A LOOK AT "MAGIC INLAY"

Eons ago, before I was a Gamer™️, I was a very small child whose primary exposure to video games was a selection of ancient Windows games on the RealArcade client that I used to watch my mom play, and then inevitably picked up myself out of curiosity. I can't say for sure just how formative they specifically were, exactly, but they certainly were to enough of a degree that they've stuck with me ever since. So, it only felt right to break in my website's funny little article section by talking about one that has become sort of a white whale to me; while it's not difficult to find, it remains out-of-reach because it is unfortunately just fully incompatible with anything past Windows 7 (and trying to boot it anyway results in nasty fullscreen flickering that absolutely warrants an epilepsy warning—stay safe).

Magic Inlay is a 2003 game developed by Puzzle Lab, as a sequel to their first game Puzzle Inlay; it's a simple little game that presents you with a shape made up of a grid of smaller shapes, and sends pieces down a conveyor that you have to fit into the shape to fill it up with no gaps left. Magic Inlay somehow adds bosses to this formula: at the end of each level you're presented with yet more shapes to fill, but now there's also a mythical creature here who roars at you sometimes and shoots fireballs to destroy your pieces.

The game has three episodes, each of which has its own unique grid shape and set of pieces to go with it, along with a unique artstyle for its monsters. Two of them, Dragon Land and Fairy Isles, are nothing in particular to write home about; they are very much generic high fantasy art.

However. The second episode, Fantasy Valley, goes absolutely insane.

When I was young, I did not yet have the discerning eye for creature design to realize how goddamn surreal and original these monsters were. So imagine my surprise when I went into one of my occasional "hey those games were cool i should look for them again" kicks and was greeted by extremely cool design work that I couldn't properly appreciate before! The wonder!! And so here I am to go over each of these things, and showcase an obscure little piece of my childhood.

STRONG start here with an ant queen with a sort of snakelike body, which upon closer inspection definitely appears to be a plant of some kind. A calla lily, maybe combined with some kind of pitcher? I will admit I am hardly a botanist, but it definitely evokes some flavor of carnivorous species, especially with the big old bug head coming out of it. Except the bug and the flower do seem to be part of the same creature, given the absolutely bizarre collection of tubes that make up everything below her head instead of a proper thorax; what on earth is happening there??? In a sense, it almost feels like some sort of Resident Evil test tube thing covered in life support systems, but with an Alice-in-Wonderland whimsicality to it thanks to the floral influence and colorful spots.

The combination of the name with the almost indescribable design elements and lack of any lore whatsoever creates a super evocative image ripe for speculation. Is this the ants' equivalent to our Medusa, combining their species with something potentially dangerous to them? Is the weird pitcher tail analogous to the snake tail Regular Medusa is drawn with sometimes? Was this the most beautiful ant in the world, who was eternally cursed out of jealousy by Ant Athena?? Much to think about.

This guy was all over the place in the promo material and could definitely be seen as the game's "mascot" (or at least one of them), which is incredibly understandable because he is literally perfect in every way. I would have done the very same.

This guy's name tells you everything you need to know, but the little details are what really bring him together into something that feels iconic. He's all wrapped up in thick, rubbery-looking armor (leaves??) that form a sort of organic outfit, complete with buckles and a little cowl that the antennae are attached to (I want to say it reminds me of a lemon juice bottle, but in hindsight it may just be that the aesthetic association in my mind originates with this guy). Meanwhile, his head appears to be just a floating orb inside the hood with a big needle-nose that's split halfway through, with the point also just floating in front of him, and he's got big sad eyes that make him look a little spooked. He's only got four legs, implying he's probably very big, each of which ends in a simple flared base.

It's super hard to place what exactly the vibe this guy gives off is, but I kinda want to say it's somewhere along the lines of "obscure CGI cartoon about bugs for very little kids", or maybe "classic Pixar short character", but with an almost Dalí-esque touch of surrealism. This guy is so shaped. He is without flaw.

This guy is maybe the odd one out in feeling relatively normal at a glance, in terms of being "just a dinosaur", but even this has some real weird design elements thrown in. What's the deal with this layer of leathery skin covering its head and torso?? The way it covers the head makes it feel like a natural part of its body, but the perfect holes for its legs and tail make it look more like some kind of coat like for dogs, and the equally-perfect slit along its back for the (also very weird) spines to poke through feels super artificial as well. Is there, theoretically, a "peeled" version of this monster? What's so "eagley" about this guy, other than the beak and the fact that the closed eye looks like a baby bird's eye, I guess? How big is that gem supposed to be? Everywhere I look I find only more questions. The ambiguous distinction between "skin" and "clothing" (if you could call it that) almost reminds me of some of the best Silent Hill monsters, in a way.

Also it sounds like a cougar for some reason.

This thing is called a rhino and sounds like an elephant, but its head and feet really make it look more like some kind of tortoise or other such reptile, and the tail almost resembles the end of a segmented insect abdomen. It's hard to place this thing, taxonomically! It's just Animal(???)!

The other immediate thing you will notice about it is that it's covered in weird, long eyes at complete random. None of them match the eye on its actual face, implying that maybe these are fake eyespots? This guy's got a similar thing going on to eaglesaur's weird leathery flesh-coat, but in this case it makes more sense that it'd just be the regular old dermal armor real rhinos have. This plating has an almost papery-looking quality to it, it juts out in places to overlap the other plates, and there seems to be a pattern of sunken bumps along the side of it.

According to dictionary dot com, "keek" is a Scottish-English synonym for "peek", which explains a lot, actually.

This one's just a legendary Pokémon. You could tell me this thing's name is a typo and meant to be "painted deer", and I would believe you. It's very neat-looking and psychedelic! It's also definitely a horse and not a deer. Don't worry about it.

The artistic-looking patterning on this thing is super cool; the blue bits sometimes seem detached from the body and largely seem placed to evoke manmade additions, like a saddle and face armor, but it's impossible to tell whether or not they're just naturally built into the animal. I love the weird fleshy knobs that this thing's legs end in as they transition into weird spikes. The lack of ears combined with the row of spikes along the back of its head are just enough to make you question exactly what it is. Is this thing a vaguely horse-shaped reptile?? Or perhaps it's just a horse-shaped Thing, and quantifying it beyond that is a useless endeavor.

now i might be wrong but i'm pretty sure this isn't what a pangolin looks like.

I love this thing. This is probably the closest these get to being a surrealist art piece more than it is a creature design; at a glance it's nigh impossible to tell what the hell you're looking at, and it throws anatomical rules straight out the window. This is some sort of deranged, eyeless wyvern twisting its neck at an uncomfortable angle, like the posing in some sort of medieval painting. The size of its wings is completely asymmetrical, and it looks like one of them just stops early for no reason instead of fully replicating the pattern but smaller. It's dotted with weird, pointless shapes and folds, and its tail is covered in super ornately decorated armor. Why is this thing called a pangolin?? Is there some misconception that they're not real animals that this game is operating on?? Did they just decide it sounded cool and didn't care?

Whatever. It rules. I'm pretty sure this thing was my first exposure to the word "pangolin" and it probably poisoned my perception of what a pangolin is for a while as a kid. I guess I've never seen specifically a onetooth pangolin in real life, so for all I know this could be right on the money.

Again, not what this animal looks like. You're getting a little closer, though.

This guy is probably the least interesting of the bunch; it's mostly just some kind of angelic dog with weird monkey hands and feet. No, all of this guy's personality comes straight from its face, and in particular that weird little mouth it has. No nose, just some bizarre... lips? Some kind of bill like a duck? With its teeth only on the top row? I'm a big fan of the folds in its muzzle as the upper lip flares out. I don't know how to describe it, but it looks like the kind of mouth you'd see on a Jim Henson puppet, which is an automatic win in my book. You could put this guy in Dark Crystal and I'd be like "yeah".

The final boss is a suitably weird goblin! Instead of the usual humanoid body type you'd expect, this is some sort of bizarre elongated head with four strange, two-toed (hooved??) legs at its back and weird little feeler-arms, anatomically resembling some sort of horrid man-bug. Its face looks kind of like if you stretched a human face into a weird muzzled shape, and the tall nose pointing straight up forms an interesting silhouette along the bridge. The whole thing is draped in golden hair that really makes it look like a walking pile of hay more than anything, and it's got big old animal ears made out of the same stuff.

Regrettably, it does vaguely evoke... some sort of unfortunate caricature, though I doubt it was intentional; I suppose there are only so many ways to distort a human face in a deliberately offputting way before it starts resembling that sort of thing.

Ultimately, a solid selection of guys that I'm happy to spread the word about. Realistically, they're not QUITE as obscure as I make them out to be, given that this game was a consistent top-seller back on that old launcher, but at the same time I have also never seen anyone so much as mention RealArcade if I'm not actively seeking it out. Either way, I'm happy to give these guys what little spotlight I can.