Magic Touch: Wizard for Hire

Magic Touch: Wizard for Hire is an endless game set in the Magic Touch series and released on February 25 2015 for iOS and Android and February 26 for Amazon App Store. The game was first announced on January 1st 2015 and was set to be Nitrome's next released mobile game. The game is free and available on iOS, Android, and the Amazon App Store. The player plays as a wizard who has to protect a castle from oncoming enemies descending on balloons.

Unlike the flash version the game is based on, this mobile version has new backgrounds and new spells.

Gameplay
Magic Touch retains the gameplay its predecessor, the player playing a wizard who has to prevent knights descending via balloons from landing on the castle by drawing the symbol pictured on each balloon to pop it.

When a symbol is drawn all balloons on screen that have that symbol will pop, and when a knight is out of balloons it will fall to the ground and die. A dead knight will add an extra point to the player's score and also yield some coins. Popping multiple balloons with one drawn symbol that causes multiple knights to die will cause a combo, which will grant extra coins.

If a single knight lands on the castle the player loses. With accumulated coins the player can purchase spells and backgrounds. Three types of interactive objects will occasionally appear in game: bubbles containing a spell that can be instantly activated, treasure chests that move horizontally across the screen and grant coins once multiple symbols are drawn, and potions that drift downwards and give an unlocked spell when multiple symbols are drawn.

Free coins
The player can obtain one thousand free coins almost at any time by selecting the one thousand coins option on the in app purchases page. Once this is selected, the player is presented with three ways of obtaining them: watching a video ad, downloading another game, or sharing Magic Touch Wizard for Hire.

When "Watch a video ad" is selected the player is shown a video ad and then given one thousand coins. This method can be used an infinite amount of time, although it cannot be used again right after being used and only becomes usable after a short amount of time. On Android, after viewing the ad the player may have to press their device's back button to get the coins.

For "Get a game", selecting this option takes the player to their respective App Store's shop page for Platform Panic, and upon downloading the game and playing once returning to Magic Touch Wizard for Hire will grant them 1000 coins.

Previews

 * January 1, 2015 - The game was announced and a preview image shared.
 * January 30, 2015 - A vine of the game was shared
 * February 17, 2015 - A trailer of the game was uploaded
 * February 20, 2015 - A vine of the game was shared
 * February 21, 2015 - AppSpy does a preview of the game
 * February 23, 2015 - A vine of the game was shared

Cameos

 * Gunbrick related characters appear in the Gunbrick background (pictured below), these character being the Gunbrick, a cat in a Kitty Cat Brick, and a bird.

Development
Development of Magic Touch Wizard for Hire started during the development of Icebreaker: A Viking Voyage which was developed from December 2011 to June 2013. During this time Magic Touch Wizard for Hire was being programmed by Arthur Guibert and the game was meant to be a premium title, however, Nitrome lost faith in the game working under that model and Guibert was relocated over to working on Icebreaker A Viking Voyage. Magic Touch Wizard for Hire was put on hold at some point and not returned to for a very long time, until 2014 at the time when Nitrome was testing out free games with ads.

When Magic Touch Wizard for Hire was being worked on it was not made in Unity (like Nitrome's other free mobile games), and it was due to this the game would not be available on Nitrome's website. However, because Nitrome would prefer to have all their free games on their site Magic Touch Wizard for Hire may be added to the Nitrome website at a future date.

The shape recognition part of Magic Touch mobile is different from the one used in the browser Magic Touch and is also more accurate at recognizing shapes. The music used in Magic Touch was reused for Magic Touch Wizard for Hire because Nitrome enjoyed the original music a lot.

Promotions
A banner of Magic Touch Wizard for Hire appeared on the front page of the games category of the Apple App Store, along with appearing in the "Best New Games" section.

Purple balloon
The purple balloon that appears similar to a DNA helix or an 8 with two diagonal lines at the top corners was removed from the game although graphics for it still exist. This balloon appeared in the original Magic Touch and was one of the few balloons that required a lot of ink to draw.

Under /assets/atlas on balloons_atlas.png is the balloon's symbol on a purple balloon, and under /assets/atlas on magictouch.png is the image of how the balloon would appear on the symbol part of treasure chests.

Despite the balloon's removal from the game, the gesture for the symbol was not removed and can still be input in-game, where it will be recognized as pertaining to a purple balloon.

Question mark balloon
Under /assets/atlas on balloons_atlas.png is an unused balloon with a question mark on it and a checkered tan and dark brown design. It is unknown what this balloon would have been used for, considering that the symbol in question cannot even be drawn

< symbol
Drawing < will cause it to be recognized by the game and flash white, even though the symbol does not correspond to any balloon or spell game. Subsequently, while lines in the game flash to correspond to the colour associated with that balloon/spell, white is not used for any of the and is unused.

Trivia

 * Magic Touch was accidentally leaked two days early due to a glitch on Nitrome's website which caused their search function to find unreleased blog posts.