Game Reviews

Drop Wizard

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iOS
| Drop Wizard
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Drop Wizard
|
iOS
| Drop Wizard

Drop Wizard is a strange one. It has moments of intense retro charm, all bright lights and cute wizards, fruit to collect and coins to pick up.

But sometimes it's a little too scattergun, and its ideas quite often feel like they're weighing the game down rather than giving it a shot in the arm.

Don't get me wrong, there's fun to be had here, but it's a fun tempered by frustration and strange decisions.

Drop Wizard can't get by on its charm alone, and if the twinkling old school sheen doesn't strike a chord with you, you'll likely drop it pretty quickly.

Wizard wise

The game sees you controlling the titular wizard. Each level is set on a single screen, and features a number of podgy enemies who are waddling around the platforms.

You walk automatically, and a tap on the left or right of the screen sends you tromping in that direction. Hitting an obstacle turns you around as well. You can also drop down from ledge to ledge. Drop off the bottom and you'll pop up again at the top.

Every time you land from a fall you fire out a star. These stun enemies, letting you close in and kick them without taking any damage. Clear all of the creatures from a stage and you move on to the next one.

Each section of the game is broken up into a set of levels. If you fail to complete all of them before running out of lives, you need to go back to the start of the set and try it all over again.

It makes for juddery progress, and with boss battles at the end of each section, you can find yourself stopped in your tracks before you've worked out what you're supposed to do.

Drop the mic

That lack of clarity rears its head in a lot of the game. You're left to figure things out for yourself, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but when your head scratching gets you killed half way through a batch of levels, it's pretty frustrating.

Quite often you'll find yourself stuck in impossible situations, trapped between two monsters with no where to go and nothing to do but wait until they hit you.

There are gaps in the scenery that you can walk over, or fall down with a quick direction change, but they make for some fiddly taps and don't always work.

Different enemy types make things a little interesting, but add their own new frustrations. You'll make silly mistakes, and it sometimes feel like the game isn't really that interested in you getting to the end.

Star lord?

That's not to say that there isn't fun to be had here. Drop Wizard offers a sizeable challenge, and working your way through the levels, when things click, can be an entertaining and rewarding experience.

It's just a shame that there's so many niggles to spoil things. It means the end product is solid rather than remarkable.

And while it might find an audience among retro diehards, you can't help but feel with a little more polish it could have reached much greater heights.

Drop Wizard

There's a solid game here, but Drop Wizard doesn't manage to turn its good ideas and great presentation into a must-buy
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.