Magurele Mystery 2021: Review

Magurele Mystery is a first-person horror puzzle set in Magurele, Pizdeanu Forest, Romania ( a fictional place). Captain Burcea has been dispatched to investigate the Pitikok’s disappearance. But when a weird beast attacks, everything goes awry. For many years, the King defended the world against Virgu The Beast. He has fallen after many years, and humanity is now in grave peril. You’ve been sent to his palace to investigate the king’s absence, but you uncover sinister secrets, setting off your adventure. The goal is to track down the beast and save the world.

First and foremost, this game Magurele Mystery was created by a single man, who appears to be around 18 years old, as a joke/meme among his friends. Is it, however, playable as a game? Yes, but let’s see if you’re a good fit.

If you’re looking for an achievement, you can use some of the YouTube game-play videos to finish it in a few hours. There’s only one achievement (Bug) that’s easy to overlook because you have to go through the first portal you come across, the one close to the alien, multiple times.

If you enjoy puzzle games, Magurele Mystery will provide you with an above-average level of difficulty overall, as well as a few particularly difficult ones. We enjoy puzzle games as well, but when Magurele Mystery became difficult or frustrating, we looked out for solutions online. However, the game made us less and less interested in cheating and more interested in discovering mysteries. If you like horror (which we do), this game almost made us pee our pants a couple of times, so we’d say this aspect is quite nicely done.

If you’re looking for a compelling story, seek elsewhere. The Magurele Mystery is meant to be a mash-up of a fun/parody of the genre, the genuine genre, Romanian inside jokes, and weird unrelated things like aliens, monsters, foxes, and portals. It’s a little chaotic but in a nice way. Consider it a long-form meme with a hint of whimsy. The game is aware that it should not take itself too seriously, but it does so without sacrificing the horror atmosphere.

The game also depicts Magurele’s fate in an unduly positive light, but it was the over-the-top voice acting that truly caught our attention. The beast’s voice, Virgil’s, saps your slow lifeforce, and the voice performers really outdid themselves in this department, as we’ve never heard more impassioned voice acting in our lives. The voice actors were enthusiastic, but it all contributes to the game’s charm, particularly because the protagonist is such a sigma male. And we really like the Christmas portion, which is quite wholesome, and the house is fantastic; you should play Sims.

The graphics in the Magurele Mystery game are incredible; the developer truly outdid himself. Some models, such as the house in the first level and the futuristic city, are poorly defined, but the ones that matter, such as the beast’s shape and the pistol, are completely realistic. When it came to sound, all we could hear was our colleague screaming whenever a monster arrived, so we couldn’t hear anything else except the game’s iconic ending song, which is currently on our MP3 playlist.

Let’s talk about the negative aspects of the Magurele Mystery now. It’s not well optimized – the FPS fluctuates wildly – but that didn’t stop us from playing it. The controls aren’t immediately obvious; read the material carefully and practice key bindings while still in the first room. We got through a significant amount of the game without realizing the inventory items’ scroll wheel rotations. On doors and other items, we recommend using both the left and right mouse buttons.

Finally, this game has a Romanian voice actor (with English subtitles). The papers you come across will include an English translation if you press a key, however, the VHS cassettes are only in Romanian. We couldn’t stop laughing at one of these VHS tapes. Only if you’re a Romanian you will enjoy the humor. Hearing this unfamiliar language will, in the best-case scenario, add to the mystery and creepiness. Overall, a fantastic game; congratulations on taking the initiative and creating such a fantastic game. We’re looking forward to the sequel, Magurele Mystery 2: Virgil Won’t Chill.

Click here to check out our last review on Magnus Imago.