Gamertell has published its weekly list of new and notable casual games.
This week’s best bet is Magical Diary (Windows, Mac, Linux).
Hardcore Gamer: The Humble Weekly sale starts a new week today, and with it comes a celebration of open source gaming. You can pay what you want for Magical Diary, NEO Scavenger (an early access game), Offspring Fling!, and Planet Stronghold. Paying $6 or more gets you Anodyne, Defender's Quest: Valley of the Forgotten, the critically-acclaimed Evoland, and Incredipede
"Just this weekend I found myself on Steam with money in my pocket and a skip in my step. As I trolloped and danced around looking for deals, a certain game caught my attention. This game, titled Magical Diary, promised me so many things. I could go to a magical high school where demons and werewolves all learned how to be magical beings. There I could focus on learning various arts that would make me a powerful sorcerer one day. I would also be given the opportunity to fall in love and find true romance in this magical world.
What the game neglected to mention was that while character customization existed, the capacity to maintain a Y chromosome was a luxury I would not be afforded. In other words, I was going to be experiencing this magical world as an angst laden 15 year old girl. What more, I was soon going to learn that the promise of finding true love was not optional."
Women might make up half the human race, but the games industry doesn’t often cater to them. Getting away from all the burly space-marines and vengeful greek demigods is Hanako Games, a small American indie outfit producing Japanese-style visual novels and adventures aimed squarely at a younger female audience. Magical Diary is the first of their games to get a release on Steam, immediately making it a more interesting mainstream proposition, but is it worth your time even if you don’t happen to be a teenage girl? Well, that’s a question and a half.
