Quantic Dream, known for narrative-first titles like Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human, is the last studio I would expect to be behind Spellcasters Chronicles. It’s a mixture of a surprisingly wide range of mechanics, including deckbuilding, real-time strategy, and third-person action, thrown into a free-to-play competitive multiplayer game. After a private demo, including a presentation and hands-off gameplay footage, I’m intrigued, though not entirely sold.
Spellcasters Chronicles has you play as one of several magic users, known (unsurprisingly) as spellcasters. Like many hero-based games, including Overwatch or League of Legends, these characters form a diverse cast, pulling inspiration from magic systems and mythology from around the world. It’s a great hook for the character designers; The Mystic Scribe uses a giant paintbrush as a weapon, the Swamp Witch has wooden horns growing from her head, and the Astral Monk has spectral arms protruding from her back.
During a Q&A portion, I ask why the characters are identified based on their casting style rather than with a name, and the developers hint that there’s more than meets the eye here. My guess is that multiple people can assume the mantle of any given role, but I’m just speculating. On that note, while Quantic Dream’s presentation is gameplay first (which I prefer), the team emphasizes that the game has a lot of lore to uncover, though it’ll have to wait until launch.
In a match, two teams of three will battle for dominance and try to destroy the other team’s lifestones, giant glowing pillars positioned around the map. To do so, they’ll summon minions, construct buildings, and attack enemy spellcasters. Abilities are spellcaster-specific, but even those can vary depending on your deck, which you fill with your preferred spells and summons before joining the game. And while the game is in third person, every character can freely fly around the map, giving them an aerial view of the battlefield.
Gameplay footage shows the formula in action. We see a Fire Elementalist use a magic staff to summon minions and ignite their weapons with fire damage. Summons can be a range of sizes. Some are small, roughly the size of a dog, and join the battlefield in groups of about a dozen at a time. Others are probably thirty feet tall, the size of a house. And Titans, which serve as huge, game-changing summons, are the size of skyscrapers, towering over the battlefield. In the gameplay demo, when one appears, the team has to drop everything they’re doing and focus all their offense on the Titan. If it gets to their lifestone, it can destroy it extremely quickly, and since each team only has three lifestones, you don’t have many to spare.
As he and his minions destroy enemy units, The Fire Elementalist levels up and can quickly choose which of his character’s abilities he wants to boost, be it damage, health, or something else. It’s a way to adjust your build mid-game, the developers mention. Once you see the strategies your opponents are going for, it can help clarify what area you want your hero to excel in.
Spellcasters Chronicles looks awesome, but like many multiplayer games, it’s more important to know how it feels; it’s like the great wizard Alex Russo once said: “Everything is not what it seems.” There’s certainly potential here, but if the flight controls are clunky or the Titans, as cool as they are, make every match end in the same way, I won’t be sticking around for very long. Luckily, I should have a chance to try it soon – at the time of writing, Quantic Dream is hoping to start beta sessions imminently, and I’m hoping to sign up as soon as possible to see if it feels as magical as it looks.
