YOU SHALL NOT PASS (this game by).
Wizordum is the latest in Apogee’s boomer shooter publishing efforts. And while it’s only in early access right now, it’s ready to prove that it’s worth your support.
I’m going to start by pointing out that I am really bad at shooters in general, and boomer shooters in particular; CV-11 I ain’t. I realized somewhere in the third mission that I’m really bad at this game. My aim is crap, and I can’t walk and chew bubblegum the way it wants me to. That said, I’ve still enjoyed my time with Wizordum, because it’s thematically my sort of thing.
As I write this, the story really isn’t in the game. Like at all. As a matter of fact, over the course of the review period, the game updated fairly frequently, each time seemingly invalidating my existing saves. Nonetheless, good game.
You get a number of magical weapons with which to end your foes rightly. The first up are the Fire Rings: they alternate left and right of where you’re aiming. I found they will usually hit objects and walls in dense environments before hitting enemies since the hitbox is relatively large. They’ll also hit the floor if you don’t aim high enough; best for open spaces and closer encounters. From the bindings, the next would be the Spellstriker which, for all intents and purposes, is a shotgun; despite being very good in that regard, I tended to hoard the ammo as they don’t give you as much as they do for other weapons, and never found myself hitting the cap as I did for the other weapons. The Frostweaver not only freezes most enemies after a few hits (leaving them open to an instakill with melee), it’s also one of the fastest firing weapons, though it does have a very short windup; think of it like the chaingun in Doom. The Magic Orb is basically your grenade; it takes a while to go off if you don’t hit enemies directly, does splash damage to everything in range (including you), and I found myself not using it very often. Also, they added a new weapon in a recent patch that consumes Fire Ring ammo at 20 a pop for one big blast; I found the ammo more valuable, but it probably has situational use. There’s also your mace, which gets Raw Mana as ammo to double the power of its strikes.
The levels and art look great. If there was one thing to nitpick, it’d be that a lot of secrets are almost a bit too well hidden; then again, that’s true to the type of game it is, so it’s not necessarily a bad thing. But I still have no clue how to get the last two secrets in E1M2. Or, like, most of them post-mission 2. I might just be blind, though.
The music is excellent. Really, it’s the kind of thing to quest to. Put on your robe and wizard hat and crank it… no, not that way.
Oh, and in case you’re wondering: yes, it has a sewer level, it’s the third one. Yes, it has a Civvie Sewer Count reference. Yes, it might just be the worst level in the game, which is saying something because the game is excellent… and also not yet complete. Yes, Dopefish lives.
So you may be asking yourself if Wizordum is worth the price of admission. The answer is yes, even though it’s still in early access. You would be hard-pressed to find a better based and wizardpilled boomshoot experience. If you only have the money to buy one retro shooter before the end of the year, it should be Wizordum.
*We were provided a code by the developer/publisher for the purposes of this review*
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