Arcane Assembly

Ultimately a miss. Although it sounds good on paper, the actual systems are very unrewarding. Every time I try to tinker up a spell, I find that either it doesn't work because of some arbitrary limitation, or it's just worse than "shoot projectile at mouse." It needs some kind of trade-off system, where you can get a mana reduction if it has short range or poor accuracy or something. Look at Noita's spell modifiers for good examples. In this, you even have to pay for mana costs up front, which means that if you have a conditional part of your spell, then you'll pay it each time even if it doesn't trigger. That's just the spell system though, what about the rest of the game? Well, the jumping feels weird (does my air jump go higher than the ground one?) and the levels are all just platforms on an empty background. Bosses try to be a bullet hell, but they're quite easy.

On one hand, I wish there were a bit more options for things to make spells with, since I basically just used the same burst throw orb spell throughout the whole game (which I replaced with what is essentially just a better orb as I got the sharp and explode spells respectively) until the last 10 minutes or so of the game where I was able to put together a fun spell that: - Auto targeted enemies with an explosion while there were enemies within targeting range - Shot an explosion in the direction of my cursor when there weren't enemies within targeting range On the other hand, I love being a wizard and I love games that allow you to really create your spells from the ground up (see: the Minecraft mod Hex Casting), so I still had a ton of fun with the game :)