Tweak your crazy spells in this tough, traditional roguelike wizard simulator

Rift Wizard 2 hit Steam this week, calling itself a "tough as nails traditional roguelike wizard simulator" and sporting the colorful graphics and complex pile of character builds to back that claim up.

In it, you're a powerful and immortal wizard who jumps from battle to battle across the multiverse while building up a repertoire of spells, skills, and magical artifacts that hopefully synergize into something that'll both keep you alive and defeat your nemesis at the end of the journey.

It sports a pretty dang massive pile of spells to play with as you build up your spellbook, giving you all kinds of ways to defeat a truly dizzying array of weird creatures you'll have to fight, each with their own strange rules and abilities. Rift Wizard 2 brings a big-time upgrade: Items to equip and use are now a huge part of play, and that new layer of powers and abilities makes this sequel much more on par with modern roguelikes, rather than traditional ones, when it comes to customizing your wizard.

Back in 2021 writer Alex Wiltshire took a spin with Rift Wizard and really liked what he saw: "though Rift Wizard sports simple pixel sprites that make it look like an authentic-to-a-fault take on Rogue, it's really a deeply open tactical arena battle wizard-building sim."

"In each run you zap, blast, disintegrate, bless, curse and poison your way through 25 randomly generated levels called realms, crafting your mage from a menu that currently lists 135 spells and 26 skills across 16 schools of magic (not to mention all the effects you'll find at random shrines). It's an immense arsenal," he said.

And I agree, for what it's worth, that this one's a great time and a big upgrade. Though it's still hard, the items add a layer of power fantasy that ramps up even harder than the first game.

You can find Rift Wizard 2 on Steam.

Contributor

Jon Bolding is a games writer and critic with an extensive background in strategy games. When he's not on his PC, he can be found playing every tabletop game under the sun.

Read more
Ascendant on Steam.
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
Knight with broken sword flanked by goblin and angel in strange underground environment.
D&D-skewering, Disco Elysium-inspired RPG Esoteric Ebb had me trying my best to be a cleric while my Intelligence stat kept telling me to become a wizard-king
A young witch watering a smiling mushroom in a magic garden
Here's a roguelite dungeon crawler Steam reviewers call 'a botanical Diablo' and 'like Cult of the Lamb' except you manage a mystical garden
Mushroom encrusted Envoy looking toward camera in Avowed.
Skyrim stealth archers and NCR Ranger wannabes rejoice: I'm 45 hours into Avowed's hardest difficulty as a glass cannon gunslinger and I've loved every minute of it
A catgirl with long white hair and ears
At least it's not NFTs this time: The new Wizardry RPG is a gacha game
Three adventurers readying for battle in Knights in Tight Spaces.
Knights in Tight Spaces review
Latest in Roguelike
A convoy of strange beings proceed across a desert in Caves of Qud key art.
After 17 years, devs of the only roguelike where players ask 'the best way to get the most limbs' can't believe its success: 'More people have bought Caves of Qud than are in this stadium, how do you reckon with that?'
A True Kin knight stands in a ruin in Caves of Qud, flanked by bloodstained furniture and a freshly mortalized corpse.
Despite making a roguelike where you can have countless arms and legs, Caves of Qud's creators say the ideal form is a limbless sphere: 'We started in perfection and only moved farther from God'
The jester from Balatro, portrayed in unsettling detail in real life, wears an uncanny smile and stares at the viewer.
PC Gamer vindicated by Swen Vincke: Larian boss calls Balatro his personal GOTY as it sweeps top prize from devs at GDC awards
live action Jimbo the Jester from Balatro holding a playing card and addressing the camera
Balatro's first demo could be edited with Notepad to unlock the whole game—the solution? 'Bury it as soon as possible' with a 'newer, shinier version'
A busy marketplace in The Bazaar.
The Bazaar could be the future of autobattlers, if it stops strangling itself to death with its own microtransactions
A vampire with a dark castle and swarms of bats in the background.
We need to decide on a genre name for Vampire Survivors-like games before a really terrible one sticks
Latest in News
gta 6 trailer
Publishers 'don't want to be anywhere near' Grand Theft Auto 6 when it launches: 'It's proving to be very stressful'
A female Zoi making two hearts with her fingers.
Following 24 hours of Denuvo-based backlash, Inzoi is taking a surprising step and removing it entirely: 'We want to sincerely apologise for not aligning more closely with player expectations'
An image of a Helldiver from Helldivers 2 shooting at a red dragon from Dungeons & Dragons.
'Ok, so dragon builds are a thing now': galaxy-brained Helldivers 2 player incinerates a bile titan with a hover pack and a flamethrower
An ancient, angry stone mech from No Man's Sky's new Relics update
No Man’s Sky lets you unearth ancient, angry mechs in the astro-archaeology filled Relics update
Assassin's Creed Shadows promo image
Ubisoft scores a legendary ratio against Elon Musk on his own platform—which hopefully marks a final end to all the Assassin's Creed Shadows' culture war nonsense
Tzarina Katarin Bokha, the Ice Queen of Kislev
Total War: Warhammer 3 rolls out a cool Kislev overhaul, changes befitting Tzeench’s magic, new projectile units and creakier skeletal horses