Spellbound Survivors is an Isometric Action game with a present release date of December 29, 2023. It currently features seven unique characters to choose from and five stages to conquer as of the beta build I’ve been given access to. There is plenty to see and unlock, but before all that, we begin this journey as a lone Rounin who finds himself in a mystical forest. It won’t be long before Spellbound shows us what it’s all about as it sends ever-increasingly massive hordes of enemies our way. We, as the player, start off slow and weak. While defiant against the overwhelming odds, our fate is to ultimately be slain. Thus begins the gameplay loop of gathering coins to increase our power permanently and change the tides in our favor.
One of the first things you’ll notice while playing is the fantastic soundtrack and its high difficulty starting off. It does not begin as a power fantasy, in stark contrast to many other Survivor-type games. By the ten-minute mark of the first level, you bet I was slowly waddling away from the tsunami of foes on my tail and immediately planning on upgrading character speed as I was inevitably swarmed. Nothing is wrong with having a challenge right out the gate, and it makes the transition of being an overpowered force of nature that much sweeter. Rapidly adding bodies to your kill count faster than the US government racks up debt will never cease being euphoric. The problem with the early game stems from only having three ways to gain coins. You either run across the infinite-sized map to break crystals hoping that some cash spawns, defeat a boss, or slay enough enemies to max out your weapons in that run.
Those last two options are impossible due to the current balance, so the smart move becomes to largely ignore combat and find crystals to break until gaining the power needed to fight. I won’t go into too much depth, considering the game is still months away, but if I had one suggestion, it would be to vastly lower how much health a boss has. That is the primary money maker and one far beyond what a new player can achieve, hence a less than stellar introduction to this game. Moving on from that, I was pleasantly surprised by how much content is included, even in this early state. Each of the five stages has foes unique to that environment and periodically introduces new ones every few minutes. The same goes for the visual variety of bosses, with several showing up in a single level. It features a ton of sprite work.
Given the vast amount of things to face off against, I hope that at least a few will be given unique attacks or support role effects that buff their comrades. As is, everything amounts to contact damage and increasing their speed to make them threatening. On that note, there are plenty of weapons for us to use. Each character has a different starting weapon and can gain more by leveling up from gems that defeated enemies drop. We can equip up to six in total and strengthen each one further for added effects. My personal favorite is playing as a Monk to have him throw hands with all manners of mythological creatures and shoot random lasers out of god knows where. To give you some context of the ensuing carnage, you will have killed close to a hundred thousand foes by the end of 30 minutes.
Something else to Spellbound Survivors credit is that it can handle this many sprites at once without any slowdown. The previously mentioned tsunami of enemies eventually becomes more like a biblical-styled, world-ending flood during its late game. The camera pulls back, and you’ll be faced with countless moving bodies at once as you cut a path toward safety and position yourself the best you can. If you’ve entirely upgraded a weapon, you may gain a legendary version after defeating a boss. For instance, the Monk throwing more punches than a Jojo character may eventually upgrade his fists into what I can only describe as the literal hands of god. Giant palm-shaped flashes of energy will pound down from the heavens and devastate everything near you. I don’t want to spoil what the other weapon’s ultimate form does, but know they are equally as inexplicable and a ton of fun. None are character-specific and may transform if fully upgraded.
Most weapons are well-balanced and equally viable. The only one that I found underwhelming is the ‘poisonous potion’ that only damages a single enemy, and its lingering effect is negligible. It is also singled out as effectively making one of the seven characters a poor choice compared to the others. While leveling up after collecting enough gems, there are more choices than just upgrading your offensive abilities. These passive effects range from being able to regenerate our health, increase our movement speed, or shoot an additional projectile. There are several more that I have yet to mention, and with us only having three random choices at a time, it can result in interesting builds you never planned for. I’m uncertain what causes more items to unlock, yet the total amount of skills and abilities open up significantly the further you play.
If you have not noticed from the pics, another meter is under the one used for leveling. It is filled by slaying enemies, and upon completion, a beast is summoned that clears the screen of anything that would do you harm. This is an odd mechanic in its current form. The meter fills so slowly that it will only activate very late into a run when we are likely already overpowered, and enemies reappear nearly instantly, rendering it pointless. I think a better application of this idea would be if we could select which beast appears and make a few non-combat based. Some possible effects could be a temporary increase in gold gained, an instant level-up, or another benefit that would be useful by the point they come into play. You can purchase permanent upgrades to increase how fast the meter fills, yet the screen-clearing effect felt like it needed to be more beneficial for the significant coin investment required.
Rounding things up, my first impressions of Spellbound Survivors were positive. Barring some balancing issues I mentioned throughout, this closed beta build is content-rich and fun. Each stage features plenty of things to make them feel unique. The soundtrack had me bopping my head throughout, and the enemy count is through the roof even amid other ‘Survivors’ type games. It doesn’t do anything too transformative to this genre’s formula, which may be a negative for those feeling burnt out from having played similar titles or a positive for those who want more. In other words, Spellbound Survivors is more of a good thing. At its stated price of $5, it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on.
[A copy of the game was provided for coverage]
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