The Mageseeker, an upcoming Riot Forge game set in the League of Legends universe, was just announced in January, yet it already feels like it’s getting lost in the shuffle. Ever since Riot revealed its major publishing ambitions during 2019’s ten year anniversary event, it’s been hard to keep track of everything coming out. But before you write The Mageseeker off as just another one of ‘those’ League of Legends games, take a closer look. Digital Sun’s pixel-art brawler game may wear its inspirations on its sleeves, but it has the potential to be one of the year’s biggest and best action games.
Indie studio Digital Sun has been working on The Mageseeker in secret for nearly four years now - ever since completing development on its breakout debut, Moonlighter. There’s a lot of Moonlighter DNA in The Mageseeker, especially in its hyper-detailed pixel-art and twitchy dodge-or-you’ll-die combat, but The Mageseeker is also drawing from Hyper Light Drifter and Hades - two smash hits indies Digital Sun’s developers weren’t shy to compare it to when I demoed the game this weekend at PAX East. But The Mageseeker is no mere Light Drifter-like, which becomes clear the moment you start swinging Sylas’ giant chains around to brutalize everything in your path.
Updated March 31, 2023: To further illustrate our high hopes for The Mageseeker, we've included our own video discussion between Eric Switzer and Jade King regarding their thoughts on this potential sleeper hit.
Much like Kratos, Sylas uses his broken chains to exact revenge on his subjugators. I’m only marginally aware of the surrounding lore, but Digital Sun assured me that you don’t need to know the history to jump right in and follow along. But even my vague knowledge of Demacia, the death of its King, and the Champions that serve as The Mageseeker’s major players like Morgana, Lux, and Garen, make me excited to see how Digital Sun is expanding the lore of League of Legends. The developers tell me that the Lux comic series serves as The Mageseeker’s jumping off point, but that Riot gave the studio practically free reign to craft its own story and create new characters, such as Sylas’ former mentor Killan who helps him escape Demacia and aids his quest to seek out the Mageseekers.
Swapping between quick close hits and powerful long-range chain attacks is immediately satisfying, and animations are so fluid and detailed it’s hard to believe they’ve been entirely hand-animated. It didn’t take me long to get a handle on the rhythm of combat, which involves a lot of dodge rolling to avoid harm and throwing your chain to grapple distant enemies, allowing you to combo straight into deadly attacks. You won’t get far with weapons alone though. The Mageseeker’s main hook is Sylas’ ability to hook (wahey) his enemies with his chain and steal their powers like a (more) murderous Kirby.
Spell stealing is deceptively complex, and the main mechanic that gives The Mageseeker’s combat its depth. Stealing spells is as simple as aiming at an enemy and pulling the left trigger, then aiming again and pulling the right trigger to unleash it, but stealing an enemy’s power and firing it back at them is rarely the most efficient way to fight. Instead, you want to capitalize on the elemental weaknesses of your targets. There are six elements in The Mageseeker, which are all split into weakness pairs. Fire and Ice are weak against each other, so you can steal a fire power from one enemy and unleash it on another one for bonus damage, and vice versa. Learning the elemental alignments is essential and leveraging them against groups of enemies in the heat of battle is the crux of The Mageseeker’s absurdly high skill-ceiling, and mastering that system is going to be a blast.
Sylas has a lot of other tools too. He has four of his own spell slots, which you can swap between instantly using the d-pad, and a supply of mana that only recharges by dealing weapon damage (stolen spells are always free to cast). This gives a lot of momentum to combat, as being efficient requires you to weave together chain strikes, your own spells, and the spells you steal from enemies. It’s a ballet in as much as any of these top-down action games are, and in some ways more.
The combat mechanics are a lot more complicated than Hyper Light Drifter, and I struggled getting up to speed with the constant shift between button-mashing to swing the chains and stick-aiming to sling the spells. But I think fans of 2D action games are ready and maybe even eager for a challenge like this. This feels like a smart evolution of the genre. It’s complicated, but the mechanics feel thoughtfully designed rather than needlessly complex. When you get into a flowstate with a game like Hades it feels like you’re acting on pure instinct, but the way you target enemies to counter them with advantageous spell types here adds a puzzle-like quality that I find really intriguing.
The Mageseeker has a lot of competition this year with both Hyper Light Breaker and Hades 2. It’s also easily dismissed by non-League fans, especially considering it was announced alongside the release date reveals for both Conv/rgence and Song of Nunu - two other Riot Forge games coming this year. I hope those games don’t draw too much attention away from The Mageseeker, because it’s shaping up to be a groundbreaking addition to the 2D action genre.