Hands on with Wizard with a Gun - Preview
Devolver Digital were kind enough to let me loose into the world with a gun, because I was a wizard and everyone knows that wizards pack heat. Ok, so rather than actually let me loose into our world with a gun, they gave me some hands on with the game Wizard with a Gun and the hook was I had to save the world, rewinding days as I went.
The premise is that you have been selected to save the world simply because the other person died and when you're transported into this world you will awaken without anything on you. Except of course for your hat, robes, boots, gloves and other assorted wizard accessories. Pretty soon though you're given the instructions on how to create your very own gun and while it looks like a gun and shoots like a gun, it is in fact a magic spell throwing device, those spells just happen to be in the form of bullets. Upon crafting the very first gun I was tasked with obtaining some magic, known in the game as Archana, and to do that I had to fight chaos. Chaos is the enemy of the world, too much chaos and the world falls apart, but in order to help you out you need to find chaos. In this particular instance the chaos was not too far away from where I needed to be and so I was able to find it and cast an entire clip worth of magic spells at it.
With some magic on hand, I was able to activate the portal to transport me to the safe area, this acts as the base between runs and also the spawn point should you die. It is in this safe space where you'll be able to research new spells, or bullet types if you prefer, craft new ammunitions, potions and much more. Before any of that can be done however you need to repair the vast majority of equipment, as time flows very differently outside things in the safe area have not aged well. Generally, this means punching everything that is broken in order to break it down into even more useful materials and yes you can shoot everything with your gun, but punching doesn't waste bullets. Once a few items were restored and I had obtained the gears that were lying around I was able to restore the stone clock and begin exploring the world.
This is where the rogue-like elements come in, each time you want to enter the world you have to rewind time and it never rewinds to the exact same moment, which is the games way of providing randomization. When you start a run, the map will be blank, enemies will be in new positions and even the gate itself we'll be placed in differently on the on the map. Each run will have a number of quests that you can attempt to close out, some might just be obtaining materials to build a new piece of furniture or others might be to obtain new gears to rewind time even further. The game controls like a twin-stick shooter, but you can also dodge roll out of the way. Each of the guns you can shoot has a limit on its range, as well as other behaviour, so getting close to your targets is crucial. Enemies and the world at large can all be shot as you see fit, some friendly critters will even wave to you as you pass, assuming you don’t shoot at them first. Understanding when to reload or retreat is important, as the world won’t show you everything, so sometimes a single enemy might be all you see, before you get ambushed by many more. Thankfully, the first few runs there's no real restriction as the game is still letting you try it out, however after those the chaos descends upon the world.
This is when the game actually started to be fun for me, up to this point it was a lot of new terminology and a whole lot of nothing interesting. With chaos in the mix however, there's a timer added to your runs and if the timer runs out chaos erupts. What this means is that with the time still counting down you can just explore the world, attempt to close off any objectives you need to and resupply everything you can get your hands on. Once the timer has ended chaos starts to spawn almost infinitely and while you can take them down, they don't stop spawning and the only real option you have is to run back to the portal and return to the safe area. Now as you're exploring Chaos will spawn singular instances, which means you can take them down and if you take them down you are rewarded with both arcana and with time. Takedown larger chaos and you get more time and you'll have to ensure a balance between pushing forward for your objective and taking down any chaos that's spawn nearby.
As this was a demo build there obviously wasn't a full range of things that I could get into, I did however find the potion making facility along with the metal fabrication tool and on one run I found a sewing machine. The more runs that I did heading back into the world and the more things that I found, I just kept making me want to head back in again, which is the sign of a very good rogue like. Sadly however it seemed my desire to keep rushing back into the world was my undoing as when I got to the boss of the area I was severely beaten. While not a huge issue in terms of the equipment that I had, it was a blow to my ego, as I thought myself untouchable up to that point.
Wizard with a Gun is an interesting game, from the outset I figured this was another slow twin stick shooter type game that would eventually open up into a larger world. What I did not expect was that my time with the game would fly by the more I was playing it and you have to remember again this was just one portion of the full experience. How this shakes out in the long run we will have to wait and see but I'm very tempted just to reload and jump back in again.
The demo for the game is available now, the full release will
