Fictorum

If you enjoy the freeform spellcasting of games like Magicmaker, Mages of Mystralia, and Magicka, then you will almost certainly enjoy Fictorum, which delivers a creative spell creation interface that is roughly on par with all of the aforementioned titles in terms of the variety and novelty of the spells that can be made and which vastly outpaces them all in terms of sheer spectacle. The game's focus is almost exclusively on the spellcasting system and dynamic building destruction, so non-destructive environmental interaction is essentially nonexistent, NPC AI is rudimentary, and enemy variety is relatively sparse. With that said, everything is serviceable enough to act as a sufficiently challenging and entertaining playground in which to wreak absolute havoc (we're talking destruction on the level of the highest tier sorceries in Dragon's Dogma, for reference). As stated in the review title, this game is geared towards those who enjoy obsessively tweaking spells to see what sorts of interesting interactions they can concoct, and for those types I think this game is undoubtedly a success; I'm not sure whether there's enough of a game here to entertain anyone else, hence the lukewarm reactions that some have had to it. If you fall in the former camp rather than the latter, then I assure you your money will be well spent. Alternatively, if you enjoy the simple act of reducing peasant villages to rubble then this is the game for you. One final thing worth noting, this game in no way prohibits the creation and casting of spells of such destructive magnitude that they will choke the life out of your CPU. I think this is awesome, but you may not.

The is a cool "be a mage" action RPG. Magic feels overly powerful, and the terrain and buildins are destrucable to a very satisfactory level, even if generally not useful to destroy buildings. Either way, the game is plesant and has something that push me to play untill.. you reach the final boss of first stage. The game end there. Essentially you enter an arena, with a single power creature or a number of magician, and your chance of surviving are minimal. So far, so good. The main problem is: you die, nearly immediatly, and you have to restart the game, from SCRATCH. No, I'm sorry. I don't want to do that. Let me retry the stage, but don't give me a game over like this. After doing this tree times, I have to uninstall the game.

While I wouldn't call Fictorum a great game I definitely think it's worth grabbing on a sale because it's quite interesting and unique. I definitely can't think of any other game that lets me blow up a whole house with a meteorite and then have the random debris from it soar through the air to cave some poor fool's head in.

So, you are a mage with power to destroy entire armies - which is exactly what the game will throw at you. Though not from start. You start with one spell (which can destroy any building nevertheless) and a few enemies, but very soon you get more of both. At the end of each map awaits a boss fight plus a final boss at the end. Defeating him unlocks different mage classes you can play, requiring different tactics (some can fly, some can burrow, some wield swords - there's even Santa Claus, showering foes with exploding Xmas gifts). This, a ton of equipment and three map modes, give quite a lot of replayability. True that graphics are a bit simple, prone to clipping glitches, enemies pretty uninspired and locations somewhat repetitive. But you won't notice that at all in the heat of a battle. Not true however that the first boss will terminate you and the game as someone said! That happens only if you enable permadeath checkbox on your first run. Well, YOU CAN if you're vain enough - but why complain about it then? Without permadeath, you simply click Rewrite history and restart the location. Besides, bosses are quite easy to defeat if you don't just stand there and pelt them with spells (as you can other enemies). Modify your lightning or similar spell with Trap, Familiar or preferably Sentinel rune, then run around to avoid being hit and simply throw the spells behind you. The boss will run into them and die sooner or later. Cheap? Maybe. Point being: you can do it any way you want. Like others said, modifying spells with runes is fun and allows some interesting and satisfying destructive combinations. Yay! Alas, game stability is an issue. I experienced quite a few crashes. Which, combined with very long start-up times, is pretty annoying. So, all-in-all, how good is it? Not perfect for sure, but really fun to play an overpowered wizard, destroying (or not) whatever and however you want. It's up to you. For €8 it's a steal. Even moreso on a sale.