Magicite is an Indie Roguelike Platform Game, which combines Randomly Generated Levels with RPG Elements and Item Crafting. Created by Sean Young, it was funded through Kickstarter on November 19th, 2013, and released on PC through Steam in June 2014.
Set in an underground world whose inhabitants have been driven from the surface by an invading Scourge, the goal is for the player character to progress through many stages with varying climates (or Biomes). During each stage, the player must fight enemies to gain experience and other materials, chop trees and mine rocks for wood and ore respectively, and use these resources to craft equipment they will need on their journey. Between each stage are towns, in which the player can buy items or fabricate more advanced equipment. More playable races and outfits to wear can be unlocked once certain tasks have been accomplished.
Magicite provides examples of:
- Advancing Wall of Doom: The Final Boss is this. On top of having to deal with the enemies, you can't just stay static and wail on him because he can easily box you in if you're not careful.
- Ambushing Enemy: The rock monsters which disguise themselves as rocks could be considered this.
- Arrows on Fire: A magic spell allows you to do this to your own arrows, by creating a flaming mist that you can fire arrows through.
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- Some of the larger weapons, although extremely powerful, are very slow to swing.
- Pure melee sets are by far the least resource intensive sets in the game, but have very limited use. You have to get right up next to the enemies to deal damage which, against ranged and flying enemies is a massive chore, and the Final Boss of the game is an absolute nightmare thanks to being an Advancing Wall of Doom.
- Arrows above Ironite. You can only restock in town,you're likely to use them on upgrades first, and you're unlikely to acquire a large amount.
- Beneath the Earth: Where the entire game takes place.
- BFS: The zweihander sword. It's very long and hits for massive damage, but takes a significant time to swing, so using it requires careful consideration on the player's part.
- Boring, but Practical: Many find the archer build to be this. They can easily pick off enemies from afar and the resources needed to get them going aren't too rare, and one of the early unlock races comes with a bow and is specifically designed for the build. Skilled archers can easily get through the game without taking damage, and even the Final Boss isn't too difficult with an archer build. The only real drawback they have going for them is, since arrows are consumable, they can get a bit resource intensive after a while.
- Stone and bone arrows. The resources to make them are far more common than others and your higher tier resources are likely going towards armor and tool upgrades instead. On top of this they're the only arrow type that can be easily made on the fly.
- Breakable Weapons: All weapons and tools have a durability, and break when this reaches zero. It's usually not much of a bother because you'll generally have upgraded to something better before this happens. You get a warning when your weapon or tool is about to break.
- Bubblegloop Swamp: The Swamp Biome.
- Chest Monster: Some chests in the Dungeon Biome are alive and will start attacking you if you get close. The rock monsters in other biomes could also be considered Chest Monsters; from far away they look like rocks, but up close they turn into monsters (and if you're not anticipating them, you'll probably have your pick out instead of a combat weapon).
- Critical Hit: The player character has a chance to make a critical hit with every strike - unusually, you get told when this happens even if the strike doesn't make contact with anything. A special hat, the Skeleton Mask, increases your critical hit chance to 1 in 4.
- Difficult, but Awesome: Mage builds are this. They take a lot of time to get going and the resources needed for their equipment are scarce, but once set up, they can easily tear through most of the levels of the game with ease.
- Double Jump: An innate ability of the player character, enabling them to make surprisingly high jumps and dodge enemies in the air. The unlockable bunny ears hat enhances this even further, allowing the player character to triple jump.
- Elemental Crafting: Very much an integral part of the game. At the start of the game, you'll only have access to wood, which will enable you to craft the lowest tier of tools and weapons; from there, you can quickly upgrade to bone, stone, and increasingly valuable metal ores.
- Fantasy Metals: The various metals and minerals are named in a somewhat tongue-in-cheek way, by adding a suffix to a real life mineral (for example, ironite, goldium, diamonite)
- Flash Step: The Teleport spell allows you to move instantly a short distance to the left or right, which can bypass troublesome enemies or obstacles.
- Green Hill Zone: The Forest Biome, which is always where the first stage is.
- Healing Potion: Can be found in the environment and also crafted from herbs.
- Inexplicable Treasure Chests: There's no good explanation why you occasionally find treasure chests in the middle of the forest.
- Item Crafting: A staple of the gameplay, allowing you to craft vital items from the resources that you collect.
- Lethal Lava Land: The Volcano Biome.
- Money Spider: Everything you kill drops money, even if it's a wild animal.
- Palette Swap: Some enemies are differently-colored variants of enemies from other biomes.
- Slippy-Slidey Ice World: The Tundra Biome.
- Stalked by the Bell: If you take too long on a level, the Scourge will arrive and hunt you down.
- Status Buff: Some of the magic spells temporarily increase your stats for a limited time.
- Super Mode: Some of the Status Buff spells appear like Super Modes. Your character will usually shout out something dramatic upon activating them.
- Teaser Equipment: The town levels always stock a bunch of equipment that you probably can't yet afford.
- Underground Monkey: Some enemies are reskins of other enemies from different biomes.
- Unnecessary Combat Roll: The player character does a somersault whenever they double jump, which is most of the time.
- The Very Definitely Final Dungeon: The Scourge Lair.
- Video Game Cruelty Potential: Townsfolk can be attacked, and leave money when killed. You can also slaughter various defenseless animals for meat.
- Video Game Cruelty Punishment: The chickens in the town level are defenseless and can be attacked and killed for their meat... but there's a chance that doing so will summon a gigantic chicken which will fight back.
- Video Game Dashing: The player character has an innate dash ability, allowing them to quickly dash to the left or right, whether on the ground or in the air. This allows you to pull off some pretty good dodges if you're skilled enough. The player character has a regenerating stamina meter which prevents them doing too much dashing in a short space of time.
- With This Herring: You start off with no money.
- Wizard Needs Food Badly: The player character has a hunger meter which slowly decreases over time. If it reaches zero, the player character starts to lose HP, so they must eat. Luckily, meat is in ready supply from the various wild animals that you encounter. You can also cook meat, which increases its nutritional value and gives it a chance of restoring health points.
