Magicka is a satirical action-adventure game set in a rich fantasy world based on Norse mythology. The player assumes the role of a wizard from a sacred order tasked with stopping an evil sorcerer who has thrown the world into turmoil, his foul creations besieging the forces of good.

To do that you must throw together elements for both offensive and defensive spells in order to overcome waves of enemies and survive the fight. There’s a lot of buttons to remember but if you’ve got a good gaming keyboard you’ll be able to whip up your own special macros like I did with the Microsoft Sidewinder X6 Keyboard. Quite handy in a pinch. Then again, you might like to play with your Xbox 360 controller, which you can also do. Got friends? You can play four-player local with a keyboard and three controllers. It’s like magic! It’s certainly like sales magic as the game sold over 30,000 copies in the first day. Great news for independent developers everywhere as it’s a $10 game.

Magicka has two modes Campaign and challenge. Campaign is obviously the story mode and you can play with up to three friends or alone. Challenge is sort of a survival mode where you have to fend off wave after wave of various enemies. I can see that being fun with friends. Again three friends local or online can join in the action.

Well I didn’t have any local friends to conjure up so I went it solo but it was still quite good fun. The problem is that it’s a lot of work to play from time to time. By that I mean that you’ve got eight buttons just for elements and often to find some good combinations you’ll almost fall into a button-mashing strategy. But they give you a sort of spell book to use so that you don’t have to remember all of the combinations. However, sometimes, the symbols can be difficult to read. That’s when you need to go into the menu and look at the Magicks book. However, stuff you learn in the challenges mode will not translate into the campaign mode and some elements combine to form symbols that, if you haven’t seen, will require some trial and error.