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.

Game: A Wizard's Lizard
Price: $8.49* (reg $16.99)
Genre: Action/RPG/Rogue-like
Time Played: 42 hours
Personal Enjoyment Rating: ☺☺☺☺☻

Links I Found Helpful**
A Youtube review by Northernlionhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYPa6XHPxP4

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

+ explore the game for yourself to learn the ropes
+ charming graphics
+ hotkeys
+ a lot to do for completionists
+ achievements*** are more like challenges
+ super cute lizard
- repetitive
- repetitive
- repetitive

If you did not find this review helpful, 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.

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: rothana dot weebly dot com

Footnotes
*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.
**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.
***Don't even get me started on achievements. My rant follows: 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 isn't 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.

Edit Log
27/11/2014 added "help me help you" section
18/02/2015 added "rothana's archive" section

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.

Fun, challenging roguelike 2d twinstick shooter.

This game is hard. Like, seriously hard. It makes Megaman look like a stroll in the park. It makes Binding of Isaac look like a simple mugging instead of waking up chained to a drainpipe with a hacksaw and a cellphone next to you. In short, it's HARD.

If you persevere though, there are plenty of hidden secrets to uncover - secret levels, unlockable characters. The pace starts off slower than Binding of Isaac - you have to be tactical *and* strategic, but as the levels progress, can become quite frenetic. Masterpiece class in game mechanics design. Plus, Raga is so CUTE. 10/10.

A Wizard's Lizard is a game in the same style to Binding of Isaac as I'm sure many people have mentioned, though I would say there is a bit more focus on aiming for progression rather than rogue-like elements such as each run being different from the very first level and so on. So don't go in expecting exactly the same experience here as it won't be. It's also a pretty challenging game!

I was asked by the developer to take a look at the game for my first impressions series and if you'd like to see the game in motion as well as hear some more thoughts on it I'd encourage you to check out the video below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5EeUOpagQc

Great game, I feel the whole 'become a ghost when you die' thing really adds to the game, and I love the artstyle. But overall I feel the game can be a bit too grindy, but then again so was Rogue Legacy and I loved that. I think the game needs something a bit.. more, to seperate itself from similar games. So while I do recommended it (I certainly liked/enjoyed it enough to 100% it) it just seems to be missing something and I can't put my finger on it. 7.5/10

This game is worth a play if you really like Binding of Isaac but wish it:

1. Had a feudalish fantasy world theme instead of a gross demon/angel/baby theme

2. the main character was a cutie lizard

3. it also had aspects of hub and grinding for advanced starts al-la Rogue legacy

4. That #3 was required to get anywhere sometimes because of RNG screws and enemies exponentially getting healthier while your pickups remain slim.

Confusing, but fun, addicting, and challenging.
Unlike most others, i did not come because i play "Bindings of isaac" or whatever it is.

I came because i got a coupon.

7.8/10

I cannot really get into this. I am a huge Binding of Isaac fan, and this just hits a little too close to home. I say that because it feels like an inferior clone to the great BoI. There is love put into this game, and it is done fairly well - good controller support, and the graphic style is nice - but it just doesn't cut it. I find myself a bit bored by it.

I'd pass. I got this in a bundle (I had been eyeing it up for some time), but still wouldn't recommend it.

Lost Decade Games has giving the world a real gem of an instant classic with A Wizards Lizard.

The art style seem to devide people, but the gameplay sure doesn't. The little Lizard Raga walks, shoots, turns, scoots and everything else right on cue. Its one of those rare games where if you die, its your own dang fault.

Level layout is great too, viewed from a near top down (Isaac style). Theres so many dead ends that can lead to certain death or a ton of gold, or maybe even a weapon upgrade. The thrill of finding one of your favorite weapons in a random chest after a tough room is amazing. In my case finding a trident makes my run instantly better.

I absolutely love the whole "you die and get a second chance as an angel lizard while you can be resurrected and keep going"-bit. I also really like the fact that the ghosts of all your slain enemies can come back to haunt you the spirit world! Making you choose between disturbing the dead and possibly get more money, or letting them rest in peace and have fewer enemies when you die.. cause you will. A lot.

If you enjoy games like Binding of Isaac, Spelunky, Rogue Legacy I'm betting you'll like this cute little Lizards adventures as well.

Pretty fun game if you like Bindings of Isaac, Legend of Zelda and of course roguelike genre. It has random dungeons, loot, progressing village and fun secrets. Not a must have, but a good addition to your library.

Can someone help me find the newest beta? thank you. PS I love this game because it drives me crazy (in a good way)

It like Binding of Isaac but i think it better (graphically and gameplay)
A Zelda's shooting Roguelike.
You improve the starting with finding blueprint for more item in shop.
and more starting money with townfork (a little like Rogue legacy)
you got equipable head boot armor arm ring book totem and (soul skill)...

Seem to have 6 character. Raga the lizard is the starting
A museum lobby for item and monster info.

Just starting but i really impress by that game.
They some flaw but seem be fix in the beta.

Fun to play with a lot of dugeon, good for time killing. The only problem is it is too difficult to win.

a pretty fun little casual game; basically a simpler version of Binding of Isaac

I got this game via a humble bundle and I'm sad to say that it just isn't that good. This game doesn't hold a flame to the experience that The Binding of Isaac Rebirth(TBoIR) offers. I'm a few hours into AWL and I feel like I've accomplished little and am only destined to grind repetitively (and boringly) towards no real goal. I've unlocked some items and blueprints, picked up various armor and weapons, even freed 4 or 5 villagers, but I've yet to unlock any new characters or come anywhere near completing a single run. Opportunities to succeed seem far too scarce while the cards are stacked against you until you are able to obtain a much more powerful build or character.

In TBoIR you can at least say that within an hour or two's practice you can unlock more content, have a more varying experience, and certainly accomplish something more. The biggest difference between this game and the Binding of Isaac Rebirth is that you can play run after run in Isaac and you don't feel like you're needlessly grinding. I've put over 200 hours into TBoIR and have yet to be bored during a run because there is enough variety and change with the levels, enemies, room layouts, characters, and vast array of items to make each run fun. After only an hour or so in AWL, I already felt like I was pointlessly grinding in this game and making little progress. At this point I have no interest in continuing this game.

Positives
- Interesting cartoony graphical design
- good roguelike concept
- varying level layouts
- variety of weapons, armor, and "builds"
- Great to see a description of what items do in the pause menu (no checking the wiki like Isaac)

Negatives
- controls feel more clunky than those of TBoIR. It just isn't as tight
- Everything from killing enemies to finding items feels very monotonous and you're very aware of grinding
- Too few health drops to recover damage
- Prices for shop items are very high even when you take the time to loot every room in its entirety and deplete every zombie grave entirely
- You never really feel powerful (not necessarily OP) like in TBoIR
- If you accidentally hit the shopkeeper while in his store, he will immediately attack you until you are dead or you kill him. (You do get to take every item in the store without paying for them, but with the clunky controls, I've accidentally attacked the shopkeep several times which has ruined my runs)
- If you manage to kill the shopkeep, he will continue to attack you in every store you enter for the rest of your run.
- For whatever reason, this game is very clunky about room transitions and my character turns around and enters the room I just left quite often

A novel spin on the genre. It's a fun game, but it's not easy. Definitely challenging, but in a way that makes you want to come back and give it another go. Really enjoying it so far and looking forward to playing more!

Simply a fun game. What I don't is that it has a low resolution and the controls are a bit bulky.

This game is, for all intents and purposes, a completely inferior Binding of Isaac. You've got the same basic rougelike setup, and the game seems promising at first, but eventually it becomes obvious how many crippling design flaws the game has. If you haven't played Isaac play that instead, and if you have I'll describe this game in terms of Isaac except with:
-Needlessly large rooms, so that you can't see everything at once.
-Uninteresting item progression. Instead of stacking buffs, you find new weapons and standard RPG equipment that you have to swap out. This could work, except because of how the macrogame works after a couple of games you'll start off with more or less everything you need for the playthrough and be locked into one specialization, and since the equipment doesn't have tiers 90% of what you find will be useless.
-Weaker gameplay. Isaac gave you all sorts of chances to kite and poke your enemies, but you were usually still at some risk while you do it. In this game, most enemies have no way to retaliate to ranged kiting, and one of the gameplans (specializing into totems) lets you create a proxy that kills everything while you hide in the corner. Worst of all, this seems to be the best strategy, and it's pretty bad to go into a Rougelike thinking "well if I'm lucky I'll find the beehive totem and spend the next 30 minutes hiding while my swarm of +8 bees clears the rooms for me".
-No sustain. This seems to be the core problem with the combat, since because the game refuses to give you any significant amount of healing items, if your gameplan has any chance of taking damage you're eventually going to die (hence sitting in the corner while your proxy totem kills everything). Food is rare (you might get one piece as a drop per game and it heals you for about one hit worth of hp and it takes a whole floor worth of gold to buy the same amount from the shop) and even the health potion you get after bossfights is pretty underwhelming. I can sort of see why someone thought this was a good idea; it shows off the game's afterlife gimmick (which I liked until I realized it was the reason there's no way to sustain yourself), but at the cost of any combat strategy other than "take no damage ever".
-Fewer rewards. You don't get free items at all unless you find them randomly (which are still more common than the food, but an Item Room would be a lot more satisfying), and there's only a boss every 3 floors. That means you're essentially limited to what you find, what you buy from the store, and what you start the game with, and since you can start with a full matched set of equippment you'll probably just buy/find a weapon or two and have your optimal build with no effort.
-Set Bonus in a Rougelike. Since you're filling equippment slots you're going to end up shoehorned into one playstyle because if you try to complete a set instead of just starting the game with it, odds are you'll never find all the different parts. Most agregious is the Trickster equippment, which increases the damage done by Trickster weapons; you can't start the game with any of this (unless it unlocks later) which means that if you pick up a Trickster item, you have to hope you somehow find enough of the others to make it worthwhile. I think there are 5 items and a weapon, and I see maybe two per playthrough.
-Same Bosses every game. You only meet them every 3 floors, but it's always the same fights. The bosses aren't especially bad, although they all have cheesy moves that you're not going to be able to dodge if they decide to use them, and as I said this is a game where you aren't allowed to take damage.

That more or less sums it up, and even though there are things I like about this game, the list above was more than enough to make me give up on it. For something that follows the same formula as Isaac, I question whether the developer has actually played Isaac because this game has so many issues that Isaac dealt with much better. A different genre of game could get away with this, but top-down shooters are really only about one thing: how well designed the gameplay is, and the gameplay here needs a lot of love.

A very poorly planned game. Upgrades seem to do nothing. Weapons barely make a difference aside from bees and spears. running the same levels over and over repeatedly wears thin very quickly. Lack of any kind of progression outside of unlocking almost worthless blueprints in the shop makes it a boring grind. Also has FPS issues, especially when using the mouse to aim. A lot of wasted potential here.