Galvanic Games’ latest outing, Wizard With A Gun, is a twin-stick shooter with barrels of charm and chaotic action. It’s also an adventure roguelite, with sandbox elements, material gathering, resource management and crafting. On top of that there’s the scanning of objects and enemies, weapon and bullet upgrades, outfit customisation and base building.
If that sounds like a lot, that’s because it kind of is; while some aspects of the game feel magical, others feel bloated and tedious.
The Look
Off the bat we’re treated to a wicked cool opening cinematic. The art is gorgeous, complete with film grain and lens flares that, along with the music, radiate an old western feel. I love it when games make the effort to craft an awesome opening, it really hypes you up for the game and sets the tone of what you’re in for.
Unfortunately though that cinematic is the only one of its kind. I was hoping for a few more throughout the game, marking key events, but no dice. A final cinematic at least would’ve been welcome, to bookend the game; it just feels like a bit of a waste of such a magnificent art style, that we only see once.
Following the opening cinematic you get to design your own wizard. Hats, robes, boots, eye colour etc. Nothing groundbreaking, but enough to put your own stamp on the character.
Of course I just had to pay homage to my boy Vivi from Final Fantasy 8… Well I tried to anyway!
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The main artstyle is also kick-ass, mixing cel-shading with a rich colour palette that really makes the world pop. I felt as if I was playing through a graphic novel about a plucky young wizard with a penchant for weaponry.
The crumbling world floating in space combined with its bird’s-eye view and gunplay, gave me big Bastion vibes, which was great because I bloody loved Bastion.
Enemy design is great. From poisonous swamp frogs and rabid ice wolves, to hard-boiled gunslingers and towering automatons; every enemy type looks unique and badass.
The bright pink, tentacled bodies of the Cthulhu-like creatures of chaos, were both cheery and terrifying at the same time!
Not to forget the bosses and mini-bosses, which are given just as much love. Often much larger in size than your regular foe, as is tradition, making them instantly more imposing.
There are multiple biomes throughout the world; unique buildings, monuments, and plant life fill each one. Giant lizard skulls baking in the desert sun, gnarled and ancient trees growing in swampland, a colossal sword impaled deep into ice; it all adds to the distinctive ambience of each area.
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The Loop
As the titular ‘Wizard with a Gun‘, you’re tasked with exploring the world of The Shatter and fending off the forces of chaos. You’ll have to retrieve missing gears to fix the Chronomancer’s Wheel, a machine that winds back time.
The main gameplay loop goes something like this:
- Teleport to The Shatter with 5 minutes on the clock, counting down to the end of the world. You can extend this time by destroying portals and driving back chaos.
- Explore the world looking for gears, battling all sorts of monsters and gathering all sorts of resources along the way.
- If the timer runs down to zero, (and it will… A LOT), the end of the world will begin. This is where the real chaos begins. Meteors of caustic energy rain down, destroying the very ground you’re walking on, and tentacled creatures portal in to hunt you down.
- Escape with your loot, back to the safety of your tower. Or die and lose pretty much everything you were carrying.
- Once back inside the tower you can deposit your resources, research new abilities and upgrade your equipment.
- Then (if you got any) you can insert your gears into the Chronomancer’s Wheel, wind back time and start the process all over again.
It’s a pretty simple loop that’s made challenging by the local flora and fauna, almost all of whom want to see you dead.
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The more gears you collect, the more of the map you open up. Fix up enough of the wheel and you will unlock a Rider, the area boss. Defeating a Rider will unlock a new biome and the next stage of your adventure.
Pro tip: Hold (X) to vacuum up resources on the ground. Much easier than tapping for each item.
The Systems
Where the game stumbles for me is in the many many systems; there’s just too much going on.
You have ‘The Worldbuilder‘ which allows you to deconstruct objects or fabricate furniture and crafting stations. ‘The Groundlayer‘ which you use to construct different types of flooring, building pathways to inaccessible areas. ‘The First Edition‘ a spellbook that is used to scan everything from enemies to furnishings, unlocking new crafting recipes.
Then there are the numerous crafting stations:
- Research Mechana – Unlocks new bullet types and their workbenches.
- Loading Bench – Craft bullets for your equipped guns and add special effects in the form of ‘powders’.
- Potion Brewing Station – Cook up potions for healing and other effects.
- Sewing Mechana – Change your clothing and add enchantments.
- Furnace – Melt down scrap into metals.
- Lightning Furnace – Electrically charge metals.
- Evaporator – Purify liquids.
- Cauldron – Mix up deadly poisons.
- Ground Construction Research Bench – Unlocks new flooring types to use with The Groundlayer.
- EIGHT separate Research Stations, one for each magic type – Upgrade bullets and unlock new powders.
These all require specific materials to use, which either have to be in your bag or in a chest adjacent to the machine. And there’s the rub; with hundreds of different materials types, very limited carrying capacity and seventeen different machines… It goes from resource management to resource misery.
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You can’t crowd seventeen machines round one chest to pool resources; even if you could fit them in, the chests have a limited capacity. So you’re left having to construct a chest for every two to three machines to draw resources from. Many stations require a mix of common and uncommon materials meaning you can’t just have one chest of metals, one chest of rock types etc.
You also can’t just pick up and rearrange structures, they need to be destroyed and reconstructed, which adds another level of awkwardness.
There’s also the Arcane Annihilator to turn your unwanted junk into Arcana (another type of resource), and craftable storage banks to store your surplus arcana.
I spent over a third of my 15 hour playtime, dealing with tedious resource management; moving between chests and stations, trying to find the items I needed. I don’t understand why the developers didn’t just have one big chest to pool all resources, that doesn’t require your crafting station to be in close proximity. It would’ve removed such a massive headache from the game.
The Combat
In contrast to the slow tedium of resource management, combat is pure chaotic fun. This wizard has a gun and he isn’t afraid to use it!
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There are four types of guns available in the game. A revolver, blunderbuss, carbine and machine gun. Each have their own strengths and I ended up carrying around one of each. Depending on the type of ammo you use you will either have to reload once your clip is empty or wait for a cooldown between each shot.
Ammo is where the game really shines. There are nine types with various sub-types unlockable through research. These range from the simple, like ‘poison’ and ‘cold’ bullets; to the more wacky such as ‘summon’ and ‘teleport’ bullets. Each gun can hold two types of ammo, leading to some killer combinations. Loading one barrel with an ‘oil bullet’ and the other with a ‘burning bullet’, resulted in a fire that burnt hotter with more widespread flames.
The standard ‘shocking bullets’ are great damage dealers in a machine gun, spraying multiple enemies at once, with electricity arcing between them for extra damage. But if you learn how to make ‘lightning strike bullets’ then you start to really add insult to injury. The rounds deal so much damage that there’s a lengthy cool-down between each shot; but by loading three guns with two sets of lightning rounds each, I found I could fire off six shots in a row, enough to put down all but the toughest bosses.
Enemy variety is excellent. There are dozens upon dozens of creatures waiting to take you on. Unicorn-horned goats charge in at full speed, gun-mancers snipe at you from a distance, while sand sharks jump at you wildly. They aren’t just dealing direct damage either, often you’ll be hit with a status condition like burning or poison that will chip away at your precious health.
Riders, the bosses of each biome, are some of the toughest fights in the game (as they should be). They’re often fast, hit like a truck and have devastating AOE attacks that can easily catch you off guard. I learnt early on to never take on a Rider if I wasn’t prepared to lose whatever I was carrying.
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There’s also a dodge-roll to help avoid attacks, though it could’ve been implemented a little better; the cool-down is just that fraction too long to make rolling a viable defensive strategy.
I don’t usually go in for the twin-stick shooter combat style, but this one was just so much fun. Even in the most over the top bullet-hell battle, with projectiles coming from all directions, where I was having to chug potions to hang on by a sliver of health; even then I was still having a blast.
The Final Word
Wizard with a Gun is a game of two halves. Tedious resource management, coupled with bloated crafting and upgrade systems, ultimately feel like a misfire. Thankfully, during combat and exploration the game truly fires on all cylinders; providing chaotic action, fantastically designed enemies and over-the-top fun.
Quest Daily scores Wizard with a Gun: 8/10
Quest Daily was granted early access to Wizard with a Gun by the publisher.
