The Glade 4.0

http://store.steampowered.com/app/42910/

Anyone else pick this up in the Steam sale? It is an amazingly addictive little action game. I'm hesitant to call it a Diablo-clone, but it does kinda feel that way. This game's humor alone is worth the price of admission, but it also happens to be really fun, especially multiplayer.

Each person plays a mage, and casts spells based on certain elements or schools of magic (Water, Life, Cold, Lightning, Arcane, Earth, Fire, & Shield). The real beauty comes when combining these elements to create spells. Fire normally just sprays a cone of fire out in front of you with a short range, and Earth just hurls a boulder projectile at very high speeds. But when you conjure Fire + Earth together, you can shoot a fireball with much greater range than a normal fire spell. And wet enemies take extra dmg from lightning spells, but if you get hit by a water spell (or step into water, or if it's raining), then you get soaked, and trying to conjure a lightning spell while soaked is not good for your health, haha. So you have to first dry yourself off with Fire. Also, you can conjure Fire and Water together to make steam, then combine that with lightning+arcane, to shoot out a "stream" that wets enemies and hits them with progressively higher lightning damage because they keep getting wet, as well. Oh, and did I mention you and your friends can "cross the streams" for increased damage? Hella cool.

The shield magic is pretty awesome, too. On it's own, you can create a wall-type directional shield (right click in any direction), or you can create a large circular shield (shift + right click) that protects you from everything outside for a time. Each type of shield can only absorb a certain amount of damage before it drops, but by hovering your cursor over the shield and spamming the spacebar, you and any member of your party can boost the shield to increase the time it stays up. But be careful, because it's possible to trap enemies inside the shield with you, plus any spell you cast inside the shield will get bounced around inside, and possibly kill you. Also, if you combine the shield magic with an element, then you get protection from that element.

There are just so many cool things about this game, I can't really get into them all. There are all sorts of pop-culture references. Lot's of Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, and James Bond jokes. And the endless number of ways to combine spells in useful, and often very dangerous ways. Speaking of dangerous. Every damage spell you cast does full damage to any party members it hits, including yourself. So death by friendly fire is a very real, and very common occurance. That's probably why they made the Revive spell so easy to cast, heh.

Anyway, really fun game, very interesting concept, and it's still pretty cheap on Steam. Let me know if any of you guys pick it up or if you already have it. I'd love to try out some multiplayer sometime.

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"I Live, I Love, I Slay, and I Am Content."
- Conan the Barbarian

I really wanted to try it and DLed the demo, but it just didn't want to run on my PC.

Title screen and music would play for about 1-2 seconds and then it would blank out on me.

Never figured it out and then my video card crapped out. Still haven't bought a new one.

Looked like a lot of fun, though.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

Ive got it, had it for a while, was playing with Mook but never got to finish it...

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Played it all the way through by me lonesome back in the spring. 'Twas a real challenge, but there's a few go-to combinations that utterly obliterate damn near everything. Arcane + steam + lightning is definitely a big one. Arcane + water + ice was good too, IIRC.

Yea, lightning does insane dmg to anything that's wet or when it's combined with steam. The Thunderbolt spell is amazingly powerful. It's usually a one-hit kill for most things. Unfortunately, in multiplayer, there's no way to control who gets hit, so your partner gets killed as often as some monster does. So it's very difficult to use in multiplayer. Very good for solo'ing, tho.

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"I Live, I Love, I Slay, and I Am Content."
- Conan the Barbarian

Magicka is currently free to play on Steam until Sunday, and on sale for $2.49. You can even buy a bundle of four licenses for $7.49 to send to friends.

DLed the full version for the free weekend. It worked finally (see my above post). Just as I thought, I love this game. $2.49 was a no-brainer for this one.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

Magicka is fun. I still want to try a 4 player run through of the campaign.

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Mook:

I'm game. Hit me up if I'm on and you're trying to get a 4 player runthrough together.

Haven't yet had a chance to play multi.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

I'd love to get in on that as well, if I can find some time that matches with everyone else's. I've always wanted to see a four-way death ray.

Been playing this again lately. I stopped a while back when I got stuck on the Lvl. 6 boss battle and got frustrated.

Never stopped loving this game though and picked it up to play some of the earlier levels. I have never enjoyed a spell casting mechanic as much as I have the one from this game. Nothing like feeling godlike one moment when you strike your enemies down with a thunderstorms, only to next feel like a n00b wizard when you electrocute yourself by summoning lightning while dripping wet.

Finally finished boss #6 and have an all new repertoire of spells and Magicks at my fingertips.

Can't love this game enough.

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This must be Thursday. I could never get the hang of Thursdays.

I bought it too. I haven't played much through the storyline yet, but having fun with arena battles.