A while ago I asked for wizard movies, which I am still slowly watching. Finished the Last Unicorn few months ago and need to look at the list again later to watch another movie. I'll make a tier list of the movies once I watch them all. But I also really like wizard games and am looking to play more. Im talking about the games on emulators and indie games no one has heard about. You are welcome to suggest popular/mainstream wizard games but just be aware I most likely already have a few hundred hours in each one of those, lol.
If you don't mind light spoilers, I recommend pulling up the noita map. Don't zoom in and look at it, just get a sense for how many unique areas there are. And then remember that it loops left and right if you go through the wall lol
There is so much hidden in that game. I think there's still one big secret that the community hasn't cracked yet too, even after all these years.
The ones that always hurt me the most are the poly self kills. Like getting an awesome homing wand, and then you get polied and destroyed by your own projectiles.
Unless it interacts with your current frequency and causes a singularity wave resulting in a metatrasmogrification of the spell phase causing it to arcanomorph to Power Dom Top.
This is simple arcanomathmatics, I'm surprised you didn't learn this in mythography 101.
If you're a Power Dom Top and you get hit with Powerword: Submissive Bottom what you will transcollate to is ENTIRELY dependent on what style of metaweave the caster used. You could stay as Power Dom Top, Acranoswitch to Sub Bottom or, more likely, cum then explode.
Someone pointed out to me that Helldivers was made by the same studio as Magicka and I had a flashback to all the accidental deaths and just went "Yeah... that checks out."
A short and absolutely adorable indie platformer about making your own spells. I found this game while randomly scrolling through Steam about a decade ago and am surprised how obscure it has remained. I firmly believe it deserves more attention.
Okay, I may be wrong but I think it's A. Shipwright. I have a bunch of blood spell images I made that have his signature toward the bottom of the image. And the artstyle is nearly 1:1
For anyone wondering the source is A.Shipwright on Instagram, they are one of the best stencil work artists I’ve ever seen, they also have a YouTube called Doodletmego
Arx Fatalis has one of my favorite magic systems ever as you learn runes and then combine them to cast spells in like an arcane syntax. For example you learn the runes first for “create” and “fire” which lets you light torches and the like, but when you next learn “projectile” you can use “create projectile” for a magic missile or “create fire projectile” for fireball. It’s gets increasingly tricky with things like “create life death” being the spell to summon a zombie.
I'm gonna give a super weird one: Outward
You gain mana via sleep deprivation, at the cost of losing your stamina, and to gain your arcane powers must venture into conflux mountain, a big purple mountain at the start of the game.
It's balanced for 2 players and supports split screen or online play. It's sequel comes out this year.
Tactical Breach Wizards, Terraria, and Noita are my go to recommendations. TBW for the humor and writing, Terraria because it's awesome (and I love that one poster who just posts terraria item icons), And Noita to punish you for thinking you were good at games.
Or you can do what I do, and start injecting wizardly shit into other games. I've been using random people's flairs and memes from this sub as Ori Rando seeds for over a year now and keeping track of the results. I might be clinically insane for keep track of these, but it's been a ton of fun. And you get to go from the early commentary where I didn't know wtf I was doing to now, where I do, but I'm often too high to do it right lol
It's been infinitely amusing first trying to find random lines I can use as a seed, and then even more fun trying to make narrative sense out of the randomizer logic lol
There's probably a ton of honorable mentions, like all the random D&D-esq RPGs. But recommending BG3 seems silly, even if it does have a ridiculous amount of magic potential to play with.
Noita has the best magic system of any game I've ever played. I am constantly looking for games with a magic system like that one. You actually feel like a mad genius when it works. And when it doesn't, well, that's why there's so few wizards.
In the second one, the main character is a witch, though she fights with a mix of weaponry and magic. There's a hub where you sometimes cast rituals, is cool.
And yes both are roguelikes, but the magic is more a theme in the second one. Of course both games are about gods so they can be considered "magic" but only the second is flavored as such. Both are incredible and worth playing in any case.
Might not be quite what you're looking for, but I'll go in a different direction.
Definitely Wizards, an (extremely) rules-lite TTRPG. Great for when you have some colleagues visiting from other towers. Break out the booze and rods of wonder and give it a quick read before the party starts!
/unwiz
I really went to play Ars Magica one day but alas, every time I check to find people to play it I find none. (Or I do find a group but they don't want new to the game players)
morrowind, a mega ton of spell effects to use and they can all be combined in various ways by making new spells. My favorite was a spell of fortify speed and demoralize so that my target would run away in fear at light speed.
More witch than wizard but I really love Cosmic Wheel: Sisterhood, it’s a choose your adventure visual novel with a very neat literal-deck-building mechanic
Orb of Creation! It describes itself as an "active incremental-puzzle" game, where you gather mana and resources to cast and craft new spells, buy upgrades, and ultimately use your wizard magic to recreate the world. It's a great game, but the only drawback is that the solo dev released the game as early access and has since taken a long hiatus from developing it any further. There's plenty to do, it's just not technically complete. Still worth checking out, especially because of how wizard-centric it is.
Oh edit to add: Ziggurat 2 is a magic-wielding first person shooter where you run through dungeons fighting hordes of monsters. I haven't played much of it, but it's an interesting take on the shooter genre.
Fair enough. Make sure to play the hell out of Terraria vanilla before going to modded, and then play every other content mod first, before calamity, bc from my experience, once you play calamity, you can't ever go back.
Also, when you get to playing modded, the best mods to play with as QoL are Vein Miner, Magic Storage, and More Pylons. These 3 absolutely make the game so much more fun. No more need to tediously mine every single block or ore, no more need to sort your storage, no more need for Chest Monsters everywhere, and A nylon for almost every biome. I'm not kidding, there are like 6 new pylons added, an evil biome pylon, 3 different Sky Pylons, Hell Pylon, and even a Dungeon Pylon. It's so nice
I mean, my default answer is Hogwarts Legacy, but I feel like that’s a bit of a cop out. If you have a VR setup, I’m told that Waltz Of The Wizard is pretty fun! Can’t say I’ve tried it myself though.
I have Hogwarts Legacy but my computer sucks. I plan on getting a better one once Ive finished saving up enough money. Currently got like 1,400 saved up. And I do plan on buying Waltz of the Wizard one day.
There's one in development called Wizard Cats that I found somewhere on reddit a while back. It seems like they're currently in playtesting, I haven't bothered getting access to that yet, but the game seems interesting. The main unique mechanic is like an AI driven spell crafting system, but I'm not sure how that works now, I think they've changed some things around recently. The idea is basically that you create your own custom spells. Conceptually it seems sort of like Magicka.
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous has a lot of cool magic classes to play as and you can become one of several bosslike entities like a lich, angel, or demon
I love WotR. It's character creation and level-up system allows for such crazy builds. Im playing as a Kitsune Hag-Bound Witch that uses Scythes and Summoning while the Mythic Path is Trickster
/uw i like being warlock* class in destiny 2. i LOVE being able to wield weapons while also casting FIREBALL GRENADE. D2 might not be Wizardy wizardy, buuuut theres plenty of outfits you can see as wizardy and the combat is some of the most satisfying combat i've ever played.
*not technically a true wizard, but mages are mages.
isn't Yomi a slur or something so they changed the name? I remember looking it up why the name changed once. Hold on, let me google it. Huh, it's just the name of some card game. I think it's dumb though because yomi is a term in japanese. So it's like they copyrighted/trademarked (i dont know laws enough lel) the word "read". Which is VERY dumb imo. So for legal reasons the name changed. Neatos. But yeah, Ive played the game before. I enjoy it.
I’ll throw a recommendation out to playing either of the Pathfinder videogames. Kingmaker if you want a fairly grounded plot about founding a kingdom and all the dramas that come with defending your new home, or Wrath of the Righteous if you want a high fantasy power trip. If you’re morally bankrupt, WotR’s Lich path has represented being a master of undeath better than any game I’ve seen in a long time, but if you’re a good dude at heart, there’s plenty of good and characterful choices to be a hero. Obviously you can play these games as Not A Wizard, there’s also classes like Alchemist to do wacky alchemical shenanigans, or the Magus to live out your swordmage fantasies. Apparently there’s also the option to be a “wah-ree-uh”, but I don’t know what that means.
Be forewarned; they’re both based on the original ruleset for the Pathfinder tRPG so they’re mechanically dense as oatmeal, and will brutally murder you if aren’t reasonably confident in build making. Lower difficulty settings are genuinely advised if you’re unfamiliar with the rules. Hell, I am familiar with them and I still played on just Normal, which is more forgiving than the “rules as written” Core difficulty. Oh, and they’re both like 100+ hour games, which demand a LOT of reading.
Spellbreak is a really good game, at least what I've played of it
it's like a battle royal where the weapons are elemental gauntlets and spell runes, you pick a starting element (which has some bonuses with the selected element that you can't get with your secondary) and then you find other gauntlets in the map, then you have runes like invisibility, flight, teleportation, etc
so you can have a poison gauntlet as your main (which makes your poison leave pools) then set it on fire, or combine fire and earth gauntlets to send blazing fissures towards your opponent.
the official game shut down a few years ago, but elemental fracture is the fan revival, gives you all the cosmetics. I haven't had the time to figure out how to get actual games running yet, but even just fucking around in the training area is good fun
You can download the comunity version which has all cosmetics from the official site elemental fracture has new content. There's a community discord server with both public servers and fairly regular events
Also to force start a game with bots filling up slots press ~ and type "StartMatch" more info on the readme: https://github.com/ElementalFracture/Guides/wiki/Console-Commands
Soul Sacrifice on PS Vita. I'm sure you can emulate it somehow.
You're a wizard who uses offerings to cast spells depending on what the offering is. The feather allows for quick dashes, and enchanted stone creates a rock weapon to smack people with. You use your wizard arm to either absorb life essence or purify corrupted souls, changing your physical appearance and the story. The best aspect of the game is when you're near death, you can sacrifice a part of your body to get ultimate power. It's even better in multiplayer because you can choose to save your incapacitated teammates or sacrifice them for power.
Magika 1 and 2 , Noita, Rift Wizard 2, spellmasons, Mages of Mystralia.
Those are my recommendations and below there's a rather lengthy explanation of each of them. I can go into more detail about any of them if you wanna ask!
Here goes my rant:
Magika is a twin stick shooter where you combine elements to make spells, it allows for a huge number of combinations but they are purposefully clunky to cast. It doesn't use a mana system or any limitations really other than how fast can you arrange sequences of elements to make the spells, that to me feels like it represents the complex casting process that's skill dependent and often not represented in game. It's fun, really chaotic and it has coop.
Noita is a roguelite where you customize wands with a really cool spell system. The game has a lot of hidden secrets and is the kind of system made for you to break it.
Rift Wizard 1 and 2 are rather minimalistic roguelites where you progress through floors. And you gather "memory orbs" the catch here is that you are an extremely powerful wizard with amnesia. You use memory orbs to pay to learn spells from a huge list, cherrypicking what you think synergizes well with what you have. The first game has less systems its juat you and your spells. The second game adds big enemies and pieces of equipment.
Spellmasons is a game you play in sort of arenas, and it's turn-based. Each turn you queue chains of spells and modifiers to tune how they work and slaughter tons of enemies.
Mages of Mystralia is another top down twin stick shooter. This one has some DNA in common with Magicka but instead of making spells on the fly, you make them from a menu, putting pieces on a grid. For instance. Fire element by itself makes you cast a still dot of fire, but you then put a movement modifier connected to it and you have a firebolt, you add an explosive modifier and you have a fireball. It's really cool.
If you have a Nintendo DS Emulator, Lost Magic is a pretty damn cool Wizard game. You cast spells by drawing runes on the screen, which range from damage spells, buffs, debuffs, healing, and you can even capture monsters and use them as allies in RTS style gameplay.
Immortals of Aveum is a FPS magic shooter which I quite enjoyed. Avowed has a nice selection of wizardly options. I also recently picked up a fun little arena combat game called MageQuit. If you want an MMO, Project: Gorgon has so very many types of magic and it all-around quirky and fun.
Dark Messiah of Might and Magic is more mainstream but for an almost 20-year old game (2006) it holds up well. It's an RPG, so you will need to spec into being a magic user over sword-and-board or stealth (also fun). I re-install it on my orb from time to time and enjoy a nice replay of it. It has a demo on Steam if you want to check it out before spending the $10.
Witching Stone, relatively newly released match puzzle, dungeon crawling, roguelite. You get spells and must match gems in order to cast them. Been playing it recently and it's quite fun
It’s not exactly a wizard game but The Bloodline on steam has a pretty robust magic system. Think Skyrim if it was made by a single passionate developer who’s a mad lad and adds things for the fun of it. He’s also super active on the subreddit which is cool to see!
I would recommend the minecraft mods hexcasting and ars nouvaue, both add modular spell casting systems which make you feel like your making spells over just using them.
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u/spootlers 1d ago
Noita is fun. Each run can vary from getting destroyed by a frog to basically becoming a god.