Wizard with a Gun Review

Wizard with a Gun is an isometric online cooperative sandbox survival game developed by Seattle-based indie studio Galvanic Games and published by the always-excellent Devolver Digital.

In Wizard with a Gun, the world is ending. Well, actually more like ended. It's too late to stop it by the time the game starts. However, you've managed to somehow make it to a tower that exists outside of time and houses a special artefact: the Chronomancer's Wheel. It can reverse time before the apocalypse. But, you're a gunomancer: a wizard who casts spells using the guns they find and the bullets they craft. It's up to you and maybe some friends to push back the apocalypse and save the world.

While the basic setup is pretty simple, there is definitely quite a bit of lore to uncover as you play. NPCs to meet that expand the world a little, books to read that explain certain concepts, and scanning enemies and items will both unlock descriptions and new items to craft. While you can ignore it very easily, it's pretty interesting to discover these things.

Save the world... by killing, destroying, and looting everything. Don't worry, it'll all reset.

A basic run goes like this: You'll enter through the gateway in the Tower and start killing stuff until you either die or leave. Every time you go back, the world will change, so no two trips are ever quite the same. You are given a main quest objective but with no steps to complete it, so you're free to do whatever you want… in the given time limit. You only have five minutes before the apocalypse starts, where the powerful Chaos monsters will spawn relentlessly until you are killed or get to a gateway to leave. However, killing the stronger ones can delay the inevitable by seconds or minutes, so it's important to regularly deal with them when they pop up. It's highly advised you know what battles to pick, as if you die, you lose all your items, which hurts, but it isn't that bad in the long run. At least it doesn't take away your weapons and ammo, but it does make item collection that much longer.

Although just because almost everything is trying to kill you, it doesn't mean it's non-stop action. You will need to collect tons of resources like wood, stone, arcane tomes, small brains, and other such items to further go down the research trees and keep yourself stocked up on bullets and items. You'll also need to collect ancient gears from higher-level enemies and area bosses called "Riders", as they are needed to power up the Wheel enough to unlock new biomes for the world to generate. There isn't a traditional fast travel system, though, relying instead on gateways unlocked in the biome that correspond with the ones in the Tower. This is decent enough, but if you make a mistake, you'll need to reset the time as soon as you leave because the timer drains to zero, and you can't enter back.

I think I have enough research stations...

But enough about a world that will face its destruction hundreds of times a playthrough; let's talk about guns! You won't go far without at least a pistol in your hands, as they're not only used for killing but for exploration and resource mining. Seriously, you're gonna need bullets to get the materials needed to get more bullets. They come in a variety of flavours, from fire and ice to healing and charm, and they don't just affect your enemies but the environment as well, which can be beneficial as it causes drops for specific items (for example, killing a metal enemy with lightning bullets drops charged iron) or to your detriment like setting a forest and the surrounding area, on fire. They can also be further modified with powders that have a variety of interesting effects. You want bullets to track burning enemies, slow down, or pull rather than push? There's a powder for each. You can only have two ammo types for each gun, so it's best to choose wisely based on the type of gun, the effect, and what can be modified with powders. I got pretty deep into it, playing with different combinations to fit my playstyle. Although, I do wish there was a training dummy or something to test my weapons on before I head on an adventure. It also doesn't exactly tell you how to obtain certain items until you collect one based on how you killed the enemy. It can be a bit of a pain to figure out, but it does make sense. For example, if you want toxic ice, you have to kill a poisonous enemy with ice bullets.

I think I talked enough about guns, but what about your home base: the Tower? Well, holy crap, it's huge! Like, it's way bigger than I thought was necessary. Most of the floor may be gone at the start, but that is easily solved with (what else?) a craftable gun that fires flooring. There's also a gun that lets you place down functional stations that contribute to powering up your arsenal or just decorative items to make the place a little more homey. While I did nestle myself in a corner and mostly placed down anything useful, I'd like to go back and make the place much nicer. Making rooms, unifying the flooring, and adding some decoration to make it nice to return to.

The pistol, blunderbuss, and carbine rifle wouldn't be out of place from a classic western... but then I got an Uzi.

Onto technical performance. I didn't run into anything that breaks the game… or any bugs at all. Even on a pre-release, the game ran very smoothly. I did have to cap it at 60 FPS due to my PC, but it never actually dipped below it other than during the only loading screen in the game: when it is loading your save. I couldn't test the co-op for the review, though (mostly because I didn't know anyone), but the single-player by itself is a good enough reason to get the game.

While the resource grind and the time limit can be an annoyance, Wizard with a Gun provides a fun experience for those who love the loop of killing and looting to make yourself better at killing and looting, with a great variety of customisation to ensure that no matter what, you will become some sort of unholy god of destruction.