I gave Mages of Mystralia a chance, but it ended up being a hack ‘n’ slash with next-to-no variety in the first three hours. The trailer made me think it’d be more of a shooter, but you don’t get a ranged weapon until after the first miniboss; even then, said attack still prevents you from doing anything until its animation finishes, just like regular hack ‘n’ slash attack do, and you have to unequip it if you want anything resembling a dodge maneuver (but said maneuver kinda sucks–being slow and unable to interrupt attack animations–and the game is built around having the ranged attack instead anyway, at least as far as I’ve seen). I finally stopped playing when I realized the second boss was also a wait-to-attack boss that regularly spawns the generic skeleton enemies to harass you, just like the first boss was, but with the added issue of the camera being panned so low, you can’t reliably avoid the boss’s spread shot unless the boss is at the back-center of the arena.

The next game in my backlog pleasantly surprised me, though:

Physics-based arcade-style game. You have to grab (hold RT) designated objects and bring them all to the truck to beat the level, and you have a timer counting up, with your clear-time determining if you get gold/silver/bronze. You’ll usually get silver on your first try (with there always being more than enough time to get bronze), and since dying/destroying items just respawns you/them with a bit of a delay, you can’t really lose, so the main challenge is replaying levels to get gold or platinum time. There are also optional objectives, and while I’m not too keen on them being unknown before you beat a level, nor did I like how a few of them are still kinda vague when you do unlock them (and even more annoyed when they blatantly conflict with each other, forcing another replay if you want them all), I appreciate how you’ll still be awarded them if you unknowingly do them on your first try anyway. Not every game with unknown optional objectives does that.

It’s not a puzzle game because the only thing you’ll need to figure out is how doing the same thing results in a different outcome, like when the bed you’re dragging suddenly gets stuck in a doorway despite seemingly being lined up properly. Tall heavy objects can also cause you to spin around while dragging them for seemingly no reason. Movement is relatively normal when you’re only carrying light objects, but it’s still possible for them to catch and slow you if they hit a corner.

Levels don’t have a whole lot of variety between them, so it can get kinda boring if you play more than 2 or 3 levels in one session, even near the end. Mid-game levels sometimes have one or two ghosts that patrol an area and can kill you if you don’t stun them with the X button, and late-game levels have moving obstacles, but it has the same problem as Overcooked 1&2 where said obstacles stay in the way for too long. For real, it only takes a split-second to push me into the water, so why does the wall stay up for five seconds??–and in a game where the timer is the main challenge, no less!

Side note: completing enough optional objectives unlocks “arcade” levels, and the first one has a focus on platforming, but between the slippery controls and bad depth-perception, the level is hard for the wrong reasons. For example, jumping from the tall platform onto the smaller platform but landing half-off the edge causes you to slip off anyway, yet there’s no drop-shadow for you to know if you’ll land properly. The second arcade level just requires tossing packages across fans, and is significantly easier, so at least they’re not all like that.

Still, the game is okay for what it is. Get it on sale if you’re interested.