I like wizards because they're the dramatic combination of powerful, cocky, and a bit dim. Through some quirk of bloodline or destiny, wizards can access impossible forces simply by saying magic words. This does not engender caution. A wizard's not a real wizard until they have accidentally set themselves on fire or unleashed an ancient evil. And if you throw four of this dim demigods together? Well, you get the co-op wizard action of the Magicka games, where freestyling elemental combinations can (and often will) lead you to heal a boss or torch your pal's face. Splendid chaos.
]]>Magic doesn't always need to be like, cauldrons of bubbling newts. I'd say building a romantic connection with a wrestler entirely formed of green ooze, or training your M.E.A.T. at Mrs. Muscles gym counts as magic – pure magic, even. And that's what Wrestling With Emotions: New Kid On The Block offers. It's a wrestling dating sim with a splash of RPG, and almost certainly a game that'll pin your heart in a bear hug and never let go.
]]>Hot diggedy daffodil, am I glad I picked Casual difficulty in Veil Of Dust. Unlike some games, Veil Of Dust doesn't make it sound like any sort of concession; the middle difficulty is called Challenge, and says "it's pretty tough - you've been warned". I took the warning seriously, and thank God, because even the easiest difficulty had me pouring dandelion tea down my brother's throat like he was doing a kegstand (and in the game).
Áine and Shane are a pair of Irish siblings who've moved to Oregon to start a new life, which, in the main story, involves eating potatoes and trying not to get depressed. It's difficult enough that I didn't think I would like it at first, as even basic tasks deplete your stamina and sleeping in your 1860s hovel with a hole in the roof doesn't restore very much per night. Áine can do spells, but they're simple and only really take the edge off what is a very hard life. Magic isn't a cure-all in Veil Of Dust, and using it has to be weighed up, just like everything else.
]]>I've never had much of a desire for "I'm attending school" sims, because I hated attending school and not having to do it is one of the prime benefits of growing out of your teens. Running a school though? That's a challenge I don't mind taking on. Twopoint Campus does a great plate-spinning take on a school admin sim, but if you want something with cards, a dark lord, and the option for organic school meals, then... well, then you're making a very specific request. But it's one I can fulfil with Spellcaster University. And it's bloody difficult.
]]>Magic Week could use a dash more dark magic, I reckon. Through The Nightmares may not be about spellcasting and amateur alchemy, but it still draws upon the arcane and otherworldly, setting its deviously difficult action-platforming inside the sleepscapes of frightened children.
You are the Sandman, and you are neither sprinkling happy dust on Danish eyelids nor delivering Liberace-haired boyfriends to vocal quartets. Instead, you’re an active fighter of nightmares, diving into the brains of restless kids to explore their most traumatic memories and, ultimately, defeat the monstrous embodiments of their fears.
]]>Spells & Secrets is an eye-catching, dungeon-crawling, magic-slinging action-rougelite with a lot of potential — and it's set in an academy for wizards, so basically catnip to me as a fan of a good high school story. I first became aware of this upcoming game while covering last summer's Future Of Play Direct, and I've been itching to write something about it ever since. Happily, as part of RPS Magic Week, I've had the opportunity to speak with Florian Mann, CEO and co-founder of Spells & Secrets development team Alchemist Interactive.
]]>I am loving all the magical witchy games we’ve been covering for RPS Magic Week, but I wanna learn how to actually be a witch, you know? I wanna learn the witchy ways, and not just from some not-so-well informed TikToks.
Thankfully, So May It Be has been my gateway to Witchcraft 101. It’s a sapphic dating sim about a bunch of witches just hanging out doing witchy things. You're part of a small coven with your three friends, and you all meet online every night to chat about school, shitty part-time jobs, and of course, witchcraft. At the end of each evening, you can privately ask one of your friends to hang out the next day 1 on 1, getting to know them better and just doing cool witch shit.
]]>Magic is weird. And, since an Ordinary (non-magical person) suddenly getting magic is also deemed weird in Ikenfell, it stands to reason that it’s practically guaranteed to happen. We can only assume the odds become even higher as the Ordinary ventures closer to the big magical fantasy school, which protagonist Maritte quickly discovers. Upon approaching the gate in search of her missing sister, Safina, Maritte suddenly starts to sling fiery spells.
Those new spells certainly come in handy, as Maritte finds herself fired up (hehe, geddit?) and ready to fight through this Paper Mario-style tactical RPG. Along with some of Saf’s old friends, you explore the titular school and surrounding areas, searching for clues that might help unravel the mystery. Ikenfell has challenging combat and lots of little secrets hidden in its 8-bit world, but it’s the loveable bunch of pals (both allies and rivals) that really made me smile. Oh, and some of them have killer theme tunes that I can’t stop singing.
]]>Too many spells in games are just variations on the old reliable fireball. Wizard sends projectile towards target. Target dies. Perhaps they deviate a little in how quickly they die, or how large the area of effect is. Maybe instead of a fireball it's a thunderbolt, or a poisonous gas, or a beam of light. Pish, I say. Pish! Where's the real magic? Where are the cataclysmic spells that take days or weeks of preparation, and then change the world with a single fateful ritual?
These games could learn something from The Last Spell, a roguelite turn-based tactics game about defending your village each night from hordes of mutant beasts that emerge from the purple fog surrounding the entire world. Whenever I start a new game in The Last Spell, I always rewatch the excellent opening sequence, which succinctly sets a harrowing scene of magic pushed further than we're used to seeing in most fiction in general, let alone games.
]]>If you’ve been enjoying RPS’ Magic Week - our two-week endeavour to spotlight magical indies - you might enjoy the Trans Witches Are Witches bundle, which is unrelated to Magic Week, but has the same spirit. The bundle is a collection of 69 games, music, zines, and other creative oddities of the magical variety. Everything has been made by LGBTQ+ creators and all the proceeds will be split between the featured teams. So far, the bundle has passed a whopping $90,000 (or £74,000) in sales, with over a week left to go.
]]>Have you ever planned to do a bunch of personally improving stuff on a Sunday morning like go for a walk down to the old pier or read 30 pages of an extremely political sci-fi book about aliens made of wool, but what you do instead is sit on the sofa playing an aggressively monetised mobile game while repeats of Modern Family run on the TV? For six hours, you do this, and eat your dinner feeling sick with unrealised potential.
Match-3 games are compulsive for a reason, and I don't have beef with them as a concept. I actually like them! But I don't like that to play a match-3 game I usually have to play a mobile game that wants me to spent money on Fairy Dollars so I can buy barrels of Explosive Wand Dust, making it easier to earn stars and incrementally furnish the Magic Toilet Goblin's bedroom, or whatever. It's the empty consumerism vibe of freemium mobile games that makes me feel like I've been eating the time-spending equivalent of junk food. Spirit Swap, which has a demo out now in the form of an endless mode, isn't that. It's beautiful, difficult, customiseable, and it'll swallow you time in a good way, not a faintly unsettling one.
]]>If you don't know that I like puzzle games by now then hello, welcome to the first post of mine that you've ever read. Recently I've been searching for jigsaw puzzle-y things to add to Jigsaw Puzzle Dreams and Glass Masquerade 2, but I also really like cute diorama things like Tiny Lands. Wouldn't it be ideal if there was a game that kind of combined both of thos th- BAH GAWD! That's Harmony's Odyssey's music!
]]>As Magic Week reaches the halfway point here at RPS, we've covered a pretty broad spectrum of wizard games over the last few days. There's your chill little potion brewers that let you coo over a bubbling cauldron all nice and cosy like; there's your darker, more supernatural witchy adventures that dig into the spookier side of the fae realm, and then you've got your lovely genre mash-ups that add spicy, magical seasoning to well-worn action tropes, like the excellent bullet-hell Metroid-like The Knight Witch I wrote about the other day. But if I thought that was pushing against my limits of gamepad dexterity, Contingent99's 2018 roguelike Wizard Of Legend is on another level entirely.
]]>Although the demo is relatively short, I’ve really been getting into the roguelike deckbuilding of Dungeon Drafters. I like the colourful pixel art, the classic fantasy enemy archetypes, how spell cards feel super punchy when activated, and I love love love the magical, fluffy wizard rabbit.
Called The Explorer, this rabbit is not only super cute - his little brown booties are adorable, as is his helmet which has holes so his massive fluffy ears can poke through - but a bonafide badass in magic casting. This rabbit can majorly throw down.
]]>A lot (most) of the magic games we're highlighting this week are in some manner lovely and nice, because witches these days tend towards the cottagecore (ily, Little Witch In The Woods!). It's nice that witches have changed in our minds to "unmarried lady who lives alone and is good with herbs and cats :]", when they used to be "unmarried lady who lives alone and is good with herbs and her cat is the devil and she has sex with the devil".
There's still room for witches with some threat to 'em, though, and I love a weird horror game, so you can imagine that when I heard about The Salt Order my interest was immediately piqued. It's a low-poly PS1-style game where an order of witches has tasked you with retrieving a grimoire from a cursed realm of endless trees. You are largely defenceless, except for the ability to draw on the ground with salt. "In many stories that I knew as a child, salt was one of the very powerful magical protective elements against evil spirits," solo dev Khamelot tells me over email. "During invocations, drawing a circle of salt could act as a basic protection. To prevent the spirits from entering one's home, you could put salt in front of the openings of the house."
]]>Bullet hell shooters have never been one of my fortes in games. There is certainly something magical about watching masters of the genre weave effortlessly in and out of flying orbs in the likes of Gradius, R-Type and Ikaruga, but whenever I attempt to step up to the gamepad myself, my movements have always proven too flighty, too seized by panic, to make much headway with them. Enter The Knight Witch, which takes the thrill of the bullet hell shooter and wraps it up in a lovely Metroid-like-shaped package my brain can actually understand. It's a fantastic little game, and I'm only sorry we didn't cover it in more detail when it came out at the end of November last year.
]]>It doesn’t have a demo or even a release date yet, but I am loving the look of Reka. It’s a 19th-century witch sim being made by Emberstorm Entertainment, where you play as a traveling witch whose chosen mode of transportation is the legendary chicken-legged Baba Yaga house, which is the coolest thing ever.
Details on Reka are still super light, and the Steam page mentions a release year of 2024, but I’ve been following Emberstorm’s Twitter intently, looking at all the cool gifs for Reka and the house looks incredible! For one, it’s huge. It towers above the forest trees and looks like it could easily stomp unwanted visitors to death. When the young witch approaches the towering beast, it bends is legs to sit down, almost burring itself in the earth for her access to the house on top.
]]>You know, I always figured I’d be great at making potions. As a kid, I was obsessed with pulling things out of cupboards and combining them into a bowl. Shampoo, bubble bath and toothpaste. Salad cream, yeast and lemonade. These concoctions were the result of pure genius, a brilliant mind capable of harmonising with ingredients on a sub-atomic level to create combinations that were beyond the capabilities of any known god. My Mam was only shouting at me because she didn’t understand. These were my elixirs! Sup from this bowl and taste the future of human evolution! Yes, I know this is the same bowl we’re also sick into when we’re not feeling well, but you also bake in it so let’s not start being picky.
As I got older, It became apparent my future was not in alchemy. Someone who puts baby corn into a bolognese clearly doesn't posses the skill to create balanced mixtures. And yet, Potionomics has wrenched the rotting corpse of that childhood fantasy right out of its grave. Finally, here is a suitable outlet for my feats of fantastical alchemy.
]]>Although my favourite type of witch is a spooky old crone, who cackles at the top of her lungs and lives in a swamp crunching rat bones and squeezing crow blood into her cauldron, the laid-back cottagecore witch is a close second. What's not to love? Living in a cute little thatched roof house, tending to your garden, baking bread, sipping magical teas, reading old tomes on the front porch - absolute bliss.
Witchy Life Story is all about this lifestyle. It’s a fluffy, cosy visual novel where you play as a mischievous witch who is sent to live in a new town called Flora to prove themselves after royally flubbing their training. The town is preparing for a festival and, as the newly appointed town witch, you need to pull your weight by brewing potions, giving tarot readings, and even leading a guided meditation session or two.
]]>Vampire Survivor-likes are a thing now, all trying to emulate the success of Poncle's indie hit that became our best game of 2022. As I've said before, a lot of them can't quite match the OG for all manner of reasons, but Spellbook Demonslayers is different. Despite only being in early access, it's already got a solid foundation to work from. No, there isn't an Old Testament that whirls around your person like a holy sawblade, but there is a revolving shield with a pistol glued onto it. Yeah, I thought that would convince you.
]]>I hesitate to call Potion Tales a shop sim or retail management game, because the economics of running a figuratively and literally underground magic potion shop seems a secondary concern next to making the potions and deciding whether you want to screw people over or not. If the answer to that last part is yes, you need to move on to the question of how.
In practice, Potion Tales is a 3D puzzle game. People come to you - I use the term people broadly because the tutorial level involves helping a fire spirit and soon after you're approached by what appears to be an aggressive daisy who is the local gravekeeper - and present you with a problem. They ask for a potion to solve the problem. That's all the steer you get. It takes some getting used to, but the Steam demo shows an impressively flexible game with a good sense of humour.
]]>Cower, brief mortals! Wait, that's a halloween thing, isn't it. Welcome to the magic circle, pals! Not the actual one, just, like, thematically speaking. Starting today until next Friday, February 17th, it's Magic Week here at RPS, where we aim to highlight all manner of fabulous games about magic, witches, wizards, general sorcery and other spell-adjacent tomfoolery. We're also putting special emphasis on magic games made by trans developers, too. Join us for a glimpse of what's coming up.
]]>
.png?width=1200&height=630&fit=crop&enable=upscale&auto=webp "שחרורו של Assassin's Creed Shadows נדחה למרץ כאשר מועצת המנהלים של Ubisoft שוקל מכירת חברה")