Spells and Secrets [Review]
Spells and Secrets is a rouge-like game that uses wizards and magic. You start off with your classic spells of magic missile and levitate but as you go through the maze like school you are able to gather experience to buy more. Players have to buy the spells in order though, luckily you only need to buy the base spell and not the upgrades. After an hour-long run I was able to gather 2000 experience, with the base spells all costing 500 I was able to buy all the first and second year spells quickly.
The gameplay itself is simple and self explanatory, you go through your school that has been magically turned into a maze that changes upon each run. You use magic to fight the enemies and get to the bosses, finding and rescuing fellow students along the way. The game is very easy which makes it good for a younger audience, the bosses only use one attack so if you stand back and use a magic missile you will be fine.
Playing in multiplayer only makes the game easier, but it also makes it more entertaining as you can have a friend play through the entire game with you. The health potions constantly regenerate so if you manage to buy one, as long as that player stays up, it doesn't matter if the other player continuously dies since you can revive them. The regular enemies don’t seem to be much of a problem either as long as you continue to keep your distance, which is easy since you are well equipped with tons of projectile spells. Though, personally, the magic armadillos did give me a run for my money.
An interesting feature of the game is that it uses haptic feedback, making it a bit difficult to use the spells as the controller is fighting back. Though there were a few problems with it, Player 2’s controller did not have the haptic feedback. And when Player 2 would use a spell, it would trigger the haptic feedback on Player 1’s controller. There aren’t a lot of setting options so we weren’t able to turn anything off or try to fix the issue. This isn’t the only controller issue either, if someone is using a spell and the other player pauses the game, the controller will continue to vibrate as if it is using a spell. Spells and Secrets is available for the Playstation, Xbox Series, Nintendo Switch and Steam.
