Summary
- For $2.99, Mage Arena offers a voice-controlled PvP arena shooter gameplay where players can cast spells with their microphones.
- Although buggy and still in early access, it achieved “Overwhelmingly Positive” Steam reviews with over 15,000 concurrent players.
- Features an innovative voice recognition mechanic alongside chaotic multiplayer gameplay at an extremely affordable price.
How can one even stand out in the highly saturated PvP arena shooter market, especially on Steam? Seems that Mage Arena found the answer with its innovative voice-controlled gameplay, letting players cast spells with their vocal abilities. Despite its early access phase, this game instantly met success for many Steam players with positive reviews. Now, delve into the gameplay and its content with this review on Mage Arena.
What Makes Mage Arena Special?
There’s no doubt that it’s the voice recognition system that makes Mage Arena stand out from its competitors. Compared to many traditional games, this game avoids relying on a few button presses and mouse clicks. Instead, it had players working through their vocal cords to shout spell names such as “Freeze!,” “Fireball!,” and more.
While it may appear gimmicky, they managed to execute it well, which makes the game purely entertaining. Although it automatically uses your default Windows microphone, the voice recognition remarkably works well. It still allows players to cast their spells on the first try, without needing extensive training.
Moreover, its proximity chat system makes sure that even distant players’ spell-casting isn’t overwhelming. Rather, they can still provide you with useful cues on incoming attacks from your enemies. Now, elevating this experience, the spells serve as devastating weapons in your arsenal.
More than the magical attacks, the starting spells hit like nukes, killing directly upon hits. Even with Freeze spells, it lets opponents turn into helpless ice blocks.
Gimmicky and Chaotic Spell Casting
Moving to its gameplay, Mage Arena welcomes up to eight players in the lobbies before dividing them into two teams. These teams are the Wizards and Warlocks, engaging in arena-style combat on large maps. So, each round features randomly shuffled octagonal chunks to make sure the matches are not identical.
Beyond the standard team battles, you also have the 1v1 duels to play in smaller arena maps. Also, players here are capable of crafting unusual weapons such as swords and staves with unexpected materials. It may be from logs or even frogs that produce such powerful items.
Other than that, there’s also a trading element in goblin villages and dungeons filled with skeletons and loot. Then, the spellbook system adds a challenge to the combat gameplay of Mage Arena. By flipping through specific pages, you’ll earn access to varying spells and prevent spell-spamming as well.
Bugs Bothering Throughout The Game
Ultimately, the greatest challenge of Mage Arena lies in its technical execution. Mage Arena serves as the debut game of a solo developer, displaying its brilliance and lack of mastery. Several players encountered various bugs like stuck movement, audio conflicts, unstable lobbies and Spell misfires.
Moreover, some users experience sudden game crashes, which require a restart. Also, certain features like British accent support were currently disabled due to functionality issues. Yet, the game opens for improvement with developer jrsjams attentively working on fixing these bugs.
It currently has six patches addressing bug fixes alongside balance tweaks. Even so, the developer decreased the price from $5 to $2.99 after the game bugs incident. Certainly, there’s barely profit from the game that the developer is getting.
How It Puts Up In The Market
Although it has its shortcomings, this review sees the dedication of Mage Arena to be better. Thus, it keeps its status “Overwhelmingly Positive” on Steam, with 95% approval from over 2,600 reviews. Often, players get lost in the perfect chaos of spellshouting with their friends and hilarious mispronunciations.
For a niche indie title, Mage Arena certainly defies the expectations of many. It currently boasts a strong retention rate from its concurrent players. With its low price point, unique gameplay, and word-of-mouth marketing, it easily turned viral in gaming spaces.
Final Verdict
There’s no reason for you not to try the Mage Arena after everything said in this review. Despite the bugs, the game performs well for new developers to break through the dominating titles in the market. It offers brilliant gameplay mechanics for just $2.99, which is extremely affordable compared to many games out there. So, it’ll definitely make your time and money worthwhile throughout the game.
Writer’s Recommendations
Hi there, it’s Stal! If you loved that article, make sure to check out these other articles I’ve written just for you. See you there!
