9 /10 1 Votes9
Genre Visual novel Mode Single-player video game | 9/10 Initial release date 19 June 2011 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Similar Hanako games, Role-playing video games |
Magical diary part 1 horse hall
Magical Diary is a visual novel video game about a young freshman magical girl at a magical school. It was released on June 19, 2011 for Windows, macOS and Linux. It is a fantasy game with elements of romance. The game uses anime-style graphics and is written in English. It was developed and published by Hanako Games. The game was later released on Steam with some bonus content.
Contents

Magical diary trailer
Gameplay

As it is a visual novel, the player reads through the story and makes choices at crucial points to change the outcome, leading to different endings. The player can create a custom female student. The game also contains puzzles in which the player has to use spells to pass the exam. Every puzzle has multiple solutions.
Plot

A player controlled avatar has been invited to attend a magical school. Here the avatar can make new friends, learn dozens of spells, face exams in the school dungeons, run for class office, and try to find a date for the May Day Ball. There are many students at Iris Academy and they are all divided up into Magical Halls; for the girls there are the Horse Hall, the Butterfly Hall, and the Snake Hall. The boys are divided in the Wolf Hall, the Falcon Hall, and the Toad Hall.
Characters

Non-romance choices:
Reception
Magical Diary received positive reception. The game received 4 of 5 stars on Gamezebo with reviewer Cassandra Khaw writing: "A dating sim at heart, Magical Diary's anime-inspired visuals lend well to the atmosphere. [...] Charmingly indie, Magical Diary is definitely worth the purchase." Gamertell gave it a score of 87/100, opining it is "a great example of the recent assortment of games for girls inspired by the Princess Maker model and the possible trophies to earn provide even more incentive to keep replaying to discover as much as you can about Iris Academy and its characters." JayIsGames wrote about the game: "Despite a few hiccups and quibbles, Magical Diary: Horse Hall is probably the best visual novel/life simulation out there in its fantasy genre right now." Rock, Paper, Shotgun review stated: "As it is, almost all the replayability is on the story side, especially on the romance side, and even with a fast-forward button to skip scenes you’ve already seen, you’ll be wading through a lot of the same text as you poke around. That’s standard practice for this kind of game though, and Magical Diary is better about it than many imported Japanese ones I’ve seen [...]"