Video Game / Memoirs of Magic

"Once upon a time, there existed a magical world, where magic, monsters and many mystical and magical creatures existed..."

Embark onto a grand adventure in the World of Magic and save the realm from the new mysterious evil entity!

Memoirs of Magic is a freeware game developed by Strawberry Octopus Productions and released in 2019. This game combines FPS, action-adventure, RPG, and platforming... It's a unique experience, let's just say. It is a standalone total-conversion mod of Doom, taking inspiration from titles such as Hexen and The Legend of Zelda.

You play as one of the seven Heroes of Light sent to stop Dark Steiner from wreaking havoc across the Land of Magic, scouring the world for the five Elemental Heart keys in order to defeat him. True to its inspirations, the game is loaded with puzzles to crack, dungeons to crawl, and bosses with bizarre transformations — as well as, of course, strapping dragon men.

Yeah things get kinda weird.

Being a total-conversion mod, Memoirs of Magic is available for Windows and MacOS, and can be installed from itch.io. Note that the game is intended to be played in multiplayer as a cooperative experience, so be sure to grab a few friends. Attempt to complete it by yourself at your own risk; it's entirely possible, but might not be good for your blood pressure.

A couple of characters from this video game reappear in Kings Of Hell, made by the same developer.

Not to be confused with Memories of Magic.

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And so begins another chapter in the Tales of Tropes...

• 100% Completion: The Marble Museum is a visual version of this, and can be filled by completing a variety of goals such as buying every gun and tome upgrade, defeating every boss, completing all the arena challenges, and finding every Marble Golem.
• Air-Dashing: Baradus and William are both capable of doing this, though Baradus can use it to fly.
• Anachronism Stew: The game exists in a cartoony fantasy world that wouldn't be out of place in a 90's RPG... with space stations, Kill Sats, and a Las Vegas style town in the middle of a desert.
• Ascetic Aesthetic: Unlike its Dark counterpart, The Holy Ark of Helios is a very simple space station with nothing to do inside and no apparent sidequests anywhere. All you can do there is speak to the High Priestess and the Vega Brothers.
• Artwork and Game Graphics Segregation: The Heroes of Light all bear only passing resemblance to their official art, usually manifesting as having bigger eyes and more exaggerated proportions to make up for the limited sprite size. Lucien's shield is not solid gold in the final game, Zandro's body is white instead of the off-gold, Phazar's body doesn't have the purple legs, and William's face is aqua instead of light green.
• Boss Room: Almost every single boss is fought in a huge, circular room with minimal features except for those involved as part of a gimmick, usually required to defeat the boss or as part of their attacks.
• Boss Subtitles: Every boss gets a set of them except for the final boss.
  AUTOMATIC IDOL
  YIAN YUN
• Can't Hold His Liquor: All of the playable characters will get drunk from a single martini.
• Came Back Wrong: Dark Steiner was originally a simple earth mage, but was brought back as a golem attempting to defend himself from being turned to stone by Typhon. While it did work, it turned him into a devout slave to Typhon's will.
• Camera Screw: invoked Getting drunk off a martini causes the camera to sway and twist for a while.
• Casino Park: The Dark Citadel is filled to the brim with flashing neon lights and interactive slot machines.
• Collection Sidequest: Collecting marble and golden statues will allow you to turn them in at the Museum to view many character sprites and even models of bosses, in addition to getting massive amounts of gold.
• Color-Coded Elements: Earth is green, Fire is red, Water is blue, Wind is yellow, Dark is purple and Light is white and pink.
• Commonplace Rare: There is only one guaranteed Chicken Pie in the entire game, located in the Misty Forest. You can occasionally get an additional one from a present, but there are far better items to chase in those, not to mention better healing items.
• Contractual Boss Immunity: All bosses are immune to being frozen and the effects of Gravity Crush.
• Cooking Mechanics: Dropping food items besides Mandragoras near an open flame will cook them, making them restore more health. Leaving them there for too long will result in them being burned and restoring practically none. Lucien can recover burned food by blessing it with his cross.
• Character Level: Averted entirely, across the game. You instead collect gold from enemies and chests, which is then spent on gun, tome, and stat upgrades, rather than collecting experience points despite being an RPG^note except Leo, but he's rather unusual anyway. Not a single enemy or boss has a level associated with it.
• Character Portrait: Every playable character gets one in the HUD (including the elemental dragons), and every major NPC gets one for use in dialogue.
• Charged Attack: The Helios Communicator's standard firing mode is a charged star beam that can deal heavy damage on impact.
• Creative Closing Credits: The credits feature a bunch of additional art and reveal the names of every enemy in the game along with several major characters. The exact art you get depends on which sidequests you completed and who you completed the game as.
• Dash Attack: Baradus can charge into enemies once he gets his first lance upgrade. William can do something similar once his sword is fully upgraded.
• Deity of Human Origin: Dark Steiner's ultimate goal - his success frames the final boss battle.
• Developer's Foresight: Usually Lord Rifnaf, along with King and Queen Essay, are protected by forcefields that prevent you from killing them by any means. However, using the GZDoom console command "mdk"^note which deals a massive amount of damage to whatever character is in the player's crosshair, effectively being instant death reveals that they have complete death sprites - and killing Lord Rifnaf maxes out your infamy, as is expected.
  • If you somehow manage to go through one of the red walls while destroying the Dark Citadel or Holy Ark of Helios, you'll find that the doors to the Magnus and Mead Tavern and corresponding Boulevard Emporium are sealed off even though there's no way you'd otherwise get in there.
  • If you abuse console commands to force Leo to hold a gun, he will be incapable of firing it; if you hold any other weapon, you won't be able to swap back to the gun, effectively removing it from your inventory.
• Discard and Draw: Almost every Ring in the game puts this trope into play in some form, such as by massively increasing your movement speed in return for making you almost blind, or multiplying the damage you deal and receive.
• Dragons Are Divine: The various dragons in the game's setting are godly figures with incredible powers far exceeding the capabilities of anybody else.
• Draconic Humanoid: All six dragons in the game are these in various shapes and sizes.
• Dragon Hoard: Mal is fought atop one.
• Earn Your Bad Ending: Defeating Typhon unlocks a special stinger that implies he's going to try ending the world all over again, rendering your entire quest nearly moot.
• Eldritch Location: The Tower of Heaven is a series of bizarre battlefields that make up the final combat sequence, with rooms ranging from a field of flowers to a room surrounded by a miasma of warped, screaming faces.
• Elemental Speed:
  • The Fire tome gives you access to Haste, a spell that makes you run significantly faster.
  • Baradus, a character associated with Wind, is the absolute fastest character in the game when charging repeatedly, allowing him to trivialize many speed-oriented sections and reach certain secrets early.
• Elemental Powers: Earth, Fire, Water, Wind, Light, Dark. Each element has a corresponding hero, firearm, magic tome, dragon and town - except Light and Dark, which share the Pyramid of Balance as their dungeon.
• Emergency Weapon: Played with. For most of the playable cast, their LVL1 signature weapon is this, only being useful when they've run out of alchemy and magic to shoot with. However, as the weapons are upgraded, they gain additional powers and utilities that, in some cases, make them far superior to standard weaponry.
• Empty Room Until the Trap: Throughout the game as a setup for enemy ambushes and boss fights.
• Equipment Upgrade: Every gun, tome, and melee weapon has a level associated with it, starting at LV1 and going up to LV3. Each level adds additional functionality and usually upgrades previous functions to be more powerful, cheaper to cast, and more.
• Fackler Scale of FPS Realism: Firmly on the Classic FPS end, with fast movement, fantastical weaponry, and totally unrealistic firefights.
• Fetch Quest: Many throughout the game, usually rewarding you with some kind of useful trinket such as by collecting all the Mithril in the Forbidden Mine for a weapon upgrade and the diamond ring.
• Frictionless Ice: All over the place in the Arctic Mountain, culminating in a precise platforming section across patches of the stuff - and enemies are affected by it too. Good luck.
• Friendly Fireproof: Zig-Zagged. Many neutral or even friendly characters can be killed by the player, but certain plot-critical characters ^note such as King Essay and Loremaster Thesis will instead be shielded from any attacks. Except for the Dark Lord and High Priestess, who attempting to kill is required for certain characters to complete their weapon upgrades.
• From Nobody to Nightmare: Dark Steiner was once an earth mage that was turned to stone by Typhon as he was casting a spell to protect himself against that exact thing. However, the spell did work, it just turned him into a puppet, binding his soul to Typhon and forcing him to mindlessly carry out Typhon's destructive will, leading to the events of the game.
• Furry Confusion: King Baradus, an anthropomorphic bird, has a live parrot on his staff.
• Gatling Good: The Magnetic Minigun is a high-power chaingun that can lay waste to enemies in seconds, but is one of the most alchemy intensive guns in the game.
• Glass Cannon: Gremile and Zandro have impressive starting strength and intelligence and start with strong weapons, but will die in only two or three hits until they can start amassing upgrades.
• Godhood Seeker: Dark Steiner's prime motivation - as he cannot remember his creation or the acquisition of his incredible powers, he concludes that he must be a god, and seeks to become one to remake the world in his vision
• Good-Guy Bar: The Magnus and Mead Tavern, where any non-selected heroes hang out and a few quest givers reside.
• Heart Container: Defense upgrades instantly increase your maximum health upon use.
• Hitscan: Zig-Zagged. Many weapons fire physical projectiles, but the Magnetic Minigun's alternative fire is a hitscan alongside Gremile's standard handgun fire and the Dead Blow's magnum rounds.
• Hyperactive Metabolism: Food is your go-to low level healing item, and you can cook it if you're near an open flame which increases the amount of health it restores. Lucien can even bless it to recover more health prior to eating it.
• Hyperspace Arsenal: Over a dozen guns and magic tomes, along with all the random items you'll pick up on your quest can all be carried without breaking a sweat.
• I Fought the Law and the Law Won: If you decide to go on a killing spree, you'll be sorry to know that the law enforcement in the Land of Magic is much tougher than most enemies, will never drop gold, endlessly respawn, and deal massive amounts of damage. In addition, attacking them will only draw more to your location, to the point where you could never handle them all.
• Infallible Babble: The hints and random dialogue NPCs give are always accurate - even random musings will pertain to the solution to a puzzle. Knowing this fact is required to save Queen Honeydew.
• In-Game Banking Services: There's a bank in the City of Magic you can use to store money for later, which even has interest applied to it if Baradus is present. Putting 200,000 gold into the bank unlocks a secret room with some free stat upgrades and a statue to collect.
• In a Single Bound: Upgrading your Agility will raise your jump height to the point where you can jump atop a house and beyond. Using the Jump spell doubles your jump height on top of what you can already do.
• Insect Queen: Queen Honeydew is a queen bee that rules over the Tree Top Village alongside King Honeydew, who's a gender inversion of this trope.
• Interface Screw: Due to the nature of the status ailment, Poison can make it so that the HUD's pain flash never goes away until you cure it or die.
  • The Green Gorgon Ring renders you nearly blind until you take it back off in exchange for giving you incredible speed.
• Item Crafting: Gremile and Zandro can create alternative ammo and potions out of commonly dropped items, respectively. Note that while Gremile's alternative ammo can be purchased, Zandro can make potions that can't be obtained in any other way.
• Joke Item: The Bottomless Money Purse, a magic purse given to you for rescuing the Bee Queen. It drops a single coin every time you use it, which doesn't even recharge your summon meter.
  • Martinis and Cigars serve only to harm you, with the former causing a major camera screw and the latter dealing a bit of damage to yourself.
• Jousting Lance: Baradus wields one, tying into his theme of charging into enemies later on in the game.
• Jump Physics: You have a significant amount of control when jumping with almost full control of your velocity, not to mention that even at the lowest AGI level you can still jump over a human.
  • Kicking gives you a slight push forward and resets your falling velocity; if you kick repeatedly then you can almost fly.
• Kill Sat: The Helios Communicator's main firing mode is to call the Holy Ark of Helios to annihilate targets. If you choose to destroy the Ark, this firing mode will cease functioning and leave you with only the charged pistol fire.
• Light Is Not Good: The High Priestess has horrible plans for the world if she manages to overpower the forces of the Dark Lord that are never quite explained.
  • Typhon, the Father of All Monsters and the dragon corresponding to Light, nearly destroyed the world prior to the events of the game - and sets himself up to try again if you formed a pact with him.
• Luckily, My Shield Will Protect Me: Lucien gains a shield early on that can be used to block attacks in exchange for mana, and can upgrade it further to a reflector shield.
• Mage Marksman: Every member of the playable cast (Gremile and Zandro especially) barring Leo, who cannot use guns.
• Magic Potion: Available as a common consumable to restore health, magic, alchemy, and summon points. Zandro can make some potions exclusive to himself as well through item crafting.
• Mechanically Unusual Fighter: Leo, the Wolf monk, cannot use firearms and has a special melee combo system that lets him gain experience as he uses his abilities rather than requiring any specific quest to be completed. He is also the only character than can grind for stat upgrades like you would in a traditional RPG.
• Missing Secret: Are you looking for all the statues to complete your Marble Museum? Sorry to break it to you, but there are only 85 statues while the interface shows 86. That last podium will be empty forever.
• Model Museum: Turning in Marble and Gold Statues to the Marble Museum will gradually reveal a variety of character sprites and boss models used throughout the game - and you can view every character in both light and dark conditions, which is the only means of seeing various characters in the dark.
• Money Multiplier: The Diamond Ring doubles the money you pick up in exchange for you not gaining any summon points.
  • Inverted with the Clover and Dragon Rings, which halve your gold in return for giving you more item drops and more summon points, respectively.
• Mr. Fanservice: Take your pick from any one of the six elemental dragons, introduced with showy camera angles, frequent flexing and posing, and generally in skimpy outfits.
• Mutually Exclusive Power Ups: Lucien and Zandro cannot both receive their Level 3 signature weapons at once, due to the nature of how they are unlocked; you need to destroy the Dark Citadel or the Holy Ark of Helios respectively, then talk to the corresponding leader to get the upgrade, which renders the other permanently unattainable.
• My Name Is ???: Just outside of Misty Forest is an area with a massive tower extending far into the sky named "???".
• Non-Elemental: Balance-type weapons (specifically the character-exclusive weapons) don't correspond to any elemental power in and of themselves and are mostly reserved for emergencies.
• Not Completely Useless: The Invisibility spell - see Useless Useful Spell below. Zandro and Lucien both have a quest where they need to destroy a location in the game, but walking in will trigger an enemy rush that seals off the area's Boulevard Emporium, rendering them impossible to access and taking their exclusive upgrades with them. Casting Invisibility before entering allows them to sneak in to the Emporium and unlock it forever, allowing them to continue their quest as usual.
• Not Quite Flight: Baradus gains the ability to charge early on in the game, which can be used to repeatedly to rapidly fly through the air so long as he doesn't run out of mana.
• Our Dragons Are Different: A cast of fanservicey anthropomorphic elemental dragon gods are available as bonus bosses. They can even be summoned after you defeat them.
• Percent Damage Attack: Gravity Crush, the Dark Tome's primary fire, deals half a non-boss enemy's remaining health as damage.
• Permanently Missable Content: Many examples.
  • Did you destroy the Dark Citadel or Holy Ark of Helios without opening up the shops first? Congrats! Those shops are now gone forever and you'll no longer have any access to the Light or Dark weapons - and you'll lose the gold statue of Lucien and Zandro, respectively! You can get them by casting Invisibility before entering the areas and making it to the shop in time, but the game won't tell you anything about that.
    • Not to mention, destroying the Holy Ark of Helios will make the Helios Communicator nearly useless.
  • Killing a quest giver will lock you out of their quest rewards forever, even if you attain the corresponding quest item later.
  • Killing a shopkeeper will make their shop non-functional - sure, you can collect the items that were once in display cases, but that shop will never provide any more upgrades, nor will they be around to accept your Dragon Pacts. As such, killing them can lock you out of several gun and tome upgrades if you're careless.
• Purple Is Powerful: Dark weapons have purple icons (and in the case of the Dark Tome, coloring and spell icons) and have access to some of the most powerful attacks in the game. Zandro's main color is also purple, being the most advanced spell caster in the game.
• Racing Minigame: The Garden of Deception is an obstacle course interspersed with combat sections that must be completed as quickly as possible, racing against a ghost that will close off parts of the maze and kill you if you're not fast enough.
• Rare Candy: Status upgrades are actual items which are usually bought from the many shops in the world, but can also be found in a handful of places in the game's world.
• Real Men Wear Pink: Typhon wears a rather revealing purple outfit and boots not unlike a belly dancer, and has his nails painted as well.
• Recoil Boost: Various weapons will throw you backwards with certain firing modes, most notably with the Shatter Shotty's enhanced shells.
• Rewatch Bonus: If you went ahead and found Typhon in a previous run, you might notice that Dark Steiner - or at least his avatars - look suspiciously like puppets, with the same sickly cyan skin and glowing orange eyes as Typhon.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Typhon was sealed away far before the events of the game after a war that nearly destroyed the Land of Magic, though he can be released if the player finds and defeats him.
• Sleepy Enemy: Gargoyles will sleep upon spawning and won't wake until you either step near them or damage them. If attacked, they take to the skies and will fire counter-attack lasers while dodging any slow projectiles; often, it's easier to just snipe them.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Arctic Mountain, with stretches of frictionless ice and enemies that can chuck snowballs at you later on.
• Smoking Is Not Cool: Downplayed. Smoking a cigar will deal a small amount of poison damage to yourself with no useful effects.
• Sprite/Polygon Mix: Bosses and certain elements in the environment are rendered as 3D models, whereas almost every character remains a 2D sprite.
• Stats Dissonance: Your character's starting stats only mean something early on in the game - later, you'll have so much gold you'll be able to buy enough upgrades to totally negate any and all of their shortcomings, such as Zandro's miserable Defense, William's pitiful Strength, and Baradus' rock-bottom Intelligence.
  • Baradus' stats, description, and appearance would lead you to believe he's a bulky tank, but in practice he's one of the fastest, most capable characters in the entire game - he can even fly far faster than magic could ever carry him.
• The Stinger: There's a secret one if you formed a pact with Typhon, doubling as a secret bad ending.
• Summon Bigger Fish: All LV3 weapons (barring character-specific weaponry) can summon their corresponding elemental dragon, though this requires you to defeat that dragon first. For example, the Ice Tome and Shatter Shotty can both summon Mal.
• Taken for Granite: Dark Steiner's ultimate plan for the Land of Magic, and Typhon's preferred means of attack.
• The Gods Must Be Lazy: Despite the fact that Steiner has sealed them away, the godly dragons of the Land of Magic will do absolutely nothing to help you unless you're willing to cough up the gold in summon points to buy their assistance.
• Too Fast to Stop: There's no limit to how much you can upgrade your Agility, which can turn your character into an uncontrollable mess unless you have a way to slow down. Can be induced with Haste at mid-to-high Agility levels.
• Video Game Cruelty Potential: You're free to go murdering every NPC in sight including harmless civilians and not-so-harmless shopkeepers.
  • This can even result in Patricide if you kill King Baradus as Prince Baradus, complete with special dialogue for the exact occasion.
• Video Game Cruelty Punishment: Killing non-essential NPC characters isn't without consequences. Aside from gaining Infamy, it can lock you out of arena prizes, prevent you purchasing anything from shops, make you unable to turn in statues, and render certain sidequests permanently inaccessible.
• Useless Useful Spell: Gravity Crush fires a slow-moving orb that halves the remaining life of any non-boss enemies it touches. It costs a massive amount of MP to cast^note 50% of your max MP to start with, but it goes down to 12.5% and that amount scales with your Intelligence, meaning you'll never be able to cast it more than a few times. Worse yet, the orb is slow enough to only be able to reliably hit only hit Golems and Ropers, which can be dealt with more quickly using other guns and spells that cost far less and will probably get the job done quicker - even in earlier stages.
  • Miyotis gives you access to a potent Life Drain status effect in exchange for dealing heavy damage to you over the course of said effect^note  25% of your max HP per second to start. - even out of combat. If you kill all the enemies around you before the effect has finished, you'll have to burn through Health potions to stay alive until then. Moreover, if you can't deal enough damage over the course of the effect, you'll die. Even so, it's likely that you'll end up taking more damage than if you just used items in the first place, rendering it pointless.
• Useless Useful Stealth: The Invisibility spell prevents you from attracting the attention of enemies, but enemies that are already attacking you will keep doing so, and enemies will still spawn even if it's on. There's also no warning when it's about to run out, not to mention its effects will immediately stop if you try to fire a gun or cast a spell (including itself).
  • The Auto Arrow's primary fire is silent and doesn't aggro enemies (even when you shoot them), but there are almost no situations where this is applicable and it can't be mixed with the spell above for the reasons stated.
• Walking Spoiler: Knowing about the existence of Typhon, the Father of All Monsters explains a lot about Dark Steiner, his motives, and his obsession with turning the world to marble.
• The Wandering You: The Land of Magic is enormous and can take several minutes to walk across, usually peppering you with random encounters along the way. This is mitigated somewhat as you unlock more sections of the Boulevard Family Emporium, but comes back into play in the Twilight Sands where you'll often need to cross through many rooms to get where you need to be.
• Wanted Meter: Killing civilians and allied characters will rapidly raise your Infamy, attracting Knights and eventually Battle Bikes if your antics continue.
• Warp Zone: The Boulevard Family Emporium allows you to quickly travel between the seven kingdoms as soon as you find the shop located in each one.
• Warrior Prince: Prince Baradus is one of these, being one of the Heroes of Light.
• What the Hell, Player?: King and Queen Honeydew have special dialogue if you, for some reason, decide to kill one of them. King Baradus has some too, provided you're playing as Prince Baradus.
  • Prior to the final confrontation, if you previously defeated Typhon and formed a pact with him, Steiner will call you out on releasing somebody so evil to assist you.
  • He'll also call you out if you killed a bunch of civilians.
• Who Forgot The Lights?: Using the Green Gorgon Ring makes the entire game world exceptionally dark until you take it off, in exchange for giving you blistering speed.

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