![]() The early upgrades do a lot to mix up how the game works - the ability to dash in a chosen direction, shoot out a magical pinball, and recover health by hitting enemies all provide new and interesting choices about how to approach each level. Upgrades that give you treasure multipliers or increased experience aren’t unlocked until much later in the game, meaning that you have to grind for a while before leveling up becomes a regular occurrence. New skills come from gaining experience, and these skills can be upgraded with treasure, but even your ability to collect these things is hindered at the beginning. Dungeon crawlers require progression systems, after all, which means that your character starts out weak, fragile and powerless - ready to die from any angry blob that looks at you funny. For the first few hours of play, this will mean starting back at the very beginning of the game. When you die, you have to start back at the last tower entrance you unlocked. It sets an off-kilter tone that works quite well for the premise, and the sight of a wizard sprinting face-first into enemies ends up being far more amusing than if he were rolling into everything. Instead of rolling around the tables, he just kind of hustles around like he’s going for a morning jog, taking paths and speeds that just happen to be the same as how a ball would act when ricocheting off objects on a sloped surface. One interesting design choice was to not make the titular wizard look much like a ball. How everything in the game works is clear from the moment you lay eyes on it, which speaks well for the artistic direction. The game’s simple graphics are pleasing to the eye, and help aid in the game’s easy-to-pick-up style. Rinse and repeat until you reach the top of the tower, defeat the end boss, and save the day. The basics don’t take long to figure out: knock a wizard around using pinball paddles, hit enemies to hurt them, avoid enemy attacks, gather treasure, and find the key on each level to open the door to the next one. The game has a solid foundation and developer Frosty Pop deserves applause for bringing it to fruition in a way that feels intuitive and satisfying. However, while it doesn’t achieve the heights of some of the better pinball mashups, it does provide an entertaining, if imperfect, bit of amusement. The Pinball Wizard (), a mash-up of pinball and dungeon crawling, doesn’t have the luxury of a recognizable franchise tied to its name. While this sometimes results in amazing games, like the 2018 Yoku’s Island Express, most examples end up as mediocre mash-ups that only gain attention if they’re tied to some beloved character. ![]() It’s a long-standing tradition that includes games like Sonic Spinball and Metroid Prime Pinball, and it dates as far back as the 1970s with Namco’s Gee Bee. Every so often, a video game developer decides to mix pinball with some other genre, franchise, or twist that turns the idea on its head. ![]()
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