What’s not to like about gunslinging wizards with magic bullets? Wizard with a Gun is a new survival roguelike game, where you do just that. We’ve taken the game for a spin in our first ever co-op review. We’ve played the game continuously with two players. Read on to find out what it’s like in our Wizard with a Gun co-op review.
Return to glory
Wizard with a Gun takes place in a place of magic where the world has been torn apart by magical entities. It’s up to you, the wizard(s), to figure out what happened and return the world to its former state. You’ll do this step by step, as every time you leave your tower and embark into the wilderness, you’ll have five minutes before the world starts to rupture again. After these five minutes, you’ll either return to your base safely or die trying and you’ll get another chance in classic roguelike fashion.
These five minutes may seem short, but there are ways around it. During your run you’ll sometimes meet arcane anomalies you can destroy to increase your timer. And when the five minutes are up, the chaos starts with meteors raining down from the sky and portals with anomalies spawning everywhere. You’ll want to return to your base as soon as possible, because dying means losing all your collected materials and progress.
Scavenge and craft
You read that right, materials. Because a big part of Wizard with a Gun is survival and crafting. In the Wilderness, it’s all about survival and scavenging. Almost everything in the game can be destroyed and scavenged. And every material is useful for something. While ultimately, you’ll go scavenging for specific materials, at the start it’s all about getting loads of the basic materials such as wood and stone. While playing in co-op, it was great to be able to split up as soon as we could to hoard as many materials as possible. Even enemies drop loot and materials and you might even find some new weapons lying around. One downside in our opinion was that new weapons were pretty rare. It would’ve been a cool part to be able to gear up your character besides all the crafting.
When you make it back to base, it’s time to craft and upgrade. Base building is a huge part of the game. Whether you’re alone or together, you can craft your magical tower the way you like. One of the first things you’ll do is build upgrade stations to upgrade your weapons and craft magical bullets (More on that later). But a big part of the base building is that you can literally create it the way you like. There’s a lot of cosmetic buildings in the game and you can create all sorts of tiles. Want to build a charred fire themed tower? Go ahead, just bring lots of charcoal. Or are you interested in a water based theme? Bring loads of water materials. There’s also tons of statues, furniture and so on to create the wizard tower of your dreams.
Expand your recipes
One of the coolest aspects of getting access to all these cosmetics and crafting stations is that you learn them through recipes. This in itself isn’t new, but the way you obtain them is. You have a recipe book which you can use in the game world to “scan” enemies and objects. When you find a new object in the world, you can scan it to add it to your recipe book. Once obtained, you’re free to craft it. This gives an extra dimension to exploring.
Even though you’re a wizard, combat isn’t done using magic specifically. You’ll use guns, as the title suggests. Combat is very basic however. It’s a twin stick shooter and the variety in combat comes from bullets. Different kinds of bullets have different effects. You’ll start with a gun and normal bullets. But as you progress, you’ll be able to craft and upgrade flaming bullets, frost bullets, poison bullets etc. Every bullet does exactly what you’d expect them to do. When playing together, you can easily gang up on bosses and stronger enemies because they’ll always target one player. I imagine it’s a lot harder on your own. The difficulty doesn’t come from complex mechanics, but the tougher enemies are true bullet sponges.
Repetitive progression
In order to progress in Wizard With A Gun, you’ll need to find gears. They’re often tied to specific enemies or mini bosses. You’ll be able to find them by exploring or by finding maps which show their location. Once you’ve gained enough gears, you’ll unlock access to the current zone’s boss. Boss fights are tougher, but once again, the difficulty mainly comes from their health pools rather than mechanics.
Once you’ve defeated a boss, you’ll be able to advance to the next tier. The next tier is always a new zone on the world map. Ultimately, it’s one giant map, no separate maps. While this isn’t a problem in itself, the issue Wizard with a Gun has here, is that every run you have limited time and have to start in the starting zone. Making your way to one of the other zones can cost precious time. You can find portals which offer shortcuts, but it took us several runs to even find one in the second zone. It would have made a lot more sense to unlock a new starting point automatically in new zones.
Upgrade away
As mentioned, you’ll be able to upgrade your bullets and passives at your base using crafting materials. Fortunately, when one player unlocks an upgrade it applies to the other player as well. So you can both work towards different goals if you like. It’s an enjoyable way to play together, especially as the base building aspect offers no stress. There’s no timer and enemies to barge on the door. It’s a safe space. One of the great QoL features in the game is being able to put a chest with materials next to a crafting station, so it automatically takes materials from the chest. There’s also loads to unlock, even cosmetics. This also means it’s a huge grind. The power level of enemies rises steeply per tier, which means a lot of grinding to get ready for the next tier. Fortunately, being able to do this together makes it a shared burden and fun at the same time.
We didn’t find a lot of variation in terms of gameplay. As we progressed, we would’ve liked some more variation. It’s always the same. You rewind time, go on a five to ten minute run and gather as many gears from mini bosses as you can. Or scavenge for materials. New zones on the map offer different enemies but mostly of the same type. The gameplay loop is the same. To combat repetitiveness, some more unique mechanics per zone would’ve been great.
Unique art style
Graphically, Wizard with a Gun has a pretty clear aesthetic. There’s some colors but not too bright. Everything matches great and you can customize your wizard to stand out as much as you like. It has an interesting art style, definitely unique to the game. There’s also loads of cosmetics to discover. The game is accompanied by a great laid back guitar sound track. It matches the gunslinging fantasy really well, as it has a real western vibe to it.
Conclusion
In the end, Wizard with a Gun is a fun co-op experience. The game might even be best to play together. Building your own tower with a friend seems like a great experience, especially because it’s relaxing in contrast to wilderness gameplay. While combat is very basic and the gameplay loop can become repetitive, Wizard with a Gun has enough going for it to represent hours of fun with a friend.
Pros:
- Base building offers a lot of options
- Lots to scavenge, discover and upgrade
- Unique setting
Cons:
- Repetitive gameplay loop
- Simple combat
Grade: 7
That was it for our Wizard With A Gun Co-op Review. Wizard with a Gun is available through Boosteroid and GeForce Now. Be sure to follow us on Twitter right here.