Magicka – non-polished indie-game with great skill system and humor

Magicka is a new indie game, recently published on Steam.

I played the demo (and then bought it) and found the skill-/casting-system to be really awesome.

6 spells (elements), one weapon, one staff and a stack of 5 spell-slots allow for extensive combinations and experimentation.

Mix Earth and Shield for summoning rocks in front of you. Or cast it around you. Mix Earth and Fire to fire a burning Rock/Ball which explodes on impact.

One Earth for firing an earth stone. 5 Earth elements for a really big stone. Charge it up on casting to fire it with more power/speed and mow down several enemies at once.

Enchant your sword with Fire and Earth, then slash with your sword and it will cast a line of flames.

Super awesome.

Just like the skill system, the humor is really good as well.

There’s an issue though.

The game is not polished. Not at all.

I found many issues when playing it.

Minor issues like graphic glitches, stuttering and inconsistencies (not being able to go stairs back up where I came down earlier on).

Utterly stupid save-system. On dying you’ll start on the same levelpart again; which may mean defeating several enemy groups, getting items again, to get to the place where 6 enemygroups attack one after another. And when you quit the game anywhere in a chapter, the end-boss for example, you’ll have to play the whole fucking chapter again.

And what’s worst about that is: The game is hard. Very hard.

And the user guidance is rather bad. The first tutorial is pretty good, but fails to explain some aspects (even basic mechanics to the gameplay; like that you can enchant your weapon and that you can block or that your staff can have active abilities you can use).

With other no-polish issues this can result in really bad situations.

In Chapter 4 boss I did not know what to do.

I tried to kill a specific enemy first of all (which was the correct guess as I now know) but could not attack him, reach him. On later tries (after dying as the 2 strong enemy wizards will be replaced upon their death, thus resulting in me dying and attempting several times) I tried again; even with area (surrounding) spells. It didn’t seem to work.

In the end I quit. Frustrated. And what’s worst: I will have to play the whole chapter again when I play on again.

As I just stumbled over it: A pretty good and informative “Lets play” can be watched on YouTube here.