Mahouki Magic feels well done while having good amounts of synergy between the bullet hell gameplay and platforming storyline. The game has a lot of potential in becoming a good short and full release with enough polish.
Magical Girl Concept: The game features the main protag and two other side characters as magical girls but the side character's magical girl forms are only seen in the itch.io page banner. The design for the main protag, Mahouki feels authentic in her magical girl form and transformation cutscene.
Mechanics: The game's platforming mechanics feels sturdy with no bugs or issue and the movement controls in this section such as jump, interact, skip dialog, and speed up dialog are sufficient enough. The bullet hell section feels good with the rapid burst of bullets having a solid impact on the enemy character while the player character can flip her aim direction automatically, although only horizontally towards the enemy. On the other hand, the bullet hell movement controls could have been better since it feels a little limiting without diagonal movements while there is no continuous fire with the fire button being held down.
Visual: The art style is very well done with good color composition and consideration with the background. The characters are cute and their personality reflect clearly from their design. The animated character in the story and transformation section adds a ton of depth to the game experience and it very smooth from walking to jumping. The attention to detail should be highlighted since the shadows do react to the light source. The transformation cutscene must have taken a lot of effort to make and it was made right for a Magical Girl game. The background art is quite detailed for a pixel art game.
UI: The game doesn't have a main menu or any way to trigger an in-game menu. However the dialog box UI used is plain and simple along with the health bars for the player character and enemy. The yellow bar during the bullet hell segment isn't clearly explained anywhere so I do not know what it does.
Audio: The music is paired with the scenes really nicely and the track selection are all really catchy tunes. The sound effects are limited but are used appropriately in the bullet hell segment. There was a bug where the sound coming from the second enemy came out continuously and did not stop for me until it was defeated.
Theme: The game clearly fulfills the main theme for Magical Girl. The theme the developer picked is about Conservation of Energy. (Spoiler Alert! Start) I feel that the story is only thing that highlights the theme, in which the magical girl uses their life as a source of magic for their attacks without being informed of its consequences, however the theme isn't present in the game mechanics or gameplay at all (Spoiler Alert! End).
Challenge / Engagement: (Spoiler Alert! Start) The story is engaging and it drives the plot of the Magical Girl betraying their magical counterpart which I find compelling and fresh (Spoiler Alert! End). The bullet hell segment is easy to play with very forgiving death, which simply resets the level. The bullet pattern and timed sequences are well made and unique for each enemy. Only drawback is the difficulty in judging the hit box of the character and the bullet. I assumed the large bullets would be a full hit box but it seems some do pass through the character without injury. Another issue is that the character can't aim down/up so hovering above/below the enemy is a big disadvantage when movement space across the level is limited. The boss attack pattern do change up according to the health level which is a plus in any bullet hell genres. Overall the game difficulty is easy for new players to pickup on bullet hell.
Originality / Creativity: The platforming mechanics in the game is quite standard but the bullet hell has some thought put into it. For art and design, it is quite original and there is a good level of creativity put into the story line. The story is a little short and more could have been done about it since I really like the plot and how it flows.
Story: The story quality is good but I feel that the translation from Spanish to English may have muddle it a little. I'm sure in their native language, the dialog and story telling would be superb. It would have been great if the dialog were translated a little better. The story from the start was well written but the explanations about the magical girl powers at the last mid section felt a little off due to the language barrier. I played the game in English (not the developers native language) so my understanding about the story may not reflect the actual content the developers intend to convey.
Overall: The developer obviously knows how to make a decent game jam game with the limited time at hand. I think a lot of the content seem to have been cut out because the side characters both have Magical Girl forms as seen in the page banner while I notice the dialogs is a little rushed. Besides that, I would say the game is complete as a playable game jam however a good chunk of polish to the bullet hell segment, story content, adding save points, and main menu UI can make the game feel a lot fuller as a full game release. If possible the developer should invest some time in polishing up the game so this would become an excellent example of a short and sweet Magical Girl game.
Note: I notice the game requires DirectPlay which I refused to download and install. It seems that I am still able to play the game without this additional component