Today I took an extended lunch break, and now I have to pay the Reaper back by staying after work. Luckily, I spent my penance playing a demo of Witching Stone, a game that applies shape-matching magic to, well, magic. The game, which is out September 16, is a pixelated sorcery that “combines elements of puzzle games, roguelite, and deckbuilders,” the way you combine a red circle and two gold triangles to summon lightning.
Plot: You’re an anime sorceress exploring a node-based dungeon map. Some nodes contain treasure chests, camps, and shopkeepers. Others trigger turn-based battles. Instead of simply selecting Firaga from a menu, however, you must combine resources on a grid displayed beneath the fighting characters.
Each spell requires a different combination of shapes, and while you can cast several at once, you can only draw a line through a certain number of squares per turn. Casting a spell also removes those shapes from the grid, causing others to fall from above, so in addition to dialing in the optimal magic, you’re trying to remove unwanted shapes and set up combinations for the next turn.
If you’ve ever played the great Puzzle Quest games or Capcom’s Puzzle Fighter series, you’ll find this all very intuitive. Like Puzzle Quest, there’s a progression system. In this case, it’s about expanding your spellbook and tweaking your spells. For example, the Giant Slayer mod makes your lightning do more damage at the cost of always targeting the strongest enemy. Even from the 15 minutes I spent playing, it seems like there’s room for scary potions, and what’s a witch who doesn’t deal in scary potions? Cheating, that’s what. Embarrassing.
All in all, it was worth staying here after five hours… find the demo on Steam. I’m generally always in favor of video game magic that involves actual spellcasting – that way they don’t feel like guns. If you despise grid puzzles and would prefer a real-time embodiment of it all, let me combine three curly blue diamonds to create a Hex Of Greater Displacement and move you towards Magicka.
