Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: Alchemist Interactive

My favorite games of 2024, kinda

Well, we’re coming to the end of the year. This year has gone by so fast. Like a blink of an eye, and it’s been the worst year of my life thus far. I lost my soul in February, and I have not gotten it back again. I keep on keeping on, but I feel empty inside.

I have never been in a less festive mood (even though I’m happy for those who celebrate), but I want to do my weird-ass end-of-the-year game awards, anyway. I want to remind everyone that this is not the best games of the years or anythin close to that. This is my list of games that I enjoyed the most this year. I thought there weren’t many games I played, but when I looked at my Steam library, there were more than I had remembered.

Today, I want to talk about three games that I quite enjoyed–and they all came in the second half of the year (for me). Two are indie games whilst one is Triple A. Let’s talk about them in the order that I played them. None of them are my game of the year, of course. There can only be one in that category, and that will be a post on a later date.

Let’s roll.

Best knock-off Hogwarts game with no awful transphobia clinging to its very marrow

Spells & Secrets (Alchemist Interactive).

This is an indie game made by two guys. That’s impressive given the scope of this game. It’s an RNG roguelite adventure tale set in a wizarding school, and that’s basically the gist of the story. In fact, the story is probably the weakest part of the game as it’s just you’re a novice wizard in your first day of wizarding school, and something is wrong with the school. That’s it. Nothing deeper than that. You have tons of classmates, but they’re just randomized characters. I do like the customization of my character and that I got to unlock clothing and a few pieces of jewelry for different achievements. And I could color my hair whenever I wanted. Although, for whatever reason, I could not make my hair true black–why is this a thing? I have found that to be true in more than one game. Black is more like dark brown.

Anyway, the layout of the rooms is procedurally generated, but there are a limited amount of rooms on each floor. Each room has a secret, but there is only one you can solve per floor (the others aren’t activated). I figured out maybe half on my own and had to look up the rest. Also, by the fiftieth time, the innovativeness wore off. I’m not complaining about that, by the way, but just noting it.

I really enjoyed learning the different spells and mixing and matching. However, and maybe this is just the way I play games, once I uncovered all the spells, there was one spell I stuck to the most–barrage. Each spell has eight artefacts you can fine that are modifiers for that spell. I used barrage, shield, and ascend roughly 80% of the time. There were some I never used, which I consider a weakness of the game. I get that different people like different builds (it’s like that in FromSoft games), but there are some spells that I completely ignore (unless I need them to solve a puzzle). I’m sad that the flame spell, bombard, just isn’t that viable for me because it takes f-o-r-e-v-e-r to cast.


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Spells & Secrets–my official review, part three

Yes, this is my third post for my official review of Spells & Secrets (Alchemist Interactive). Why? Because I still have things to say about it. Here is the second post in my trilogy of review posts. This will probably be the last one, but who can say for sure? At the end of the last post, I was talking about the final boss. Also, about the stripping of artefacts in the boss fights for the harder versions of the school. Which, once I actually looked at the wards, it wasn’t that the artefacts get stripped, but the leveling of the spells? I think? It’s unclear from the description. At any rate, I’m not a fan.

Back to the final boss. Again, *SPOILER WARNING* for the rest of the post. I mentioned that the lock-on is one of the most frustrating in the game. Because of the physics of the game and how many things on the screen that you can lock on to, it’s really frustrating when you’re actually trying to lock-on to an enemy–especially a boss.

By the way, I’m crurrently doing a vanilla run (without the wards turned on) because I want to try to get the clothing for the fourth student faction. That’s the faction that is based on *sigh* parrying/deflecting. Which is another thing that irks me. That’s the thing that devs are taking away from Sekiro? That parrying/defelction should be the main combat choice? I really hope this trend dies out soon beacuse it’s my least-favorite FromSoft trend ever.

To be clear, I’m not mad about parrying/deflecting being a part of a FromSoft-like game. I am mad about it being the only combat option in a game (looking at you, Lies of P. No, it wasn’t stirctly the only way to play the game, but the other way was not fun at all). And I hate that it’s bleeding into my cozy games. Yes, this game is a rogue-lite, but I would still consider it a cozy game. Or cozy-adjacent. Adding a whole student faction based on it is, ah, a choice. Yes, it’s a lot more forgiving than Sekiro, but it’s still annoying as fuck.

It’s a spell that you need to cast as the boss is casting their spell. If you do it right, you will stun them, and then you have to attack them and kill them while they are under the spell. If you do so, they will go back to home base, er, the…uh…schoolyard? I think? And then you can fight the bosses in the boss arena in that student faction’s area. Which, no thanks. I just want the outfits. No idea how to get them. I’m assuming I’ll have to fight the bosses in the arena, which does not excite me at all. Sadly, the outfits for this faction are my favorite ones. Bleah.

Back to the game itself. In my vanilla run, I’m blasting through the floors. I have beaten the first two floors with very little sweat. I did not get hit on the first floor, and the only damage I took on the second floor was when I was trying to get the deflection spell to work on the boss. I don’t think I managed to do it, though.

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Spells & Secrets–my official review, part two

I have talked about the game, Spells & Secrets (Alchemist Interactive), before. In fact, I have, apparently, done an official review of it. This will be part two of that now that I have officially beaten the game. The first part of the review (which I have no recollection of writing) is here. I’ve also done two quick looks at it, so, obviously, I have lots of feelings about it.

Let’s just get something out of the way. It’s obviously influenced by Harry Potter. That’s all I want to say about that, but the similarities have to be noted. We can move on from that now that I have made the comment.

At the end of the last post, I was talking about one of the things that’s a bit misleading with the game. The devs have said that they want to make it so that a player can make their wizard be anything they want. Which, in theory, sounds great. But, and again, I fully admit this might just be me and my limitations, what it meant for me was that I just kept using the same spells over and over.

Here’s my thinking. I suck. That’s not me being self-deprecating; that’s me being realistic. Oh, and *SPOILER WARNING* for the rest of the post. I know that anything that is timing-related will not work for me. That means I don’t ever touch a few of the spells. The deflect one and the switch one (you switch places with the enemy) are the two I’m thinking of especially. 

Then, there are ones that are a bit more generous with the timing, but they’re still timing-based in a way. Or can be with modifierss (artefacts). An example of that is the spell, telekinesis. It’s not time-based in and of itself as it just moves objects/enemies from place to place. But, there are modifiers such as one that snaps the objects that you move into the direction you’re moving them. I figured out that if you don’t touch the left stick as you do it, you don’t get the snap motion, but it took me too long to figure it out.

Then there are spells that just take too damn long without the modifierrs. Bombard (hurling a fireball) is one of them. It takes forever to actually load up and itas too easy to be interrupted while doing it. Which is a shame because fire is my jam. I wanted to be a fire and ice wizard. Ice in my left hand; fire in my right. That didn’t last very long, sadly. Also, I know how true RNG works. I know this means that every time you get an artefact, you get an equal chance to get each one. But. I don’t like true RNG. I don’t know if this game had it, but there are some artefacts I haven’t gotten. And there are some that I seem to get every other run.


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Spells & Secrets–my official review

Let’s talk Spells & Secrets (Alchemist Interactive). I’ve done two ‘A Quick Look’ posts about it, the latest one being this one. I have recently beaten the game once, which, like many rogue-lites/likes, is not the end of the game really. There will be spoilers all up in this post, so this is your official *SPOILER WARNING* for the rest of this post. I’ll do my best to keep it general, but I can’t say that I won’t let slip with a specific spoiler now and then.

I have been playing it a lot. That’s not a ringing endorsement of the game in and of itself because I will get absorbed in a game and play it compulsively, whether I like it a ton or not. That’s just the way my brain works. Once I’m in, I’m in. And I’m not saying that this is a bad game; it’s not. I’m just saying that how much I play a game isn’t necessarily correlated with how good the game is.

I also want to say that because of my dexterity and spatial issues, the game is harder for me than it really is. Oh, and because the target lock is frustrating and suspect. I get that this is two guys doing the work, so I’m not as harsh on it as I would be otherwise, but the collision dynamics aren’t great. It’s hard to lock on the enemy you want to lock on with everything running in front of you. Also, because there are so many things in the room that you can move about (props, essentially), and when the enemy runs behind the prop, the aim lock will break and latch onto the prop.

This is especially bad in a boss fight when the boss spawns ads. Which I’ll get to when I reach the end of the game big boss (who, spoilers, may be the reason I don’t play the game any longer). I have a lot to say about that fight–none of it good.

Back to the base game. There are three different floors and in every room, there is a secret that you can solve. Or, if you get frustrated like me, look it up. This is cool! I really liked that aspect of the game, even if I couldn’t always figure it out. When I did figure one out for myself, I felt so smart.

If you haven’t found everything in a room, there will be a purple question mark on your map until you find that last thing. The problem is that there are glitches in this game that means a purple question mark might not disappear when it should. As someone who can get obsessive about clearing everything up in a room, that’s frustrating. Sometimes, if you go out of the room and go back into it, the question mark will disappear. Sometimes, it won’t. And sometimes, you can’t do the thing you need to do in order to clear that room.


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Spells & Secrets–A Quick Look, part two

I have been playing an action rogue-lite indie game called, Secrets & Spells by Alchemist Interactive. I wrote part one of my A Quick Look about it here. At that point, I had cleared the first floor twice and died fairly quickly on the second floor. The only reward you get for beating the first floor boss is two full red hearts and one yellow heart (shield). Each hit costs half-a-heart, so basically, six total hits. Of course, if you have less than 2 full hearts worth of red heart damage, then the reward isn’t that meaningful.

It’s a minor complaint, but a complaint, nonetheless. I appreciate the hearts, obviously, but it’s just a weird reward. I would rather get an artefact or a spell (the former modifies the latter) as a reward, which is what most games of this ilk give you when you beat a boss. Still. I don’t want to be too harsh on this point because health is always welcomed.

Wait. No. I want to say a bit more. Here’s my issue with it. At the very beginning of the game, it’s a good reward. You start out with a full three hearts, which means you can take six hits. There will be light *SPOILERS* throughout this post, but nothing super big. I don’t think. Or rather, there isn’t much to spoil about the game. I mean, I could spoil the secrets, which I won’t do. The characters are, sadly, pretty forgettable and interchangeable. What do I mean by that? 

I mean that some of them are clearly based on Potter characters, but in general, the students were just generic kids who you would not notice on the streets. You get one or two original pieces of dialogue from them that give you background color to the school, but nothing more than that. They also give you tips for the game, which I appreciate, but it doesn’t make them more personable, honestly. I will say that I don’t know how deep the game goes, so this may change the further I get into the game. I kind of doubt it, though.

I do appreciate the four different student factions (gee, does that sound familiar? Complete with a different color for each faction?), just to shake things up. I like that you get different clothing as you do certain things for each faction. Such as using a spell from that faction in a run. I really like the style of the game. It’s cute and cartoon-y, and it’s just all around cozy.

Back to the bosses. I just did a run in which I beat the second floor boss. Easily. I have not yet explored the third floor so I can’t talk about that. I quit out after beating the second floor boss because I was tired at that point.


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Spells & Secrets–A Quick Look

I have a ton of games in my Steam backlog. Also called the Steam pile of shame. Every PC gamer has one (and, presumably, console players have their own backlog, too), and it’s often in the several hundreds if not thousands. My M.O. these days is to power through the demos I impulsively download during an indie fest and see if I like any of the games. At the same time, Steam has indie fests all the time. Like all the fucking time. Right now, they have their IndieCade Festival going. Which means more demos to try out!

You can see my dilemma. Every time I got rid of one demo, I added three more. That’s a slight exaggeration, but not that far from being the truth. I’ts a running joke with gamers–that there’s just no way to whittle down a backlog. I’ve thought about doing a series on it–playing all the games in my pile of shame, alphabetically, for five minutes each. I can usually tell if I’m going to like a game within the first five minutes. It’s not as if there has never been a game that didn’t grow on me as I played, but they are very few and far between. For better or worse, I know my tastes well–and this is for all pop culture. I can count on one hand a piece of pop culture that I thought I would hate and it turned out that I liked it.

There was a game that intrigued me when I saw the trailer/read the description. It’s Spells & Secrets by Alchemist Interactive. It’s in the vein of a (sigh) Harry Potter–by the way. I will be glad once we’re at the place where we don’t have to mention that series whilst talking about magic/fantasy worlds that are set in a school with kids. I know that this is the cultural touchstone, but I wince every time. That being said, it’s hard to avoid the comparison with this game so I’m going to unwillingly make a few–but as minimal as possible.

The story is pretty basic. You are new to this school and there are shenanigans going on. The first day you’re there (this is the demo), the school is attacked by creatures unknown. You have a basic wand and are given a basic (junior) spell. It’s a pew-pew spell. No, that’s not what it’s called, but that’s basically what it is. It’s the basic spell from afar, and it’s the spell I used the most by far in the demo. There is also a telekinesis spell that I will admit I haven’t gotten the hang of quite yet. It has it’s use, but it’s not a spell that I really care for. In fact, the best use of it so far is using it for a big-sized chess game.


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