# Magic Research — user reviews

> 61 indexed App Store user reviews of Magic Research by Matias Ezequiel Colotto, rated 4.70/5 from 188 ratings.

- Source: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/magic-research/id1671272877/reviews
- App overview in markdown: https://appshunter.io/ios/app/magic-research/id1671272877.md
- Rating breakdown: 5★ 167 · 4★ 9 · 3★ 3 · 2★ 3 · 1★ 6

## What do users think of Magic Research?

Overall sentiment: positive

**Pros**

- 👍 Great idle/incremental game
- 💡 Deep and complex systems
- 🚀 Well-paced progression
- 💰 Worth the price
- ✨ No ads or microtransactions
- 📚 Engaging story and lore
- 🎮 Active and idle play options
- 🔄 High replayability
- 🧑‍🏫 Automation systems (apprentices, researchers)
- 🗺️ In-game meta-information
- 🎯 Challenging boss fights
- 💯 Rewarding gameplay experience
- 🧑‍💻 Attentive developer
- 📱 Works well with VoiceOver

**Cons**

- 🐛 UI layout issues
- 🐌 Can be grindy
- 🔋 High battery consumption
- 🐛 Text running off page/scrolling issues
- 🐛 Wood resource bug
- 🐛 Stunned mechanic
- 🐛 Bosses running away
- 🐛 Spell balancing issues
- 🐛 Auto-battling can be mundane
- 📱 Phone gets very hot

**Commonly reported bugs**

- On new iPhones, switching away and back causes UI unresponsiveness
- Text running off the page, preventing interaction with buttons
- Wood resource counting backwards
- Becoming stunned for a full minute, unable to act
- Bosses running away from fights
- Exploration difficulty jump
- UI layout issues on iPad Pro (long scrolling panels, cut-off inventory views, difficult spell favorite scrolling, useless event panel)
- Text pages not scrolling, making discoveries unreadable

**Most requested features**

- Add background music
- Add Chinese language support
- Make monsters pixelated
- Adjustable times for apprentice auto-casting
- Display monstium collection counter during exploration
- Allow apprentices to auto-craft potions
- Make the game accessible to the blind
- Add a way to start further into dungeons
- Automate crafting
- Improve quality of crafted items (armor, weapons)
- Add a 'Magic Smithing' school
- Allow players to avoid or cure silence effects

## Newest reviews (13 of 61)

### 5/5 — Un super jeu

*2023-12-01*

J’ai adoré ce jeu, qui m’a accompagné pendant 15 jours. J’étais dévoré par l’envie d’essayer plusieurs écoles de magie, optimiser mes builds, progresser dans le jeu.

### 5/5 — Très bon jeu

*2023-11-27*

J’ai découvert le jeu grâce à Reddit /incremental-games. 
 50h dessus plus tard, je peux dire que le jeu m’a vraiment occupé l’esprit et rythmé ces 2 dernières semaines. 
Il y a une trame et un univers cohérents, juste assez pour permettre à la mécanique du jeu de s’installer doucement.
Le charme du jeu se dévoile à chaque fois qu’on découvre une nouvelle compétence, un nouveau bâtiment, ou bien une nouvelle approche pour progresser. 
Il n’y a pas de multiplicateurs x1billion comme dans certains jeux du genre. Ici on progresse organiquement au fur et à mesure de ses découvertes. Une pépite à mes yeux.

### 5/5 — Perfect

*2023-11-26*

The best couple dollars I’ve spent on the App Store. Really well thought out progression and resource management. I’m a long way from finishing but I definitely will!

### 5/5 — Awesome

*2023-11-09, version 1.14.1*

The only game I’ll go out of my way to review. Truly worth the cost, genuinely entertaining, respects its players enough to not be chock full of ads or microtransactions. Love it!

### 5/5 — Best Mobile Game

*2023-11-09*

An RPG with base-building, crafting, and an amazing number of storylines.
10/10, one of the only good mobile games.
Currently at 98% completion on main run.
But I have started other runs just to feel that early-game rush again, of course.

### 5/5 — Almost perfect imo

*2023-10-28, version 1.14.1*

The best pacing of any incremental game I’ve ever played, so far but I’m not done yet. As someone else said the auto battling is my only gripe but it’s still fun

### 5/5 — Absolutely must play

*2023-10-11*

Finally a proper incremental game. Good and satisfying progression, interesting story, engaging gameplay, no mtx. Good stuff! Thanks, dev!

### 5/5 — One of the best

*2023-10-02*

I’ve played nearly every idle game on the app store, and I can happily say that this is one of the best.  It lacks the fancy graphics that some other idle games have, but it makes up for it with gameplay and passion. 

There are a lot of interwoven mechanics and resource dependencies that make the game mentally stimulating to play.  The combat, while simple, can also be challenging and require real thought and attention to progress.   The random storylines were always fun to discover and left me excited to retire and try the other options.  

And the best part?  NO OBNOXIOUS ADS OR MONETIZATION!

This is one of the few idle games I felt empty after finishing because I was having so much fun progressing.  10/10

### 5/5 — Honestly the best iPhone I’ve played

*2023-07-05*

I’ve played 100’s of games and most hold my attention for a period of time before I realise what am I doing wasting my time mindlessly clicking buttons for no real purpose. This game was challenging, the progression was fast enough to hold my attention, and it made me driven to play more and more and more. The story was great! I just had to know what was going to happen next, I was hooked. I finally beat the game and it was rewarding! I felt a sense of accomplishment and pretty powerful to boot. Great game!! Honesty, please make more games like this one 🙏🏼 I’ll play it, I’ll buy it!

### 5/5 — Excellent

*2023-06-29, version 1.14.1*

Amazing minimalist idle game worth the price tag

### 5/5 — Best idle game on iOS

*2023-06-01*

Amazing game. Well balanced and keeps you thinking. “Retirement” is exciting because of all the options you can choose and paths that get unlocked. Finally beat it today after investing a ton of time. I hope DLC comes out or a sequel, because I would happily pay to play more.

### 5/5 — One thing

*2023-05-28*

Why monsters are not pixels?

### 5/5 — Idle game for people with short attention spans

*2023-05-05, version 1.12.1*

If you’re looking for your next Kittens Game, this is it.

## Most critical reviews (10 lowest-rated)

### 1/5 — Great Game, Poor Execution on iPad Pro

*2023-12-07*

First, the good: this is a great, deep, and detailed game. Have been playing for 2 weeks, retired once, and only just scratching the surface.

The bad: the UI layout is awful and really affects the gameplay, especially for a grind-type of game. Here’s a few examples:

1. The right hand side panel with “Magic Research” at the top contains the main options, sometimes the time speed up section, your resources, your experience, your stats, and your buffs - it’s super annoying to have constantly scroll up and down this long list to find what you need.

2. When in Exploration / Combat, the Items tab shows a cut-off view of the inventory with a huge blank space below, when it could clearly show all of the inventory.

3. In the Cast Spells panel, you can add spells to the top in Favorites. However, that panel can only be scrolled up and down when clicking on the “By Schools” section at the bottom. If the Favorites section becomes too large, it’s annoying to locate the small section of “By School” just to scroll the panel

4. The Event panel is largely useless and takes up way too much space that could be used by the other panels.

It’s a shame that such a great game engine is let down by a poor UI layout.

### 1/5 — Fun but some major buzzkills

*2023-04-13*

Fun game but a few things that make me want to completely stop playing are. At some point you can become stunned for a full minute. Unable to do anything in the game even craft. This has happened multiple times while fighting bosses which means an imminent death as you can’t cast a single spell.  Also a mechanic that I cannot imagine why is in this game is bosses can just run away from fights.  And fights that can take up too half an hour, 30 minutes into a fight and they have 20% of their health left and they can just flee.  A Ridiculous boss mechanic and a waste of my time.

### 2/5 — Not worth the money.

*2023-03-16, version 1.5.2*

The game got boring after less than an hour. Just repetitive content with irrelevant content to make you do more work than needed. I regret paying money for this as I won’t be playing it again.

### 4/5 — Great game, has bug

*2025-12-03*

On the new iPhone, when I switch away from the game and back, I can swipe menus but can't interact with any buttons. Makes playing a bit of a pain right now.

Love the game, one of the best idle game experiences on the market for any platform. The systems are complex but not overly so, the pacing is really well-done, and it's designed in such a way that you don't need to consult a guide which I love.

The apprentices system is a great way to give the player a way to automate the game, and the way it's designed means you're always building toward something (adding a new buff/boost, improving your resource collection, etc).

Researchers are a great way to passively improve less important or hard-to-train schools. Not having to actively train evocation on weak enemies each run, or constantly enable buffs to slowly train enchantment, makes it far easier to focus on the interesting parts of the game loop. 

I'm a sucker for games that provide an in-game mechanic for gaining meta-information. Spells to reveal quest requirements or game tips are very cool and provide an important avenue later game to progress without being tied to a wiki page.

### 4/5 — Decends to auto-battle

*2023-09-03, version 1.14.1*

Easy 5 star if they decreased the auto battling 10x. Im on my 5th retire and just dreading the monster essence grind. Got my $5 worth at least.

### 4/5 — if support Chinese ，it will be perfect idle game

*2023-08-14, version 1.14.1*

Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz  Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz  Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz Chinese plz

### 4/5 — I Love This Game But Have Two Problems

*2023-05-26*

I’m glad I bought the game.  Even with the two problems I’ve had it’s worth the money.  

The first one was mentioned by someone else, text running off the page so I had to quit the game and come back as I couldn’t get to the buttons.  I figured out that I had to lower the size of my text on the entire phone to fix this.  It’s a hassle but if I hold it very close then put the text back up when I finish playing I’m okay.

The second is that I’ve had to retire twice because my wood started counting back instead of forward so I couldn’t keep hold of any wood.  I’m still trying to figure out what triggers that, and if anything makes me stop playing it will be that.  It’s too bad because it’s a fun game otherwise.

**Developer response:** Hello, 

Thanks for the feedback!

Regarding the wood counting back, it is most likely being caused by Furnaces, which consume wood. To reduce this consumption, you can turn off the Furnaces by expanding them from the Campus screen.

If this doesn't solve the problem, I'm happy to provide more support - please reach out to magic.research.game@gmail.com. Thank you!

### 4/5 — Bugged text - update

*2023-05-06*

This game has a bug with long text pages. They don’t scroll so when you make a discovery often you can’t even read what it is. To progress, you have to close the app and reopen it because there’s no way to get to the button. You never get to read the text you missed. Update Edit: The developer said it was due to my increasing font size on my iphone. So I’m playing it now on ipad and it’s pretty fun. Adding another star to review.

### 4/5 — Wow

*2023-05-05*

Super addictive idler / optimisation game in the vein of the paper clip one. Takes everything to the next level. Pure skinner box dopamine injector. A++ would recommend, had to uninstall because it was taking over my life —— Update: moving down to 4 stars as the jump in exploration difficulty getting to new exploration levels is large. I feel like I’m bottlenecked and die too quickly - maybe I’m meant to be pumping conjuration research for better gear?
Update 2: everything got easier when I retired and prestige’d a character. I guess that’s how you’re meant to do it

### 4/5 — Cool game

*2023-03-01*

Honestly a phenomenal game, the idea is interesting and the meta progress is fun to unlock, however it’s very grindy. Offline progress is essentially zero, you obtain time pieces to speed up the game while your actively playing meaning you will never see progress when you open the app, fun game non the less!

## Most praised reviews (10 highest-rated)

### 5/5 — Perfect

*2025-09-13*

Excellent jeu, le 2 est encore mieux, vivement le 3.

### 5/5 — The Best Active Play Idle Game

*2025-07-11*

I just completed the main game (have not 100% it yet) and have spent over 56 hours actively playing. This game is an amazing incremental which holds your attention through. It requires active play, but gives you “time pieces” as you are idle, which allows you to speed up gameplay, or do time warps. This allows you to constantly feel like you are actively playing, while allowing you to speed through some grinding parts. Highly recommend the game, easily one of my top 3 mobile games ever. Now onto the second game!

### 5/5 — Finally a fun idle

*2025-03-30*

This is a really fun idle game. You can do both idle and active play, [active being faster than just idling] the actual boss fights are a challenge when you encounter them for the first time and you really have to take stock of your resources and see what items you can craft and spells/buffs to try and beat them. Give this game about an hour, if you like it after that. Buy the 2nd one because it’s more along the lines of a remaster rather than a 2nd game. Very fun stuff. NEED NUMBER 3 😄

### 5/5 — Great timesink

*2024-11-01*

Well priced, feels like something I’ll reset and come back to in a few years.

### 5/5 — First time 🥴

*2024-08-30, version 1.15.0*

Lowkey, my first time playing this kinda game. I’m addicted, I haven’t stopped playing it. At some points, I’m not even having fun but I’m still playing. This game changed me

### 5/5 — Fun, great replay value

*2024-08-18*

Smooth and streamlined from beginning to end. Couldn’t take it out my hands for weeks

### 5/5 — Me and my best friend beat the game!

*2024-03-27*

This game is insanely fun. Me and my friend played at home, work, in the bathroom… everywhere. Whenever you think you’re halting and there’s not much to do it opens up again and you get tons of stuff. So much fun how they have combat in addition to building your schools. 10/10 would recommend

### 5/5 — Great game

*2024-03-07, version 1.15.0*

Great game but I have come to a point where I need more stone to build another warehouse but until I build another warehouse I can’t hold more stone.

### 5/5 — 텍스트 게임이라니????

*2024-02-04*

어릴 때나 해봤던 텍스트 게임이길래 
후기가 없는데도 다운받아봤는데 재밌네요. 
파밍과 rpg 를 적당히 섞어놔서
어릴 때 했던 텍스트게임들에서 많이 발전된 느낌이에요. 어느정도 방치도 가능함
참고로 영어지문 꽤 많이 나오니까 영어 읽는거 힘드신 분들은 패스하세요.

### 5/5 — Perfect Game for me just one suggestion

*2024-01-02*

A Little Bit of Background Music, something relaxing, would be nice

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*Data collected daily from the US App Store and indexed by [AppsHunter](https://appshunter.io/). User reviews are verbatim App Store reviews. Ratings, prices and chart positions refresh continuously; this snapshot is from 2026-09-01.*