Is Stardew Valley's wizard performing actual magic?

[leomellado]

A magic circle, 8 red spheres, 4 purple spheres. What kind of magic is he performing here? The shapes and colors may not be merely coincidental, but an actual evocation, I suppose (?) If so, what is he probably doing?

 

[solxyz]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this doesn't correspond to any traditional European-derived magic. This does come close to some Vajrayana mandalas that I'm familiar with (if the spheres can be taken to represent different spirit figures), but even in those cases, the outer blue spheres should be at the cardinal directions, not in the corners.

 

[leomellado]

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that this doesn't correspond to any traditional European-derived magic. This does come close to some Vajrayana mandalas that I'm familiar with (if the spheres can be taken to represent different spirit figures), but even in those cases, the outer blue spheres should be at the cardinal directions, not in the corners.

I suspect he employed some magical works to conceive this game, and the wizard might be a representation of that. The geometrical symbols inside the circle really give off some type of evocation. The cardinal directions you point out make sense, as they are often required in evocations also..