

If that was the only flaw, it would probably be possible for English speakers to exchange tips and advice, and eventually figure out what we're supposed to do to complete the tutorial quests. But it's not. The second is the bugs. At least on IOS, the app crashes every fifteen minutes or so. Sometimes when you claim a reward, it just doesn't work. Sometimes you have to complete goals two or three times. Sometimes the daily rewards tell you that you've already claimed them, when you haven't. Sometimes the interface becomes extremely laggy for no clear reason. Sometimes the gestures don't work the first time. Sometimes interface elements don't refresh when they should, giving you inaccurate information. In a resource management game, not knowing exactly how much of a particular item you have can be a massive problem!

The one thing I can say for Prudence Interactive is that they always have ideas that are ambitious, interesting, and could be a really good time. If only they'd finish them! Please, I'm begging you: stick to one big game a year, and take the time to get rid of the bugs. Spend the resources to localize it properly. You'll get much more return on your investment that way, instead of pushing out a half-baked game with an amazing idea every quarter. Call of Fate could be loads of fun if it was maintained and all of the promised features were released. If the flaws in Magic Artist got fixed, this could be hours of fun. Ranger Legend sounded amazing and had interesting mechanics, when it wasn't crashing. But you've got to stop teasing us with games that should be wonderful, if only they had been allowed to cook a little longer. Take the advice from your own characters in Magic Artist, and treat your games like the exquisitely polished works they deserve to be.