Wands is a VR game where players use magic wands to attack and defend themselves in virtual reality.
The player can choose from five different spell schools:
Arcane: This school allows the user to cast spells that damage opponents and directly affect their surroundings. The user can create boxes, pull levers, and push blocksto advance in levels.
Lightning: The user can use this school to attack enemies by throwing bolts of lightning at them.
Life: This school allows users to heal themselves and teammates, as well as resurrect fallen players. Enemies cannot be brought back from the dead after dying unless they are first resurrected by a Life player.
Necromancy: A special type that requires mana to summon minions that will fight for its user until it dies. Summoning additional creatures will increase your damage output, but also drain your mana pool faster.
Storm: The Storm school contains offensive spells designed to give players an edge in combat. These include orbs that deal radial damage, mines that blast projectiles outwards when enemies come near, missiles with homing capabilities, and more.
A special sixth school called ‘Miracle’ is available for players who purchase the in-game upgrade (the Starter Pack). This school contains spells used to support teammates by increasing their health and mana pools, as well as the speed at which they regenerate both.
The player can select from a multitude of counters that will help defeat enemies: shields, teleportation scrolls, and even invisibility. There are also various consumables that can be purchased with crystals found during levels such as bombs and potions.
Positives: The art style is pretty good, the different spell types fill a lot of niches. The variety of counters and consumables is nice.
Negatives: You can’t see your feet when you look down, which leads to some annoying platforming moments. No real player guidance on what spells do what or what levels are supposed to be like. There’s a lot of trial and error with this game where I didn’t enjoy it as much as other VR games I’ve played that were more clearly designed from the ground up for VR.
Recommendation: This is a decent pick-up-and-play multiplayer experience that doesn’t require long play sessions to have fun with friends, but there isn’t much depth here. When you play Wands, it feels like a game that was meant to be played with a mouse and keyboard or on a console controller but ported unceremoniously to VR headsets. I’m glad I got the game cheap during its launch sale, but $20 would be too much for this product in my opinion.
I give Wands by NUX Studios 2 out of 5 wands. What is your rating? Please leave your thoughts down below!