Mages of Mystralia
In the kingdom of Mystralia, it takes more brains than brawn to succeed. You will face down giant, powerful creatures and navigate treacherous terrain. You will encounter puzzles that confound even the wisest of the old sages. And you must overcome obstacles put in place by people who do not want you to succeed. Your path will not be easy. In Mages of Mystralia, you play as Zia, a young girl who discovers that she has been born with an innate sense of magic. Unfortunately, magic has been banned, so she strikes off to train on her own to gain some control over her powers. On her journey, she meets other exiled mages and, discovers runes with magical properties and realizes that she can combine these runes in millions of different ways to come up with completely new spells.
Steam User 1
This game sat in my library for some time before I tried it, and it was a very surprisingly pleasant experience. It was a bit short for my liking, not in the sense that it wasn't long enough but in the sense that I didn't get enough time with all my spell customizations. With that in mind, the spell customization in this game is something wild that I wish there was more of in other games. By the end I was raining fire that exploded over the entire screen, making whisps of electricity launch out of a shield that pulled enemies and items in, creating pillars of stone that created walls to protect me while obliterating enemies. Finding the balance between powerful spells and MP management is difficult at first but once you understand it you can almost literally rain the heavens down from the sky and turn all your enemies into dust; but it takes time, which gives the player a sense of learning along with the character.
The story is okay, it's not going to keep you at the edge of your seat and it's pretty obvious who the big bad is in the first few scenes of the game, but it's not bad. It just clearly wasn't the focus of the development as the gameplay experience seems to be first, which is a good idea for a team this small. That said, the lore and worldbuilding is fantastic, significantly better than the plot, and the game is set up for a sequel which I hope we see, Borealis studios has an announcement coming up and I hope it's more of anything like this.
The downside of the game are few and far between, in my opinion the spellcraft learning curve is pretty big and enemy design is very basic, and in a game where your entire offensive kit is your MP, the enemies that block your MP usage seem cheap and unfair, but you are given enough at your disposal once you "solve" the gameplay that it becomes a nonissue, but for those that have a hard time figuring it out that can be extremely punishing.
Steam User 1
Unique and interesting spellcrafting system, decent metroidvania gameplay, decent story and writing. My only complaint is that most of the fight difficult comes from huge groups of enemies swarming and preventing you from getting attacks off without constantly kiting around the room, which gets old. Boss fights were interesting enough, though.
Steam User 0
I loved most of this game. While the storytelling is imperfect and the balancing is occasionally suspect, the overall joy of carefully handcrafting modular spells is just incredible. For anyone that enjoys Path of Exile's support gems or Zachtronic's games that include linear "code" through symbols, give this a try!
Steam User 0
This game is absolutely delightful. The magic system is it's strongest feature by far: you make your own spells using building blocks provided, and you can make it do some wacky stuff. My personal favorite was making a statue that exploded about three times a second, destroying everything around it. I love this game, and I highly recommend it
Steam User 0
Nice games,......very impressive spell system with fun and challenging puzzles....
far exceed my expectation.
Story abit short.........
Problem is when I mixed up all the spells creating an ultimate spell....my computer kinda freeze, cant handle all the mixed spell...
overall very very good indie game...
Steam User 0
Fun game with fun spell mechanics. It's almost a metroidvania, but it's really straightforward.
The game had potential for a sequel but I think the devs are gone. Ends in a kind of cliffhanger, has a "What's gonna happen next time" but also has a conclusion for the game.
I would recommend to play the game in the easy difficculty, not because it's hard (I beat it in Archmage mode) but because some of the combat it's kinda janky.
Steam User 0
Mages of Mystralia is Amazing! From the spell system to the adventure to the orchestral music, this is a Must Play game.
Overall, the game isn't hard. It'll carry you along as you poke into new areas and come up with wicked fun new spells.
This is one of those rare, high quality titles that belongs in your library.