Arcane Assembly Reviews

Controls are bad for controller users, and the main mechanic, spellcrafting, is way too complex.

This feels like a game jam concept. I got it on sale, and that's what I would pay for a game with this little content. It takes inspiration from Hollow Knight, but it's levels and enemies don't feel unique or fleshed out. One enemy in the last zone is just two bush sprites on top of each other. As for wand building and spell building, well you don't have that many options honestly. You only are ever given one real spell to control which is the orb. You can change all these parameters for the orb like it's speed, or having orbs spawning orbs or having them orbit another orb. But all these things cost more Mana, and are usually harder to use than just spamming attacks with no delay. I beat the game super fast even on the expert difficulty which is just a damage modifier, and it feels like there should be more spells or more things I can do. This game has a novel idea in creating spells yourself, but the system needs balancing to make different spells worthwhile. Overall it just didn't bring as much replay value as a game like Noita does

If you lose to a boss you just encountered, it takes your coins until you can retrieve them and defeat the boss. So, you can't spend the coin to buy upgrades to help defeat said boss.