The Sims: Makin' Magic

"Do you believe in magic?"

Makin' Magic is the last expansion of the best selling game of all time. Attempting to feed off of the craze that Harry Potter created, Maxis introduced an expansion in which your sims, too, can learn to do magic. There is no school for magic, and any non-magical sim can become a witch or a wizard. There are a plethora of spells and charms to practice, as well as several other new gameplay aspects.

The Sims: Unleashed introduced the idea of farming and growing vegetables. Makin' Magic expands upon that idea. With this expansion, you can grow elderberries and grapes. By using a special baking oven, and adding some honey, sugar, or baking mix, you can make honey nectar, cakes, pies, or freshly made bread. Take those carrots from Unleashed to spice up a dull cake and make it into a carrot cake, as well. And the elderberries and grapes can also be added to a nectar press to make wines.

After installation, entering any sims house to play will prompt a man to come by and deliver a box. Contained within is a magician's starter kit. You get a wand, toadstools, toad sweat, butter, 35 MagiCoins, a Hole in the Ground, an electronic spell book, and a spell maker. Possessing a wand means that a sim is magical, even if they never use it. Looking in the spell book tells you that an unknown spell requires the three ingredients that came in the box. Putting them into the spell charger yields the spell Toadification, which turns any non-magical sim into a toad. As is quite evident there are numerous spells that your sims can learn to create and perform.

Along with the spells in the book, there are also charms. In order to produce a charm you must purchase a special charm maker from Buy Mode. Once you have one and have added the proper ingredients, you will produce a large crystal like the ones that appear over the heads of sims. Charms and spells can both be used multiple times depending on how much you have developed your mechanical and cooking skills.

Kids tend to take after their parents, so it‘s only natural that they, too, should have the ability to become magical. They have their own special spell maker and their own spells. They need some of the same ingredients the adults need, but they are not allowed to interact with the vendors. As such, they need to find new ways to obtain those magical items. Toadstools can be gotten from the toadstool seat, and faerie dust must be gotten by playing with the Visions of Sugarplums toy.

If you hope to spells or charms, you're going to have to somehow procure the necessary ingredients. Ingredients can be bought in Magic Town, which can be accessed by calling a cab, or by jumping into the Hole in the Ground that came in the box. Simoleons are of no use at all here; the only acceptable currency is MagiCoins. There are a few ways to make MagiCoins. First, you can perform magic tricks. Going up to a stage, there are a couple different shows you can put on for the audience, such as the Mummy's Tomb in which you revive a mummy and make it dance. You will be paid differently depending on your skills. In my opinion, this is the best way to make MagiCoins, because you can perform many tricks successively, racking up 300 MagiCoins in a short time span.

Another money-maker is the ever popular duel. Head over to the dueling platform and select another sim to challenge. It is pretty much a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors, except with five different attacks. Each competitor is given four random attacks from a possible five and is pitted against the other in a battle of wit and magic. The attacks are as follows: Black Blizzard, Blue Tornado, Yellow Brimstone, Red Wave, and White Lightning. A complete shutout in the duel means complete victory and the maximum reward. Being hit once lowers the amount of money received. A draw will not get you anything. And a loss brings you no prize and the shame of having been beaten.

There are other ways to make MagiCoins as well, but they are so extremely unrewarding that they are not worthy of mentioning. There are three vendors that you can buy ingredients from. Vicki Vampiress, Apothecary Todd, and Mara the Faerie Queen all have shops set up throughout Magic Town. The prices of their wares vary depending on the rarity and/or usefulness. In addition to selling goods, these vendors are willing to make trades. They will offer to give you a rare ingredient if you agree to hand over an ingredient of your own that they are unable to acquire. Finally, the vendors may ask you to do a favor for them if you talk to them. Such favors include delivering an item to someone, locating someone who if in possession of something important, or eliminating clouds which put sims into a deep sleep.

If you have the Sims Unleashed, then you are familiar with the concept of sims having pets. Vicki Vampiress offers the opportunity to get a new kind of pet. She sells Dragon Nests for 49 MagiCoins. Well, these nests just happen to contain Dragon Eggs which eventually hatch into real live dragons. When you get the egg home, you can interact with it. You can cradle it, play music for it, and rotate it. When the dragon hatches, it will be one of three kinds. It may be purple, meaning that it was nurtured too much as an egg, and as such is now lazy. It could be red, meaning that it wasn't given much attention at all, and is prone to setting things on fire a little more often than is comfortable. Finally, it could be golden, which is the middle of the road kind of dragon. Not surly and very active. This happens when the egg is given the perfect amount of affection. If and when you get tired of having a monster for a pet, you can choose to set him free.

When you have amassed more MagiCoins than you know what to do with and you are tired of living with the “normal folk,” you can opt to move into one of the houses in Magic Town. These houses need to be paid for in both MagiCoins and simoleons. The homes really aren't conducive to housing a large family, so if you have one, expect to pump even more money into them to expand. The houses are charming in an eerie way, and each of them has a history that you can read about prior to purchasing.

When your sim casts a spell or a charm, he or she puts a sort of magic into the atmosphere. When the air becomes so laden with magic, it is concentrated in the form of a magical growth. Magical growths include pretty, magical flowers, ugly knotted tree stumps, climbable beanstalks, or ability crystals. These ability crystals are my favorite aspect of the entire game. There are several new social interactions which can be learned, as well as a few practical skills, such as Extinguish. The best, in my opinion, is the Teleport ability. This allows a sim to move from one end of a lot to another in an instant. He or she can move into restricted areas that no other sim can access. With a little bit of imagination, you can have an enormous amount of fun with this ability alone.

The Sims: Makin' Magic is without a doubt my favorite expansion out of all of them. It took a long time to come around, but the wait was worth it. This expansion is what keeps me coming back to The Sims for more. This is a wonderful conclusion to a great game, and it is what makes The Sims one of my all-time favorite games.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 04/06/07