Mango Protocol reveals its next title Angie Magica, an ambitious 'Zeldalike' set in the studio's Psychotic Universe

In this house we have always admired the construction of universes in which several games are interconnected in a more or less clear way. Remedy has its own, but in this case we're more into the indie section and we'll talk about the prolific Psychotic Universe from Spanish studio Mango Protocol, which will soon see a new instalment with Angie Magica.

However, Angie Magica moves away from the side-scrolling, point and click adventure we've seen in the studio's previous games, and goes much, much further. It's a Zeldalike. Yes, just as it sounds, and we were able to chat about it with the studio's co-founder and creative director of the game, Mariona Valls, at the BCN Game Fest, in an interview that you can watch with subtitles below.

A 'Zeldalike' is a big word, and it's certainly a big draw for gamers, but there's a lot more to it than that. "We're making this game super-influenced by the Zelda franchise," Valls began, "but we like to call it an action adventure, a gourmet action adventure."

Gourmet refers, quite rightly, to the fact that in Angie Magica cooking is a central mechanic. "Cooking is very important. The place where your adventure takes place is the land of Penuria, and in Penuria you will gather a lot of ingredients, you will meet the people who live in Penuria, they are also gourmet people. They will share with you their recipes, and you can collect little stickers of the recipes, and yes, it's a fundamental part of the game."

But of course, to relate it to something like Zelda, there has to be some emphasis on exploration and a sense of adventure, for example, investigating dungeons like in A Link to the Past, and there's that in Angie Magic as well. You have to come to dungeon exploration on a full stomach, it seems. "It's very similar in that respect," Mariona Valls acknowledges. "You'll have this open section of the map, we'll open the map in different sections at the same time, there will be like three biomes that are very different from each other, and you'll have this free will to navigate the map and collect ingredients, do some side quests, get stronger to get to this final place where you're going to fight a boss, and there you'll get this magical power, because this is the story of a magical girl, and this magical girl will get different magical powers every time she faces a villain in a castle that's like a dungeon."

So where does Angie Magica fit into Mango Protocol's Psychotic Universe? If you're a veteran of the studio's recent games, such as Agatha Knife, Colossus Down, or Clem, you might have already guessed, but just in case, Mariona explains:

"The main character, Angie, is a villain that already exists in Colossus Down, so this is like the character arc, like the villain build of Angie's character, and how she became the villain that she became when you fight her in Colossus Down, We got, yeah, the community told us they love her, did a lot of fan art, so we thought it was a cool opportunity to explain to the community who she is, and how she gets to the place she gets to when you fight her in Colossus Down."

At the moment there is no confirmed release window for Angie Magica, but hopefully soon the studio will confirm if they can get a publisher to help them finish the project.