Revenge of the Mage

I genuinely did not expect to lose an hour to this one. Revenge of the Mage plants you inside a first-person perspective and then throws the genre rulebook at you sideways: it is a bullet-hell wave shooter where the weapon is magic, the "gun" is a spell loadout built run by run, and the whole thing moves at a pace that would feel right at home alongside classic arcade FPS energy. The crossover is niche, but once the rhythm clicks, the loop becomes oddly meditative in that fast-hands, slow-brain way. The structural bones are straightforward. You pick an Ancestor - each tied to a different elemental identity, fire, ice, arcane, lightning and so on - and drop into one of nine portal locations, each with distinct environments, monster rosters, and a boss waiting at the end. Between levels, a hub lets you spend run-earned currency on permanent upgrades or unlock additional Ancestors. Mid-run, every kill feeds experience, and each level-up presents a randomised selection from a pool of 30-plus passive cards, each upgradeable multiple times. The RNG here reads as genuinely fair: you will rarely feel robbed of a strong build, and the variety across runs is real enough that a second session plays meaningfully differently from the first. Where the game earns its goodwill is in the kinetic feel of casting. Managing active spells as primary attacks while stacking passive card synergies creates a low-floor, high-ceiling build game that casual players can enjoy immediately and theorycrafters can sink time into optimising. Weaving through incoming projectiles while watching your own spell volleys light up the screen has a tactile satisfaction that the price point does not prepare you for. The sound design and vibrant, stylised visuals hold up their side of the bargain too - this is a game that knows it is small and compensates with colour and noise. The friction is real though, and worth naming clearly. Movement has a stiffness to it, particularly when surrounded: the dash does not always respond cleanly in crowded situations, and the jank is noticeable enough to cost lives. The death penalty - losing a portion of your run gold before returning to the hub - slows early progression in a way that can feel disproportionate before you have unlocked a meaningful base of upgrades. Controller support is listed, but community threads flag ongoing issues with gamepad cursor behaviour, so keyboard and mouse remains the safer choice for now. This is Early Access in the truest sense: a working, enjoyable core with visible rough edges the developer is actively filing down. For what it asks of your time and goodwill, the game delivers a surprisingly distinct experience. The developer has signalled plans to expand toward extraction and deckbuilding mechanics, which is either exciting or concerning depending on your appetite for ambition in an unfinished product. Right now, taken as it stands, this is a small game doing an unusual thing competently. I root for the ones like this.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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