Near-Mage
Release date: May 27, 2025
Developers: Stuck In Attic
Publishers: Stuck In Attic
Genres: Adventure, Indie
Categories: Single-player, Steam Achievements, Full controller support, Steam Cloud, Family Sharing
Supported languages: English, German, Russian

Near-Mage is a narrative-heavy adventure game with a bit of role-playing DNA that aims to appeal to hardcore players of the genre and newcomers alike. Study spell crafting in the Transylvanian Institute for Magick as a Near-Mage; Experience a deep and engaging story that plays like an adventure game; Craft your own spell inventory, use it with different results in every play-through; Dozens of vampyres, pricolitch, moroi, strigoi, ghouls, shtima - your spells change their lives for better or worse; Hand-painted in glorious 4K and traditionally animated frame-by-frame; Dozens of itemized outfits and hairstyles to customize your main character; A game about Transylvania made by Transylvanians! You're Illy Vraja , a teenager at a crossroads in her life who gets invited to Transylvania by her mysterious Great-Aunt, Domnica, only to find out she comes from a long line of witches, and is entitled to enroll in the Transylvanian Institute for Magick! As a Near-Mage, you are entering a summer preparatory school, hoping to graduate into a full-fledged spell caster. You’ll take classes in different types of Magick and see how you can use your growing powers to affect the lives of those you come across . We are from Transylvania, Romania ourselves, so we’re doing a deep dive into its rich lore, legends and superstitions, heavily drawing on them in creating Near-Mage’s dark and colorful world. Travel freely between three main hubs: the real-life town of Sighișoara, the mythical town of Rakus, that lies beyond a Magickal veil and cannot be seen by most, and the Transylvanian Institute for Magick . Near-Mage will allow for a lot of freedom when approaching the situations you’ll encounter within the Transylvanian Institute for Magick and its surroundings. When it comes to spell-crafting, you can choose what type of classes you’re taking on a whim, or you can look up recipes in a spellbook and strategize your build. This build variety will in turn lead to different outcomes for some quest lines, affect certain NPCs’ fates, and result in high replayability. Maybe you’ve erased an NPC’s memory on your first play-through. What if you used a different spell on them this time around… or no spell at all? You’ll be able to play Near-Mage as a point and click, or you can control the character directly. Walk to your objectives, run at full speed, or even fly there! Make friends or enemies with fellow students, learn to be closer to your Magickal calling, and lift the veil off of ancient mysteries in Near-Mage! 

Press reviews: “Near-Mage is everything I want from a narrative point-and-click magic adventure” Highly Recommended – Vice “A near-perfect self-published masterpiece. Anyone who plays Near-Mage will forever stand in awe of what three people can accomplish while stuck in an attic.” Grade: A – JustAdventure “Near-Mage will enchant players with its beautifully vibrant locales and heartfelt tale of finding one’s place in the world.” 90/100 – Adventure Game Hotspot 

Notes: Near-Mage will contain mild swearing and some sexual innuendo, alcohol and tobacco consumption, cartoon violence, and rare representations of dead bodies.