Which brings us to another novel thing in the game – splitting the party. It's possible to have some characters exploring a dungeon, while one character is making money in a city in another part of the world and yet another character is memorising spells at an inn in a different town. Usually you'll want all you characters present in dungeons, though, but when exploring a city, it can be a good idea to have one character (preferably one with high Charisma) do the exploring, while others make money, rest, train or memorise spells. The party splitting is also important in order to solve some of the problems in the game.

Magic Candle looks like an old Ultima game, where you control a party or a character on a top-down map. There are several types of maps – the overland map, the castle and town maps, and the dungeon maps. Combat either takes place directly on the dungeon map, or it switches to a separate combat map if you are on the overland.

The combat system is among the better turn-based systems. It's not very complex, but has many unique features, like different kind of mushrooms you can eat to get various combat bonuses, the ability to sidestep attacks (if not blocked on the sides), and the ability to pierce several enemies with one arrow. It's quite simple, but also quite tactical and fun. The monsters are a mix of generic types like orcs and trolls, and original, exotic ones like hraffels, zorlims and bargs.

An important part of the game is talking to NPCs to find clues on how to stop the candle from burning down. Lots and lots of note-taking (or screen-capping) is needed. NPCs also have schedules like in Ultima 5-7, and finding them can sometimes be a challenge in itself. Some of them won't even leave their houses and you have to knock on their doors, but they won't open unless you address them by their names.