Robe ‘em up wizard-action game Magicka will soon allow more than just co-op combat and duels, you’ll soon be able to blast each other in PvP arenas under a number of game rules. To prove that this TRUTH Paradox have released footage and I’ve posted it below, along with the details of the three PvP modes.
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Magicka is to get two new challenge maps, “Caverns” and “Marshlands”, each featuring a swarm of monsters that a player must take on with magic violence. You can check out the details of the maps in question in a video, below. However, one map will be free, and one will cost $1.99. Which will be which? Well that’s being decided in a poll just here. Looks like Caverns is the firm favourite, but maybe it’ll turn around for poor old Marshlands.

“These maps will be released on April 26th, one of which will be offered without requiring so much as a single potato,” say Paradox, cheekily.
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Paradox have today squeaked out their excellently batshit DLC pack Magicka: Vietnam, which relocates wizardry to misguided war. Not that this is exactly approaching the Vietnam conflict with anything other than farce and satire, but it seems to be saturing its co-op monster-splatting with as much ‘Nam-themed excess as it can conjure up. POW camps, napalm, hueys, Rambo and raaawk all appear, but mostly it’s about making camo-clad goblins die by the dozen. It’s enjoying itself first and foremost, and there are precious few commercial games that can be said of. In what’s now Magicka tradition, the latest trailer is an exercise in explodey absurdity.
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Paradox send word that the mages of Magicka will be killing goblin-cong in Vietnam next month, and this exciting gameplay opportunity will cost a straightforward $4.99. It’s a new campaign setting, but “also contains a new survival challenge map with increased difficulty in direct response to the request from the community.” There is also a spell that calls in an F-15 napalm strike.

I’ve posted the announcement trailer below, again, because it is among the “best things” that are on my list.
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(5:12:42 PM) Kieron: OMFG
(5:12:44 PM) Kieron: OMFG
(5:12:50 PM) Kieron: The new magicka trailer!
(5:12:59 PM) Kieron: I don’t know here to start
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RPS reader Alex “Truthcake” Turpin sends word that Arrowhead Studios has released a free little bit of DLC for wizardly co-op title Magicka entitled “Mea Culpa”, which is nerd for “We’re sorry”. What are they sorry about? The game’s buggy launch, of course, as indicated by the list of new content after the jump. The developers have released a new song, too, entitled The Gamer and Magicka. Imagine if all developers routinely released songs for their games! The world would be a better place. With worse music.
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Magicka! It’s out. It’s smart. It’s broke. The entireity of Arrowhead studios and anybody else Paradox can muster are, allegedly, working on patches around the clock. So where did this infomercial-style video come from? Surely the developers aren’t fannying around with dry ice and cardboard orcs while gamers worldwide are struggling to play their game. Surely not. Thankfully, Paradox have released this video with a statement. (more…)

Something we rather want to do on Rock, Paper, Shotgun is write about Magicka. It’s one of those games, not a giant AAA mainstream release, but a small project that captured our attention. We’d been watching it from the corner of our eyes during development, and then Quintin fell completely in love with it when he previewed it last week. Our looks were forward. And then it was released.

It’s been a real shame to see what should have been one of those feel-good stories become something completely different. A tale of bugs and woe and disaster. One Paradox has responded to by offering all Magicka DLC as free until the end of the month. As they fight to patch it into something playable, we decided to take a look at the game in co-op between ourselves. Except for Quintin, who organised it then remembered he’d bought tickets for the opera or something. So Jim, Alec and John set forth to adventure.

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Right, to keep you up to date on Magicka, a hefty patch has already appeared. That’s swift. And Paradox tell us the developers are already hard at work on a second patch to catch what they haven’t crammed into the first one. And, they tell RPS, there will be new patches every 24 hours fixing whatever may have arisen. For the angrier denizens of the internet, let’s remember that while it’s obviously massively frustrating to spend money on a game and then not be able to enjoy it, this is an £8 game from a small developer that’s working its arse off to fix everything as fast as it can. Not ideal, no. But not, let’s say, not patching your billion dollar selling AAA blockbuster for months. To apply the patch you’ll need to restart Steam, whereupon the 522MB of fixes will begin downloading. The long list of patch details are below.

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We’re very excited about Magicka at RPS, and I’m currently trying to begin an adventure for part of our coverage. But the keyword at this point is “trying”. The game has just gone live on GamersGate and Steam, but rather a lot of people are having trouble. Of the bugs reported, two have rather got in my way in the first two minutes, and an attempt to play a co-op game has already collapsed into an exchange of, “Can you connect now?” instant messages.

However, pleasingly, Paradox tells us that a patch is already in the works. And even better, new patches will be appearing every 24 hours to address any other issues that may arise.

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