Alongside our world exists a hidden one inhabited by magical creatures. For most of the year, elves, merfolk, centaurs, Winged Ones, and other species have to remain hidden, trying their best to blend in and pass as human. But for one brief, shining moment, when everyone is in disguise, magical creatures can come out to play. This is Venice’s Carnival, and you, the best – and pretty much only – detective solving magic-related crimes, hope for a chance to finally take a break by attending Carnival with your elven friend Ymir. But, of course, crime never takes a holiday, and you soon find yourself caught up in a dastardly scheme to expose the magical community to the world once and for all.
Magic City Detective: Wings of Revenge is one of several entries in the Magic City Detective hidden object/puzzle series, developed by Do Games and published by Ocean Media. Like other games in the series, it began life as a smartphone title before making its way to PC and, eventually, Nintendo Switch. The Magic City Detective games star the titular nameless detective, who has to use their wits and gather evidence to solve crimes related to the magical world because the “normal” police and detectives can’t know said world exists.
When I learned that Wings of Revenge was a smartphone game ported to console, I’ll admit it – at first, I was wary. I’ve been burned in the past by ports like this, that do absolutely nothing to improve the game or make it more console-friendly in any way…or, in some cases, simply just aren’t very good games. But luckily, I can say this is not the case. Although it is slightly held back by its smartphone-game graphics, which desperately needed a larger update than they got, it is still a very solid puzzler/hidden-object game that offers a neat couple hours of fun.
Wings of Revenge shines in two ways. One, its gameplay is just varied enough that you never get tired of one particular element – the hidden object sections are decently spread out, and the mini-games are different enough from one another to feel fresh. Two, there are a lot of quality of life elements put into the game to make it less frustrating.
There’s an “easy mode” where parts of each scene that you can interact with are highlighted, preventing the game from simply turning into a pixel hunt. There is a robust hint system that suggests where to head next without simply giving away the solution. If you ever don’t feel like doing one of the hidden object sections, you have the option to earn the same rewards by playing a few rounds of Match 3 instead. And, if a mini-game ever is frustrating you too much, you can simply skip over it! I do think the last of these needs a little bit of tweaking, though – I would like to have had the option to get hints during the mini-game and then skip it if I’m still confused, rather than only being able to choose a full skip.
The story is nothing amazing, being a fairly basic mystery with the question of “who is causing chaos during Carnival?” The characters are interesting, though – Ymir gets put into “damsel in distress” situations a little too much for my liking, but the mask-seller is a fun ally (with a really cool design that I won’t spoil, as it’s a very fun reveal!) and the villain makes an interesting foil for Ymir, the protagonist, and most of the magical world. They’re arrogant and see themselves as “better” because of the benefits being a magical creature gave them, and are thus determined to reveal the hidden nature of the magical world at any cost. It made a nice parallel between the “masquerade” of the magical creatures having to pretend to be normal humans and the literal “masquerade” party going on in Venice throughout the game!
There are three different kinds of hidden collectibles in Magic City Detective, and I didn’t really love them or hate them. I think I would have been a lot more frustrated if there wasn’t an option to mark which locations still had collectibles in them, though, because some of them are very small and hard to notice. Another bit of frustration was that one collectible was “different types of masquerade masks,” which was annoying because some scenes took place in the middle of a mask-wearing crowd or, worse, in a mask shop, making it very hard to determine which masks were collectibles and which weren’t. I did, however, like the fact that each collectible came with some facts about it, allowing the player to learn more about types of masks worn during the real world Carnival and various magical creatures from around the world.
The biggest flaw of Wings of Revenge is, unfortunately, the transition to the Switch did not seem to come with all of the upgrades necessary to run on the Switch. The graphics were a bit fuzzy in places, very frustrating for a game which relies so heavily on examining detailed scenes. There were also several moments where the game lagged heavily during cutscenes or scene transitions, and it really felt like my poor Switch was overtaxed at points (although the game never crashed, and to be fair I do have a fairly old Switch.) Still, I think the game could have used a bit more tuning up when it comes to graphics and scene transitions to help it run more smoothly.
One important thing to note is that I did play the Collector’s Edition of Wings of Revenge, and I do highly recommend it over the vanilla alternative. It comes with the ability to redo mini-games and hidden object puzzles at will, which is very nice, especially if you chose to skip any of the hidden object puzzles to play Match 3 and want to give them another try later. There’s also some nice concept art and other extras, but the best part is that there is a fairly extensive bonus chapter that adds a good chunk of playtime and has some particularly fun puzzles. Plus, the cool mask salesman character comes back! I think the presence of the bonus chapter definitely makes getting the Collector’s Edition worth it.
Overall, Magic City Detective: Wings of Revenge is a fairly solid puzzle/hidden object game that stands out due to its colorful setting and quality of life additions that remove a lot of the frustrating elements games in this genre also have. It struggles a little bit on the Switch, and probably could have used a little bit more tuning up in the transition from mobile to console game, but this only affects the game’s performance at a few moments, and it lags rather than crashing or shutting down. I’ve never played any other Magic City Detective games, but I liked Wings of Revenge well enough that I could definitely see myself doing so in the future!
Kate played Magic City Detective: Wings of Revenge on the Nintendo Switch using a review code.
