A new action roguelike dropped this week that focuses on open-ended creativity with your attacks, focusing on the ability to slot different effects into one weapon to make a customized stack of powers. In Magicraft your wands all have open slots that can be filled with spells and spell modifiers that'll trigger from left to right, in order, every time you click. From that basic setup you customize to get—in the words of the creators:
"Ultra-high degrees of freedom [that] cannot even be exhausted by developers."
Which is to say that with 100 different wand effects and 100 different spells to slot into them you're going to, just by sheer mathematical probability, be able to make something the devs have never seen. Maybe even something another player has never made. You can see the potential for yourself in the free demo.
- This bizarre roguelike has a new take on the Vampire Survivors formula: letting you build your own custom weapons out of brains, eyeballs, and chimpanzee spines
- Ascendant brings a unique spin to the bullet hell dungeon crawler with its huge item stash and extensive build crafting for new and deadly synergies
Magicraft has five chapters, with the first four feeling a lot like the room-and-boss structure of Hades that sees you fight a miniboss and boss, but choose the rewards and rooms that come before and between those fights. The fifth chapter changes it up, throwign you into a boss rush with your now-complete build.
Magicraft developer Wave Games has previously released indie rhythm game Musynx, a management game called Soul Academy, and a couple dating sims. It's published by Chinese streaming juggernaut Bilibili.
You can find Magicraft on Steam, where it's normally $16, though it's 20% off until November 15. It's actually available in a bundle with another game often described as "Chinese Hades"—Warm Snow.
