Arena-type games always share one thing in common, a sense of speed. Whether you’re playing an arena shooter like Quake or an arena brawler like Brawlhalla, arena-style gameplay challenges gamers to hone their reflexes in claustrophobic encounters with their foes. Wand Wars is a fantastic example of a 2D arena game done right. One that is lovingly crafted, greatly paced and is overall great fun.
Moonradish’s venture into the arena genre feels fresh. The gameplay of Wand Wars feels more like a sport; while it can rely on skill but you can also be lucky—in the case of Wand Wars that lies with the type of power-ups that appear. Nearly every game in Wand Wars gives you that one-more-go itch that will eventually leave you playing for hours. This is in no small part to the extreme simplicity of Wand Wars’ gameplay. By using only three buttons and a directional input, Moonradish Inc have created a fantastic local multiplayer title that can be enjoyed by everyone.
Wand Wars also has a simple premise. Two of the three game modes—every mode can be played in either free-for-all or team versions—revolve around a small magical sphere that players much catch and either fling back at their opponents or into the opponents goal, depending on if you’re playing Arcane Arena or Merlinball. When sending the sphere back you can either tap the button to immediately send it back and turn it to your colour or charge it to greater expand its size and speed. The bigger and faster the sphere becomes, the harder it is to dodge. Fail to dodge and you’ll explode into lovely pixel-art smoke.
The longer a round in Wand Wars, the tenser it becomes as you attempt to deflect the massive, bouncing sphere that’s quickly hurtling towards you and your teammates. You can attempt to fire an arcane arrow at your opponent to turn them into chickens, leaving them vulnerable and unable to grab the sphere, or you may fire that arrow at the sphere itself to render it harmless until someone flings it again. You may even use one of the many power-ups available to you to send giant death beams towards your opponents or become a wizard-eating demon. Sometimes the sphere may even get crushed by the environment, splitting into two or more to play with. When the arcane sphere is bouncing across the map at such extreme speeds, Wand Wars is one of the most entertaining multiplayer games I’ve played in recent memory, especially when playing with a maximum of four players.
Sadly, the tension produced in these two modes isn’t brought into the last of Wand Wars’ three game types, Hexout. Hexout removes the sphere altogether and instead focuses on getting kills with the arcane arrows and power-ups you find. Not only does the speed of the game feel reduced here but it also takes away a hefty amount of the challenge found in the standard Arcane Arena mode.
Wand Wars isn’t just about local multiplayer, though. While it does lack a much-desired online multiplayer option it does include two single-player alternatives. You can either play standard multiplayer with bots, of which you can choose from ten forms of difficulty for each CPU enemy, or you can play through the short but interesting story mode. While the story mode here is threadbare, you do get to learn a little bit about six of the ten playable characters—who can be unlocked either through earning XP or by choosing everything to be unlocked in the options menu—as well as a little bit about the universe in which these characters live.
The story modes structure follows your chosen character through a few matches using a variety of game modes, albeit mostly the standard Arcane Arena, with around ten-second introductions, sometimes talking about why the characters are challenging the other and spouting memes. Each character’s campaign doesn’t take long to beat the first time around but there is a more challenging legendary mode which sorts out some of the AI’s weird behaviour that they display in the easier difficulty mode such as staring at a corner until the sphere nears their location or just wandering around in circles for some reason.
The visual representation of Wand Wars is also a wonder to look at. Backgrounds show off some pretty lovely pixel art, power-ups send gorgeous beams of bright colour across the screen, environmental animations flow nicely and giant ripples and sparks of electricity fill the screen when the arcane sphere gets near the height of its size adding even further to the tension the game modes that include it provide. Music-wise however, Wand Wars leaves something to be desired. That’s not to say that the games soundtrack is bad, it does a good enough job but not one track feels very memorable at all. That being said, you’ll probably be having too much fun screaming at your friends to even notice the soundtrack in the first place.
Summary
Moonradish Inc. has wonderfully delivered on the promise of producing a fast and frantic arena multiplayer game that’s great to play with friends. While a lack of online multiplayer is indeed disappointing—as well as the slower pace of the Hexout game modes combined with a limited amount of content—Wand Wars is still an extremely fun and challenging game that’s perfect to play with a group of four.
Lewis is a games journalist, freelance gaming and consumer-tech journalist. They contributed 344 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, Windows and PC, and Xbox news: has since served as Editor-in-Chief at StealthOptional and Gaming Editor at MSPoweruser, with bylines at Gfinity Esports and FRVR.