レビュー

• gamedeal user

  Jun 23, 2014

  Edited July 3rd: As of update 2.0.12, all game-breaking bugs have been fixed. Recommendation changed. This is a fun, tough little action-roguelike. There are still a few small issues like slowdown when there are too many mobs on the screen, but nothing that makes the game impossible. It seems like the devs are still working on balancing bosses as I've noticed huge swings in their difficulty between this update and the last one. Progress is VERY incremental, as you slowly save villagers and buy blueprints to give yourself a better run. Some of the items look really similar, and the names are not displayed before you purchase them, so it can be frustrating thinking you were buying a Helmet of somethingorother when it turns out to be a Helmet of someotherthing. If you liked Binding of Isaac or classic LoZ, try this one. I am including my original review below. Most of the issues are no longer applicable, but they still existed in a $15 game: I'm surprised this isn't labelled Early Access (I wouldn't have purchased it if it were). In the 70 minutes I played, there were no less than 3 game breaking bugs I experienced multiple times each. 1. On Win7, game must be run in XP compatibility mode or you get only a black screen on launching. 2. Sometimes when hitting an exploding barrel the game crashes to desktop 3. Sometimes (for no discernable reason) the game's visuals will freeze. You can hear the menu options and run into things, but the screen is frozen. These kind of bugs are totally unacceptable in a roguelite, or any game with permadeath. Hopefully the devs will be able to get it patched fairly soon, but it's pretty frustrating that this is for sale on Steam as is without a "beta" or "early access" tag, considering how buggy it is. All that said, the bits of the game I got to play are pretty fun. The controls are very similar to The Binding of Isaac, though movement is a bit less slippery and shooting a bit more precise (due to the controller support adding 4 more aiming directions, and the projectiles not taking on any of your own character's momentum.) It's a shame the bugs make it unplayable. Once it gets patched up I think it'll be a fun little action RL.
• gamedeal user

  Jun 30, 2014

  Someone recomended me this game because it was supposedly similar to "Binding of Isaac", but had native controller support and other roguelike elements and I decided to try. The game was interesting on the first run, but once I realized how little the items added to the gameplay and the repetitive nature of the levels it got boring pretty quick. In my opinion, what makes "Binding of Isaac" shine as a great game are the unique items and the carefully balanced challenge. You keep trying to do one run after another, motivated by the thrill of what new item combination you will obtain, how will it affect your gameplay and how far can you get with it. I felt no such thing in AWL, none at all. After 10 runs or so the SAME items would keep popping over and over, and I could barely tell the difference between any of them. The weapons were the most interesting part, but even so they had all the same damage and it didn't fell much different from using any of them. The "level design" was OK at best, switching quickly from empty rooms with a zombie to a large room with 5 enemies at close range, while a goblin throws daggers at you and a werewolf comes charging from off-screen. Then an empty room with explosive barrels and a switch that opens the door. I get it is "randomly generated", but the generation mechanics and base rooms should be more interesting or ballanced. The player should be given the opportunity to gear a bit or meeting new enemies before being thrown in a room with 10 of it charing at him. The totem mechanic interested me a lot, but then I got an abbacus and checked the totem damage, which was basically the same as my own weapon and got disappointed. I tried to make a full-totem build by obtaining the totem book and shaman items, but in the end using it was so clunky, having to put it on the ground and kite enemies to it while waiting for it to poof and hope that the hitbox didn't cheat me. Most of the times it was simply easier to backtrack and throw hits at the enemy one at a time than wait for them to get hit by the totem. Now don't get me wrong, I love "roguelikes" and the difficulty associated with them, but what makes them fun is the possibility to test your limits and play the game everytime with a different set of cards. This feels to me more like I am playing an old NES game like Ghosts and Goblins where I have to keep repeating the same stuff and the difficulty is centered around perfect timing, patience and execution of it. I personally do not recommend the game, and if you feel that the things I cited are important for you, if you enjoyed "Binding of Isaac" for the items and hate doing the same stuff again, maybe this is not the game for you.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 1, 2014

  I was a huge fan of Binding of Isaac and Legend of Zelda, two games that A Wizard's Lizard is often compared too. While I have found enjoyment in this game (and its general addictive nature) I would definitely place it below the former two. It has a fun item database and interesting upgrade elements however I found the gameplay itself can become quite tedious and bug issues, specifically around some monsters cause you to die unneccesarily - very frustrating after progressing to a certain point. I would only reccommend this game to someone with a lot of time to kill, if you haven't tried Binding of Isaac I would go there first.
• gamedeal user

  Jul 21, 2014

  Terrible Performance For some reason, this game has terrible performance. In the late part of the game the performance is so bad it's literally impossible to play. Many people in the forums have stated similar issues. This game looks like an IOS port and should be able to run fine with a potato, but currently high end PCs are struggling with it. I personally don't have much hope that it will be fixed due to several reasons: -It hasn't been fixed yet. -The reason there is no widescreen support is because that would mean 50%isch more pixels on screen and it wrecked the performance (as stated by one of the developers). -The fact that they can't get such an untaxing game to run smoothly and that the had to resort to such drastic measures mentioned above just screams incompitence. I honestly don't think that they even CAN properly optimize this game. -And most of all, they thought it was acceptable to release the game in this state to begin with. The first 3isch floors are playable but the frames do drop below 30 if many enemies are on screen at once. But since it's literally unplayable (for some PC configurations) in the later half of the game, there is no way I can in any way recommend this game.
• gamedeal user

  Oct 21, 2014

  It starts out being a blast as you rescue townsfolk, get newer and better items, and get further along into the game; but eventually devolves into repetitiveness. Although a roguelike in vein of TLoZ and BoI, it hardly gets very random. Due to this, as your skill level goes up, you get further in just to be hit by gobs of enemies. This is where the game's fault lies in as the enemies tend to take a lot of punishment before going down. As you get to the final area of the game, it gets worse in this regard as now said sponge enemies now hit like trucks and with every death you'll just be visiting the same rooms over and over and over. Now in an average roguelike, this wouldn't be a problem. In AWL, it's hardly random enough to give the player a reason to continue to do so. Finding blueprints enables you to reduce the luck element by finding a good enough item that you can now use at the beginning of the game upon purchasing it. However, even that process could essentially be considered "grinding" as you're going through the same places yet again to get something to help you get through the game's 3 main areas. Due to enemies spamming you in large amounts and them being able to take a heavy amount of punishment; rather than them changing up tactics, (or even getting new attacks or becoming faster for example) they essentially don't do anything creative with them. Everything else, such as the music, is passable at best. Overall, the game's faults will eventually wear you out on enjoying it.
• gamedeal user

  Nov 28, 2014

  [h1]At the Time of Writing[/h1] [b]Game:[/b] A Wizard's Lizard [b]Price:[/b] $8.49* (reg $16.99) [b]Genre:[/b] Action/RPG/Rogue-like [b]Time Played:[/b] 42 hours [b]Personal Enjoyment Rating:[/b] ☺☺☺☺☻ [b]Links I Found Helpful**[/b] A Youtube review by [b]Northernlion[/b][url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYPa6XHPxP4]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYPa6XHPxP4[/url] [h1]General[/h1] You may think that I absolutely love this game if you've looked at my hours played, and although I am enjoying it and I do recommend it, take it with a grain of salt please. I've found this game to be somewhat difficult, but the completionist in me just can not accept defeat, and so I keep coming back again and again. At this point I have 50 deaths and 0 wins. Therefore, I'm not at all sure what the ratio is between the game being challenging and my skill level being awful. There are a few characters to unlock, however that is far in your future if you're anything like me. First you need to learn the ropes of the game. One of the most enjoyable aspects of a Wizard's Lizard is the opportunity to explore for yourself and get to grips with how to accomplish the objective of the game. However, as you learn a little more each time you die, it has to be said that the biggest drawback to this game is the repetativeness. Last of all, I must mention that I have not played The Binding of Isaac, and therefore I can not give you any comments comparing the two games to each other. I find the Binding of Isaac too gory. [h1]Gameplay[/h1] You are a lizard. A very cute lizard that looks cross and sticks his tongue out every time you attack. Your objective is to battle Death and help your wizard. You do this by wandering through the dungeon until you get to the last area. There are three main areas and two side areas. Getting hit (losing health) is a very bad thing because healing items are relatively few and far between. As you progress further and further into the dungeon, you'll be able to rescue villagers and buy blueprints which are the two persistent progression aspects to the game. They will give you more options in town before you start a run, making you more powerful, and thus more likely to get further. That's about it. It's pretty simple. Kill stuff before it kills you. Don't get hit. Get to the end. Although, as I might have mentioned before, it isn't necessarily easy to do. [h1]Controls[/h1] Controls are WASD to move and arrow keys to attack (you can also use the mouse to attack, but I found it rather cumbersome to use). There are few hotkeys to learn to make life easier, but the three most important ones are: Z is a spell attack, X puts down a totem, and shift makes you dash. It's important to learn to use your abilities to help you clear out rooms faster and with less death. [h1]Storyline[/h1] Very basic. It's really more of a theme than anything else. At the start there is a short cutscene setting you up to go rescue your wizard. Since I haven't managed to win a game yet I can't comment much more than that. [h1]Sound[/h1] I really enjoy the music, it's quite fun if repetitive, but repetitive like Tetris or other beloved old games. You are warned if you hate repetitive music. The sound effects are rather basic and a little jarring on the ears. There are only a few which I deem practical sounds - giving you warning of an incoming attack. [h1]Graphics[/h1] Delightful graphics in my opinion. Cartoony, sure, but charming. I also appreciate that I can turn off the bloody globs of zombie exploding because I do not enjoy gore. The lighting effects are very neat, although after a while they became tiresome for me because they do make gameplay harder. There is an option to turn the lighting effects off. [h1]Pros[/h1] [b]+ [/b]explore the game for yourself to learn the ropes [b]+ [/b]charming graphics [b]+ [/b]hotkeys [b]+ [/b]a lot to do for completionists [b]+ [/b]achievements*** are more like challenges [b]+ [/b]super cute lizard [h1]Cons[/h1] [b]- [/b]repetitive [b]- [/b]repetitive [b]- [/b]repetitive [h1]Help Me Help You[/h1] [b]If you did not find this review helpful,[/b] I would really appreciate your constructive criticism - tell me why it wasn’t helpful for you. It’s my hope to make the reviews that I do take the time to write up, as helpful as they possibly can be. [h1]Rothana's Steam Review Archive[/h1] For those that are interested in seeing more of my reviews, I have set up an archive of them at an external website. I don't earn anything off of this at all, it's just a little side project that I add to when I can. Steam won't let me create a direct link though, so you'll need to make your own way to the URL I describe now: [b]rothana dot weebly dot com[/b] [b]Footnotes[/b] [b]*[/b]Any prices that I mention are in CDN because that is what I see. The primary price I list at the top is the price that I bought the game at. [b]**[/b]I will not be keeping an eye on whether the links are up to date, so if they are broken I apologise. Remember that these are external websites and I'm just trying to be helpful - I'm not responsible for the content on the other end. [b]***[/b]Don't even get me started on achievements. My rant follows: [spoiler]Suffice it to say that I think most achievements are complete waste of space. The only reason I'm going to mention them as a plus point on a game is if they're being used properly. I don't care if you managed to kill your first zombie in the first five minutes of the tutorial... that [b]isn't[/b] an achievement. Achievements should be challenges for the player to complete which are somewhat difficult to accomplish, and/or make you think about the game in a different way, thereby getting you to explore different ways of doing things and thus expanding upon the gameplay.[/spoiler] [b]Edit Log[/b] 27/11/2014 added "help me help you" section 18/02/2015 added "rothana's archive" section
• gamedeal user

  Jan 9, 2015

  While this game looks nice, has a great theme and tone set by the visuals, and has a pretty nice upgrade system, there were many things that really killed my enjoyment of it. While individual rooms are generated well, with a random layout and varied monsters, each floor is utterly predictable, from the number of rooms to the effective contents of each. You don't do much damage, and you don't have many ways to get HP back, which is nice and reasonable, however every time you kill an enemy or break a destructable object the entire screen shakes. It seems like overkill, and quickly becomes more of an annoyance. Does every single kill need to have that impact? You can have upwards of 50 creatures on the screen at a time in some rooms. That's stopped being an occasional screen shake and become more of a semi-permanant earthquake. The graphics look nice, but the game ran very badly on my machine. If more than one enemy was taking damage at a time the whole game seemed to tank for a few frames. If several traps go off at once, again, it tanks. The game runs in a window, which is nice, but if you accidentally click outside the window, which is far from hard with a mouse controlled twin-stick shooter, then the game 'locks' whatever keyboard input it had until you jiggle it. for example, if you were walking downwards, you will continue walking downwards when you alt-tab back into it. For movement skills this is easy enough to fix, but it is particularly annoying when you accidentally lock down your sprint button, which prevents you from shooting and has a cooldown. Then 2-3 seconds after coming back into the game and fixing your movement, you find yourself sprinting off into the wall of spikes. Running the game fullscreen letterboxes off either side of my screen. This is an understandable design descision, since having a fixed player camera makes sense, I won't hold that against the developers. However I will hold against them the fact that you can still click in the black regions with my mouse to target, and the game doesn't recognise that input, as if you had clicked out of the game. That's just bad. Overall, while a nice game that would have done well as a free flash game, it quickly becomes very repeditive, and has enough buggy quality issues to make me sorely regret paying the full $15 price.
• gamedeal user

  May 15, 2015

  My main issues with A Wizard's Lizard are: the game is too [b]repetitive[/b]; there is not enough [b]content[/b]; and everything becomes [b]annoying[/b] (enemies, rooms, equipment). [h1]A Small Explanation Of What A Wizard's Lizard Is All About[/h1] A Wizard's Lizard is [b]very[/b] similar to The Binding of Isaac, but has an upgrade system similar to Rogue Legacy. During your crawl in the dungeon you can rescue an infinite number of villagers (3 max per crawl) who each give you 500 Gold to start each of your runs with. You spend your money before you enter the dungeon (or choose to save some or all of it for in-dungeon purchases). You spend your money on weapons / other equipment of which you purchase blueprints for in the dungeon. Dying will leave you in ghost form, but you can return to normal on the second part of each area. [h1]The Game Is Too Repetitive[/h1] There are 3 main areas ([b]Cemetery, Sewers, Crypt[/b]) each with 3 parts to them (e.g. Sewer 1, Sewer 2, Sewer 3) and 2 sub-areas with 1 part each respectively. That's it. All crawls feel the same because everything is set in stone. Blueprints, shopkeepers (and the kinds of items they sell), secret enemies and paths will always be in the same areas (e.g. Cemetery 2 will always have a blueprint for purchase, and Crypt 1 will always have a villager to rescue in the area). You always fight Death at the end. There are no surprises. Someone even wrote a guide on what you can find exactly in each level: https://steamcommunity.com/app/280040/discussions/0/540744934619347325/? [h1]There Is Not Enough Content[/h1] Many of the weapons feel the same and I think a lot of them should not even be in the game. There's even a weapon called the Owl Slayer that is very effective against Owl enemies. The problem with bringing such a weapon is that Owl enemies are only in the first area (Cemetery). Owls are not even difficult enough to warrant bringing a weapon for the sole purpose of making it easier to kill them. As stated before, there are 3 main areas with 2 sub-areas. One of the sub-areas does not have a Boss at the end, so that's 3 main Bosses and 1 sub-boss. There are also a couple special enemies you can fight if you want to, but you usually do not want to. Unlocking shortcuts to the Crypt and Sewers are laughably easy. You just have to kill one of those special enemies in each area once, which is not hard at all. You will also encounter the same enemies over and over with the exception of a few rare enemies. The game has 72 blueprints to collect (those 72 blueprints do not even include every piece of equipment in the game). The game has a Museum that lets you know which weapons / equipment you have completed the game with. I have completed the game with every weapon and piece of equipment and I can say it was not worth it. [h1]Everything Is Annoying[/h1] [u]The Rooms[/u]: There is so much BS in a lot of the rooms that you have to be overly careful. Every room becomes a tedious nightmare making the game difficult for all the wrong reasons. There are so many non-enemy structures that when destroyed will send projectiles flying out and are very annoying. The Crypt is littered with arrow wall traps and the Sewers have wall traps that spew green liquid on you that slows you down and is more of a nuisance than anything. Rooms freeze with all activated / deactivated traps as they were when you leave a room. So if there is a sliding spike trap located near a door and it barely misses you as you get through the door, you will have to take damage on the way back for not paying attention. Another instance of this happening is when you die and become a ghost; all ghost enemies in previously completed rooms will be unfrozen like the spike trap. I died on a crawl one time after I was backtracking to get revived when I went through a room I had cleared before when I was alive, but now it had a skull ghost in the doorway which killed me instantly upon entering the room. Another annoying part of the rooms is that they can have annoying traps like webs on the floor that slow you down, fans that push or pull you, spike traps that spring up from under the floor, and spike traps that slide across the floor when you get in range. They are all annoying and everywhere. [u]The Weapons / Equipment[/u]: Damage upgrades are necessary if you want to have a fun time in your crawls, but they are somewhat rare (for one thing you cannot purchase any of them at the town before a crawl) and all of the damage upgrades except for the charms come with a downgrade. The downgrade is that with each piece of spiked equipment you put on, your fire rate will go down. [u]The Enemies[/u]: Once you enter a room with enemies you cannot leave until every enemy is dead (except for the 2 crystal enemies). This becomes especially annoying when you go into a room on accident. Some of the enemies can be fun to fight like the two types of Owls who attack you depending on which Owl type you attack which have some great strategic scenarios. And then there are all of the other enemies who all feel the same. Some enemies can freeze or slow you, but the majority of them just charge at you. The later stages feel like there are too many enemies / traps and the enemies have too much health. Some enemies can even kill you in one hit with an explosion against a wall. [h1]Final Thoughts[/h1] If you're a completionist, you may find some entertainment from collecting every available blueprint (which was a pain to do by the way) or completing the game with every weapon and piece of equipment (which also was not very fun). The Museum also tracks how many times you've killed an enemy and will make the trophy of that monster Golden when you've "Mastered" killing them. This can mean a low number of kills like 25 or upwards of 500+. I'm not even going to try that because a lot of the enemies are rare or take a long time to get to. You may also be interested in this game if you want a 10-20 hour game that you [u]never want to play again[/u].
• gamedeal user

  Jun 25, 2015

  I have had a lot of fun with this game. It's got great replay value and definitely scratches the rougelike itch.
• gamedeal user

  Sep 15, 2016

  A wizards lizard is a great rogue rpg game. I mostly don't play rogue games, but they can be quite fun. This little rogue rpg features areanas, secret levels and characters, and time runs. This can make the game quite fun. It is also alot like the zelda games. There is also a sequel on steam that is still in EA (and has been for quite awhile): http://store.steampowered.com/app/373470 Recommended for fun and rpg elements.