Game:

The Binding of Isaac (2011)

Category:

Review

Duration: 48:53

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Magicraft is an Indie, Action Roguelite Bullet Hell Dungeon Crawler that combines a bit of Binding of Isaac with the wands of Noita; wild!
Magicraft is an Action Roguelike All About the Wands!

Wand Builder:
In Magicraft, you drag and drop spells into your found wands, empowering them with the spells you have found or crafted in the dungeon rooms, much like in Noita.
Unlike Noita, in Magicraft, you can swap the spells around whenever you want!
Each wand has its own stats, mana amount, and number of spell slots it can hold, so having multiple wands can be handy, much like in Noita, as it provides flexibility to handle unexpected situations.
Much like Noita, wand spells seem to fire off in the order placed, not all at once, so the order in which the spells are placed matters.
Meaning: wands seem to follow Noita like rules, reading spells from left to right, where the left most spell takes effect first, applying its effect to the spells to its right.
Also like Noita, you can get potions, you can only carry 1 potion by default, but they are powerful, invisibility, uncursing, shielding, petrifaction, levitation, handy stuff like that.

The Dungeon Form:
In Magicraft, the dungeons are random, and full of nasty monsters, tricky hazards, and treasures to hunt.
The dungeon is broken up into rooms, and there are many types.
After each room, you often get a pick of 2 for the next one, with the game telling you what room type it is: Spell Room, Healing room, Max Hp room, Artifact room, Shop, Spell Forging room, Coin rooms.
The spell forging room lets you combine 3 spells into a stronger 1, or randomly transform 1 spell into another, interesting, recasting a spell cost gold, the within run currency.
There are Relic Rooms that let you pick 1 of 3 upgrades, in Vampire Survivors / Horde Survival fashion.
There are chests and doors to open that require keys, which you can find or buy at shops.
At these shops, you can buy healing, new spells, wands, and keys; handy.
There are also these ominous looking purple cursed chests, that grant crystals, but give you a lasting debuff, until you clear it with the right potion; presenting a bit of a risk for the bold player; be bold, become cursed, but gain gems!

Intense Dungeon Combat!
The dungeon environment matters here, as the environmental objects will block enemy attacks, but trees and rocks can be destroyed by your spells; so be careful!
Monsters will rush you, fire at you, even spew out globs of acid on you, turning the very ground against you! Watch where you step!
Watch out for the bio rumba like monsters, they sweep nasty gunk wherever they go, slowing you down with their yellow goop, making the green acid piles that are accumulating harder to dodge and more of a threat; taken em out before they make a mess!
Speaking of a dodge, by default you don’t have one!
You are a wizard here, a wand twirler strictly, so you have no default dash, sprint, or jump, so use your magic and move mage!
Remember that you do slow down while firing you wand, making it a meaningful choice when you choose to move or not; good.
There are traps too, walking into a spike pit hits you for 10hp; be grateful it’s not instant death like in some other games…
Walking in acid pools hurts you too; don’t walk in acid pools!
Magicraft is fair however, as enemies take damage from traps as well; good!
If you do get hit, there are rooms that increase your max life, and enemies rarely drop 10hp healing by default, nice!

Meta Progression:
Meta Progression is present in Magicraft in the form of Purple crystals, used in between dungeon runs to increase your max starting hp, initial coins, backpack limit, and how many wands you can carry; so some very powerful stuff here!
You can also reset your meta progression, if you want.
There is also Ancient Blood you give to the old man, but he will not accept it; demo limitation I guess?
From a few runs, I can say that currently, it feels very unlikely that it is possible to beat this game absent any meta progression, so expect multiple runs here to strengthen your character enough to make it over the power curve.

Controller support is present, and felt good and responsive, and good old Mouse and keyboard felt good as well.
I used the gamepad in the above recording, as I found it felt best.

Note: This is an early look at Magicraft so any bugs or other oddness is not representative of the final product.
Still, Magicraft is a fun Action Roguelike Bullet Hell with Random Dungeons and an engaging wand based magic system, and is easily well worth a wishlist and a watch.
Watch?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2103140/Magicraft/
#BulletHell #BindingOfIsaac #Noita

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