Shop management games have become a popular niche in the cozy and relaxing game genres, with dozens of memorable titles that offer a range of deep and engaging narratives, as well as detailed and fun simulations. It’s easy to lose tens of hours in these games, and there’s enough variety of subjects and themes for them to appeal to most players.
Magic Inn, developed and published by Purpledoor Studios, is a shop management game with a touch of magic and fantasy, released in Early Access. We play as a wizard looking for a new life, becoming an innkeeper, and running the inn with the help of various spells and magical enchantments.
A game’s UI and accessibility are often one of those features that seem invisible once done right, and it’s hard to appreciate them. But in contrast, a bad UI design jumps out at you from the first moment you interact with the game. Unfortunately, Magic Inn‘s UI design, tutorial, controls, and accessibility are noticeable from the very beginning, and not in a good way. The UI does not fit the visual design of the game, the hints and tips are unintuitive, navigating the menus is complicated, and interacting with the world and the animations feels janky. In addition, a few major bugs that I encountered in the days before the Early Access release left a very bad first impression. But there were a few updates leading up to the release that fixed the bugs I had encountered. I decided to give Magic Inn another chance, and started to discover a charming and enjoyable game beneath the unpolished facade.
The game starts with a simple character creation. There are a few customization options, nothing too deep, but it fits the game’s aesthetics. Then we are introduced to some of the main characters in the game. Samuel, the owner of the Inn that hired us as the new innkeeper, and Luka, a young chef working at the inn. There are a handful of unique NPCs in the game that have their own quests and stories, but most of the characters are general customers, some with items and recipes that we can buy from them. There is an overall questline and story, and currently, we can play the game and complete the first act of the story, but from a narrative standpoint, Magic Inn still has a long way to go.
The gameplay is where I found my groove and started to enjoy my time with Magic Inn. There are a few minigames for cooking, cleaning, and bartending. We can buy new equipment and furniture, or craft our own. The minigames are fun, but optional; you can turn them off in the settings, which is a nice option for longer playthroughs where you are over the simple minigames. But these are the basics of managing the inn, serving the customers, and cleaning the tables. Once we progress through the game, we can hire more staff to help us in running the inn, so by the mid-game, we can allocate most of the responsibilities to our staff and just focus on socializing with the customers and NPCs and improving the inn in other ways.
Social interactions in Magic Inn are handled through a simple card game. We use our confidence as a resource, and can play different cards to increase a character’s relationship. We can also use confidence to ask satisfied customers to become regulars at the inn. This is an important gameplay element, as the customers often have ingredients and materials to sell, and having a regular customer that supplies the necessary ingredients for the inn will mean we won’t have to visit the market as often.
There are a few spots open on the map that we can visit in the portion available in Early Access, but the scale of the world map would suggest there are other areas planned for the future. We can visit the market before or after the inn is open for business, we can meet new people and invite them to the inn, and we can purchase a variety of different items from the rotating stalls or the main trader, Ed. We can also post advertisements or hire staff from the newspaper stand. There isn’t a lot to do outside the inn in the game’s current state, but there is groundwork for more content to be added.
A contradictory aspect of the Magic Inn is the magic itself. After our first day, we are visited by a wizard who gives us a wand so we can use our magic to help around the inn. Most of the abilities we have are spells to clean the tables, send the dishes to the customers, or teleport to other locations from the fireplace. The first few abilities are things that hopefully we will allocate to staff and don’t have to do anymore, and teleportation does not have any significant uses, at least in the game’s current state. Magic is a core to the identity of the game and its narrative, but its implementation in the gameplay is underwhelming to say the least.
In the end, despite all the shortcomings and the general lack of polish, I was really hooked by Magic Inn, and I was sad when I finished the first act and saw the message notifying me that the content for the rest of the game is not ready yet. The game still has a long way to go, but I will look forward to further updates and its full release. If you are a fan of the genre, like Magic Inn‘s vibes, and are willing to look past the jankiness of its Early Access state, it can give you about 10 hours of fun and engaging gameplay. But I think a better option for the general audience would be to wait for a more polished version down the line.
Nima reviewed Magic Inn on PC in Early Access with a provided review copy.
