Sometimes wizards are just dudes with fireballs able to turn others into frog or sheep. Sometimes wizards are mere humans trying to harness immensely fickle powers way greater than them. Sometimes wizards are just ceaseless searchers of secrets about the existence itself. In this game you are all three types of wizard at the same time.

What the game is in general? It's a roguelike, really. It calls itself a roguelite but despite lacking in 50 keyboard buttons to press and some convoluted subsystems for managing your internal organs, it features some immensely in depth simulations and interactions between player, spells, environment and enemies. Literally every piece of terrain can be wrecked, and gasses and liquids are present as simulated too! And depending on your current spells there's an immense variety of things you can pull off with environment, like certain gasses and liquid can be set aflame, others can be mixed into different liquids, wood burns and metal and water conduct lethal electric discharges. Even enemy corpses can be interracted with by kicking them, some of them spraying acid or other goop while they roll down the surfaces! Also being a wizard you cast spells, but mostly trough wands, but also the wands can be customized at certain places, allowing you to create truly incredible or suicidal implements by combining projectiles, special effects and other features. Wands themselves are varied in stats so there's a lot of nuances to wandcrafting.

The amount of content here is staggering, the main path isn't that long and you can rush it even, but you'll probably end up super unprepared for final boss then, and there's some side paths and many, many secrets with strange and amazing goodies and secrets hidden all over the place. The general content is staggering too, with a huge selection of spells, magic wands, enemies, all different and varied, no clue how many playtroughs should it take minimum to experience everything. And all these things feature fun interactions! Like you can use freezing magic to get enemies you struggle beating stuck in solidified liquids! Flooding the whole place with water both helps reduce the lethality of fire or toxix sludge based hazards and enemy attacks, yes, but also certain enemies take damage from liquids like water, and you can electrocute everyone underwater with a single attack... oh and things only get weirder as you go down. You'll see scifi facilities and jungle and weird ancient temple locales under the early mines and ice zones, and enemies will be appropriately change to fit local theme, and so will the hazards.

By the way, I cannot say art style is that remarkable, it's nice and pleasant and fits the technical specifics of engine where each pixel is simulated, but I feel like art-wise the main treat here is the soundtrack, a perfect mix of ambient and psychadellic rock. Particualr genre of rock always seemed to offer a more enticing take on wizards than other genres that damble in fantasy nonsense, and it really fits here, in this dangerous yet fascinating and full of secrets world where technology and magic all exist together.

If there's one flaw in this game, it's the immense brutality. It's cruel, it wants you dead, and it loves making you kill yourself in the most absurd and dumb way possible. Especially when it comes to combining wand spells, or dealing with environmental hazards. It's one thing to get dipped into toxic waste while low on health, but it's even more embarassing when you shoot your wand only to realize lightning works a little bit more indiscriminately while in water... though kinda like Dwarf Fortress this is absolutely one of those Losing Is Fun games, and that's cool, not every playtrough needs to reach the finale when you can enjoy the game's systems and options from early on.

Absolutely give it a try if you appreciate the roguelike/roguelike formula and enjoy games being a little bit cruel to you, in a fun way.

Sometimes wizards are just dudes with fireballs able to turn others into frog or sheep. Sometimes wizards are mere humans trying to harness immensely fickle powers way greater than them. Sometimes wizards are just ceaseless searchers of secrets about the existence itself. In this game you are all three types of wizard at the same time. What the game is in general? It's a roguelike, really. It calls itself a roguelite but despite lacking in 50 keyboard buttons to press and some convoluted subsystems for managing your internal organs, it features some immensely in depth simulations and interactions between player, spells, environment and enemies. Literally every piece of terrain can be wrecked, and gasses and liquids are present as simulated too! And depending on your current spells there's an immense variety of things you can pull off with environment, like certain gasses and liquid can be set aflame, others can be mixed into different liquids, wood burns and metal and water conduct lethal electric discharges. Even enemy corpses can be interracted with by kicking them, some of them spraying acid or other goop while they roll down the surfaces! Also being a wizard you cast spells, but mostly trough wands, but also the wands can be customized at certain places, allowing you to create truly incredible or suicidal implements by combining projectiles, special effects and other features. Wands themselves are varied in stats so there's a lot of nuances to wandcrafting. The amount of content here is staggering, the main path isn't that long and you can rush it even, but you'll probably end up super unprepared for final boss then, and there's some side paths and many, many secrets with strange and amazing goodies and secrets hidden all over the place. The general content is staggering too, with a huge selection of spells, magic wands, enemies, all different and varied, no clue how many playtroughs should it take minimum to experience everything. And all these things feature fun interactions! Like you can use freezing magic to get enemies you struggle beating stuck in solidified liquids! Flooding the whole place with water both helps reduce the lethality of fire or toxix sludge based hazards and enemy attacks, yes, but also certain enemies take damage from liquids like water, and you can electrocute everyone underwater with a single attack... oh and things only get weirder as you go down. You'll see scifi facilities and jungle and weird ancient temple locales under the early mines and ice zones, and enemies will be appropriately change to fit local theme, and so will the hazards. By the way, I cannot say art style is that remarkable, it's nice and pleasant and fits the technical specifics of engine where each pixel is simulated, but I feel like art-wise the main treat here is the soundtrack, a perfect mix of ambient and psychadellic rock. Particualr genre of rock always seemed to offer a more enticing take on wizards than other genres that damble in fantasy nonsense, and it really fits here, in this dangerous yet fascinating and full of secrets world where technology and magic all exist together. If there's one flaw in this game, it's the immense brutality. It's cruel, it wants you dead, and it loves making you kill yourself in the most absurd and dumb way possible. Especially when it comes to combining wand spells, or dealing with environmental hazards. It's one thing to get dipped into toxic waste while low on health, but it's even more embarassing when you shoot your wand only to realize lightning works a little bit more indiscriminately while in water... though kinda like Dwarf Fortress this is absolutely one of those Losing Is Fun games, and that's cool, not every playtrough needs to reach the finale when you can enjoy the game's systems and options from early on. Absolutely give it a try if you appreciate the roguelike/roguelike formula and enjoy games being a little bit cruel to you, in a fun way.