Last wizard standing 'em up Spellbreak zaps out a closed alpha
Fire, dooby doo
"What if X but wizards" is a question that's lead to many of my favourite things. Dota. Star Wars. Bernie Sanders. So I'm glad to see Spellbreak asking that question of battle royales, and returning with a spell-slinging last man standing 'em up that just launched in closed alpha. You can pay to get in immediately, or sign up in the hopes that they'll let you in for free. I've had a dabble, and would say it's definitely worth doing the latter.
Dev's Proletariat have shown an admirable lack of restraint. There are tornadoes that engulf swathes of the map, meteors the size of houses. It's as bombastic as magic should be. Look, here's some showboating from a player called Sugar Wizard Tree, whose video I mostly picked due to his name. More wiz fights can be found on Spellbreak's YouTube channel.
That's my jam. Wizards soaring through the air. Wizards teleporting. Wizards filling the screen in front of them with flame.
Not that I did much of that in my first match. My squad got pasted by the first chumps we came across, and I blame some stuttering server issues for me not managing to land a single hit. These are early days, where that lag sits on a bed of placeholder UI and abilities that need much more tuning. Some confer silly advantages, like the boots that let you be invisible a third of the time.
There's certainly promise here, though. It's a refreshing change, setting people on fire with fireballs rather than molotovs - though I could always go back to Battlerite Royale for that.
If you sign up for the alpha, the devs say they're "regularly adding new players to the program, so the wait shouldn't be too long." You should do that! You probably shouldn't pay £45/$50 for the privilege.