Bytes ‘n’ Blurts: Catching Up on Minishoots and Magequits

Year: 2019
Platforms: Xbox One, PC

There are plenty of online party games to choose from, but what helps set MageQuit apart from the pack is how well it balances bedlam and skillful spell-slinging, offering plenty of magic-based murder for those of any skill level. The action plays out in a top-down death match where you and a lineup of other bearded wizards huck fireballs and rocks at each other until only one side is left standing. Each game is made up of nine rounds, with a round ending when a team is wiped. However, where things get particularly interesting is that at the end of each battle, everyone gets to pick a new spell in reverse order of your kill count—some of these are fairly mundane, like the ineffectual melee attacks, but others are downright insidious, like the infamous Spitfire, which covers the stage in flames. Things slowly scale in complexity across each match as you go from firing a single basic ranged spell to wielding a veritable arsenal; one of the main reasons my gaming group has stuck with this one for so long is because the randomized options mix and match in ways that make every game feel unique, while the spell drafting format offering a soft form of rubber banding that never feels too egregious.

And maybe the most important reason for the game’s magic is how these abilities and stages lead to hilarious moments, as someone gets flung off an airship or unleashes a legion of Dune-looking worms that teleport their victims around the map in a confusing blur. It results in chaotic battles that still offer ample room for skilled play as you curve shots and utilize abilities to their fullest (or accidentally walk into a volcano, which happens a lot). The test for any good party game is if you keep playing past the first few weekends, and five years later, my gaming group still hasn’t gotten sick of this wizardly free-for-all. —Elijah Gonzalez

Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate

Year: 2010 (DS, Japan only); 2020 (Switch and PC, Worldwide)
Platforms: Switch, PC, DS, Vita, iOS, Android

As an editor I am a stern boss and patient sounding board for my writers, but also a valuable resource, always ready to not just whip copy into shape but to share advice and lessons of wisdom learned during the one entire year I’ve been writing about games. Sometimes that street goes both ways, unfortunately, and I reluctantly learn something from my eager young charges—like the value of dungeon crawlers and the vitality of the venerable Shiren the Wanderer series. (Thanks, Dia and Marc.) Okay, I was no stranger to slumming it through monster-filled dungeons, but it hadn’t been an active part of my gaming diet for a couple of decades, at least, until recently. Editing multiple dungeon-dwelling pieces from Dia Lacina over the last few years filled the tank, playing Valbrace in UFO 50 turned the key, and Marc Normandin’s Shiren hype put this wagon in drive; all I had to do was pick a game and floor it. Shiren the Wanderer: The Tower of Fortune and the Dice of Fate, an beautifully overwrought name for anything, was the game for me, and I’ve gone on a run or two most nights for about a month now. I’m pretty sure I drove that wagon straight into Lake Baikal, because this thing is deep, with endless tutorials and practice dungeons, a village full of pregame stuff to sort through (none of which I fully understand yet), and then three whole actual, for real dungeons that make up the bulk of the thing—and that’s not even factoring in the inherently meaty and convoluted rules that define Shiren’s particular brand of dungeon loitering. It’s way more than just scrounging up some weapons and herbs, taking down some asshole monsters, and climbing these towers floor by floor, and it’s that intricacy, that amount of detail and possibility, that makes Shiren such a tenacious game—one that grabs hold and won’t let go. It’s a perfect game to end the night with, discrete by design and hard enough that most runs don’t keep me up too late; if you’re unfamiliar, it’s a classic roguelike, with randomized tower layouts that change every time you play, and all progress and items being lost whenever you die. You always restart from zero, and your success depends both on your own actions but also on the luck of the draw when it comes to what materiel shows up during your run. It’s unpredictable in every way, and I’ll often follow up a run where I cruise almost all the way to the top with one where I die just a few floors in. It’s a rich, deep, always exciting adventure, much like this thing we call life, but with way more Mamels, Froggos, and Mudkins trying to kill me.—Garrett Martin