Connor
Nobody here has a face.
We are short figures in patchwork dusters and wide brimmed hats.
We have guns but they don’t shoot bullets… at least, not the type you are used to.
Magic is in the air, literally in our case. We are in a flying ship with a few other arcane masters.
We travel a sea of broken islands floating above an unknown expanse of chaos.
Our mission is to save the world, which is going to be difficult since it ended five minutes ago.
Gonna need a time machine for this one.
Quick question, what do arcane magic and the western genre have in common?
If your answer was ‘not much’ then yeah, you got it right. This wasn’t a trick question.
Wizard with a Gun is the latest from Galvanic, published by Devolver Digital; and it’s the mashup we always wanted but never knew how to ask for.
Right from the word go, we tonally know what to expect.
The main menu features a lone, faceless wizard cowboy tending a campfire at night.
A threadbare cloak and a big hat concealing a face shrouded in darkness but for two shining eyes sits on a log in quiet contemplation.
Eyes in the bushes watch from beyond.
The music lulls you in gently, giving you a moment to absorb the crackling of fire, the crickets at night, the hooting owl… then the western strings start up and balance is struck between haunted house and lone gunslinger.
Hovering over the menu options on the side produces the twang of a guitar chord. Strafing up and down makes it sound like you are running your fingers over the strings. A feature so simple and effortlessly cool I’m jealous I didn’t think of it.
The ambiance is complete.
After a brief cutscene showing a small group of wizards crashing a ship after some floating islands explode we start the tutorial as the only survivor of the crash.
We are told by a purple phantom of shifting digital noise that the world has basically already ended and our mission is to turn back time and try and stop it.
“If you fail, nobody will be around to blame you” Says the scruffy stranger we meet sitting on the edge of eternity.
Reassuring in a bittersweet way.
Wizard with a Gun’s artstyle is a bold, almost cartoonish drawn art in the same family as ‘Don’t Starve’ with thick lines and vibrant colour.
The entire game is played on floating islands amidst the end of days while the ghosts of a shattered land drift by in the background.
The shadows are the unsung champions of the game’s visual presentation, absolutely everything is cast in a blend of light and shadow that makes the scene come to life.
Speaking of Don’t Starve… gameplay.
We are a camera centred character on an isometric game world composed of defined squares.
On every expedition we launch from our wizards’ tower located somewhere outside of time we have five minutes to wander in relative safety before the world starts ending again and things get real dangerous real fast.
We can delay that moment by destroying the portals that pop up around us during the night cycle, but eventually toxic unlife energy is going to start falling from the sky and it’s time to call it quits.
This is, of course, the time when some of the best and rarest materials for gathering become available, making risk assessment one of the biggest elements at play.
Do you play it safe and make for the gate back home?
Or stay and kill a few more twisted chaos abominations and harvest their energy?
Crafting is the backbone of our misadventures.
There’s a library of upgrades, magic bullets, modifiers to those magic bullets, items and boosting potions we can make in the tower to help us claim greater rewards on the field so we can craft better gear in the tower.
I think of this type of cycle and repeated reward as the X-COM loop, even though the games couldn’t be more different otherwise.
Blame Yahtzee Croshaw.
Naturally for a game named ‘Wizard with a Gun’, the emphasis here is on… well the guns.
Living our daydream of the moment Gandalf gives up and pulls up with an AK we are here to live that blend of arcane wonder and gunslinging action.
We craft our first one out of nothing but a block of wood because wizards can just do that and from then on it’s our job to research and craft the weirdest and most destructive bullets we can get our hands on.
There’s your standard elemental interactions, fire burns, poison does tick damage, cold slows… you’ve all been here before. You can get charming bullets that can make enemies fight for you, bullets that summon walls, bullets that coat things in flammable oil. Everything can be upgraded and there are no class restrictions, your options are infinite.
Flavour text for the pile of stuff dropped on you seems limited at first glance.
There’s a couple of throwaway lines for common items, but nothing impressive.
Then you pick up a book that can scan things and are told the story of how books like this, made to write themselves and learn autonomously, almost destroyed the college that invented them after becoming self aware.
Now we are running around with the magical equivalent of the smartphone if it was running Skynet OS.
From then on in, story is trickled in. Details of the world whose ruins we stand in and the factions that once inhabited it.
The music is impeccable, excellent. I could sit here and listen to nothing else if it weren’t for the fact that I have only five minutes until existence begins to fall apart at the seams.
Magic bullets have their own associated sounds, oil bullets squelch, fire bullets flare.
You’re a wizard with a gun and Galvanic wanted to make sure you knew that.
This game sucked me in and didn’t let go.
Every step forward revealed five more steps I can take and I can already see myself doing multiple playthroughs to focus on different areas of gunmancy.
A few minor bugs here and there are easily forgiveable on my way to saving the world with guns and magic.
Released: October 2023
Rating: PG
Platforms reviewed: PC
Genre: Shooter
Developer: Galvanic Games
Publisher: Devolver Digital