In this classic feature, Ed Ricketts beats the dust off Magic Carpet and takes it for a spin.
We’re digging into the PC Gamer archives to publish pieces from years gone by. This article was originally published in PC Gamer issue 206, November 2009.
Combining designer Peter Molyneux’s twin obsessions of the time—collecting mana and deformable landscapes—Magic Carpet is almost like a simplified, first-person 3D version of Populous without the pesky man-management. And with a great deal more fireballs.
Each world/level/set of islands of the 50 featured has a set level of mana, the idea being to collect enough to « restore » that world (for tedious plot reasons). This is why you happen to be floating about on your Axminster dispatching monsters with spells. At first you have only two, a pathetic fireball and a Possession spell. Do-in a monster with fireballs and it breaks up into a jumble of golden mana balls that bounce around the landscape. That’s where the Possession spell comes in: shooting the golden balls turns them silver and claims them for your own.
Other magicians also flit about on carpets, have the same spells as you, and aren’t averse to nicking some of your mana. So you need to protect it, and you do this by collecting another spell that builds castles out of the earth itself. Your PortaCastle comes with its own hot air balloons, which search out your claimed mana globules and take them back, safe from harm. The more mana you collect, the stronger your castle can be, and thus better protected from the other magicians who try to attack it.
MC isn’t about the flying. Controlling your carpet is a simple matter of left, right, forward and back, with mouse tilt for up and down, and since you can never crash (or land, for that matter), it takes only a few minutes to get comfortable with it. Spell collection, too, isn’t hard—they just lie about on the ground.
No, MC is about the strategy, and the action. The basic concept is beautifully simple, but as the game progresses, you need to use the increasingly sophisticated spells to full advantage.
