Spellbound Survivors Review | Run While You Can (PC)

Spellbound Survivors is a good casual roguelike experience for all individuals. Mixing simple gameplay with strategy and keeping away mechanics, you’ll be trying an infinite number of combinations in order to succeed. With multiple maps, enemy types, and classes to choose from, no two runs of Spellbound Survivors will be the same as the previous one. Of course, if you want to succeed, you’ll need to upgrade the many abilities between matches. Each of these is designed to assist the player in overcoming the overwhelming odds.

Since Spellbound Survivors is a game that can be beaten in under an hour, it makes the perfect time killer. On a day when you don’t have much going on, try this title! Beyond this, the simple control scheme and gameplay loop will have casual and experienced gamers alike entertained. Of course, as a rogue-like title, you shouldn’t expect to win in your first few rounds. Instead, you’ll need patience, knowledge of the items you are using, and the upgrades you take along the way. By collecting as many coins and essences as you can, you’re sure to make your way to the ultimate threat!

Spellbound Survivors will be available through Steam on December 27th.

Simple Story

The story of Spellbound Survivors is a group of heroes going out to try and slay the overlord. To this end, you’ll have to trek across several environments including a road, crypt, sandy desert, icy barren, and volcanic location. Each of these will have their own monster types and bosses with their own speeds and damages. Every mini-boss seems to act like a lieutenant to the overlord’s army, making them challenging and hard to beat. These creatures have seemingly killed every other person as you are the last living person left.

Once you slog through the depths of the monster hordes you’ll encounter the overlord himself. Being a creature of magic and domination, they will try to kill you with powerful elemental forces. You won’t have much of a chance against them unless you have built up the power of a hero swelling inside each class. As for classes, each character seems to fit a stereotype in tabletop games ranging from a fighter to a paladin and warlock. Not only do these classes start out with different stats, but have an alternative weapon that can help you along the way.

Exciting Gameplay

The gameplay for Spellbound Survivors is very similar to what you’ll find in Vampire Survivors. Acting as an alternative story to the same game style, this new take on rogue-likes makes the genre accessible to more casual gamers. Because of this, if you’re new to the franchise and want to learn the patience of starting after dying, Spellbound Survivors is for you. Using your movement keys, you’ll just choose between different weapons and abilities and try to avoid the enemy hordes. From this simple loop of gameplay, you can create entire strategies based around keep away.

Legendary Abilities and gameplay

You’ll need to collect gold and essence in order to level yourself up, and gain better bonuses. All the while you’ll raise up a special bar that gives you access to immensely powerful abilities. Notably, as you start out, you’ll only have one type of creature coming at you, and as time goes on the numbers increase. Every five minutes you’ll encounter a boss fight which will completely pause your timer. During this fight, you’ll have to kill the creature before the time continues once again. At 30 minutes you’ll interact with the overlord himself, teleporting you to his realm as he makes short work of you.

Classic Graphics

In terms of how Spellbound Survivors looks, the graphics hold some of the best polishing for a casual game I’ve seen. Using a great amount of simple art designs and pop culture, cute monsters along charming characters. Every aspect of these helps paint the game in a less stressful light, while the gameplay itself makes you attentive and alert. The result is that every creature in the game is bound to make you happy or nostalgic for past titles. The bosses are larger and more dynamic, resembling powerful versions of their map’s themes. The maps themselves are well made, open, and infinite allowing the player to really focus on the enemies at large.

To define this game’s art style, there are both pieces of bright colors with warm textures, down to dark and haunting ones. It all depends on the map you choose which experience you get. For instance, the desert map will have Egyptian-themed enemies, and the ice realm will have frosty opponents. The forest tends to keep enemies around that could be found in dungeons and dragons or Final Fantasy. Meanwhile, the crypt is full of undead, and the volcano is full of likewise fire-themed enemies. In the end, you’ll be brought to a galactic spatial dimension to combat with the overlord himself.

Volcanic Biome

Repetitive Audio

The soundtrack for Spellbound Survivors is both entertaining and a little bit repetitive. While the rock track both inspires and keeps you attentive, it’s not that fun to listen to for thirty minutes. This can be an understandable flaw to have when you’re developing a game, but it’s annoying nonetheless. Having a single audio track leads to just turning the sound down and putting on your music. Besides this, the damage effects and monster noises are basic and expected for the gameplay you have.

Honestly, there’s nothing overly remarkable about the sound of Spellbound Survivors, however, it is a fun game regardless. If you have your own music on, you’re bound to get lost for hours as I did the first couple nights. It’s also important to note that the sound of some of the attacks is genuinely entertaining. They remind me of classic games with fantasy effects, something the game overall leaves me with a taste of. The one real critique to end this off is to add an extra soundtrack, something to fill the gap in the thirty minutes of playtime. 

Spellbound Survivors was reviewed on PC with a key provided by ToastedSquadStudios