Emergent Magic

I immediately wishlisted this game when i saw the name "emergent magic", because im a magic junkie (especially magic creation) and that title (and description) screamed it. I bought it today and my first impressions are: It's clearly a passion game that's rough around the edges. It feels like the core concept is someone's dream game/system and everything else was an after thought. I agree with the first review for this game in that it is unfinished, it feels like it should be marked as early access, but tbh the main core of the game is the spell crafting and from a cursory look it seems fully fleshed out, if occasionally a little clunky and esoteric at first. The combat is surprisingly fun and frantic, starting in the second stage at least, the first stage enemies and spells are too simple to have much fun with. Despite the overall lacking presentation of the game, and a few very minor issues, it's surprisingly solidly built, i was constantly on edge thinking some major glitch would just break my game mid stage but no, the closest i got was when i got stuck in something after dashing into it then getting surrounded on a high wave, but i was able to get out before dying and finish the wave. Heres some info on how the magic works since the ingame explanations are always either short blurbs that disappear before you can process it, explained poorly, or just not explained period: The main thing to know is the circle chart that covers the floor around your magic pedestal, it tells you which element "follows" which other elements. So for example fire will move towards wind, so if you have a fire block behind a wind block it will continually move towards the wind, which pushes the wind forward. exact opposite sides of the chart repel each-other (like fire and water). Advanced elements (as in elements that arent on the outer edges of the circle chart) i only started to get in to and am still struggling to understand them. When you craft a spell, the slider 1:1 affects your PROJECTILE LIFETIME, then some combination of the complexity of your spell and your set projectile lifetime determines the cool-down between spell usage. The modifier block thingies (the ones that look like little spell circles) can be super useful and can majorly increase what you can do, if you want access to one pretty early you can [spoiler]find a set of 5 anchor blocks in the second stage next to a health potion in a little bar/cooking area, which has an invisible wall for some reason, but just walk to the right side to go around it[/spoiler]. Important controls to know are q and e to change the selected hotbar slot, left click to place the selected block (the rainbow crystals arent a block), if you place directly on the face of a block it will place there the way you would expect, but if you dont place it on a block it will give you a projection for where the block will be placed if you click again (this lets you place mid-air). Right clicking a block will break it and have it fall to the ground where you can pick it up again. Inventory is opened with "I" though i recommend rebinding it to somewhere like r so its easier to reach since you have to move your spell from equipped to your hotbar every time you want to tweak it. You can tweak spells like i mentioned, by left clicking the pedestal with the spell selected in your hotbar (not the equipped spell slots), it consumes the spell book and places the blocks back where they were when you finalized it (if there's already blocks there it still places them, they just clip inside each-other). oh also those shiny red bottles everywhere are health potions, you cant grab them cause your health is full thanks to the fancy regenerating shield that protects your actual health. I'll hopefully update this review as i play more later (and as it hopefully becomes better too), for but now its a hesitant recommend, cause i really like main magic crafting mechanic and think this game has a lot of potential. [b]UPDATE[/b]: I'm WAY late to saying this, but this game isn't actually getting updates anymore from what i can tell. I didnt want to change my review or make it not-recommended for a while cause i felt bad, but it looks like it got basically no updates after it was launched, which is uhh, concerning to say the least. I actually reported a bunch of bugs/issues when i first made the review, which I was thanked for, but then found out that the game isnt being updated. After having months to let my thoughts settle, i feel like calling it a "passion project that's rough around the edges" is too positive, especially since the lack of updates, but I dont feel right dismissing it entirely cause i did find some unironic amount of fun, and havent seen what it looks later into the game to know if the open-ended nature of the magic system becomes more fun like i expect it to or not. I hope to see this dev make higher quality games in the future, but i cant really recommend this in its current state.

It's junky. The explanations and onboarding are bad. This is more of a proof of concept than anything else. My game crashed when I died on wave 7, causing me to lose one long hour of testinf. Yet, I support the devs for what they are trying to do. I love crazy magic system and I felt genuine fun testing it. Please put an additional music for combat. F to launch the wave, E to interact please. Please do some video in the game showing the interactions of various magic elements. Don't start with four elements, start with one, then two, etc... Easier way to test and tweak new spells would be great. A clear spawn point for the ennemy too (look at Orc Must Die) With this already, it would be so much better. Best of luck <3

Saw this trailer like eternity ago and immidiately whishlisted. Was super excited once it released, immidiately installed, and immidiately got a softlock in the tutorial level (or at least what i assumed was a softlock). Told myself i need to return to this game later. Today, one moth later, i booted it the second time and yes, it is still completely unplayable. Triggers constantly break, interfase refuses to show things, simply running around the "arena" level and randomly pressing f button somehow clogs my leftmost hotbar slot with infinite stacks of summon cubes that don't go away even after exiting the level. I really like the idea and want to enjoy this game, but it isn't even alpha test ready at this point. Please at least fix the triggers and do something about the spell creation interface. Ability to tinker with already created spells would be nice as both a great visual tutorial (50 paragraphs of floating text isn't something that helps a newbie to understend your deep mechanics, but what scares and allianates them further) and a softlock prevention mechanism (tutorial literally gives you 3 fire, 3 air and no undo button whatsoever). I don't want to be negative about what looks like both a great potential and a passion project, but if left in its current state this game will just die unnoticed because of all its junk and clunkiness