PLATFORM: PC | RELEASE DATE: 13TH AUGUST
Cast as a youngster who turns up outside a school for wizards, you’re taken in by the principal, Elementine, after he notices that you happen to be in possession of a very special spellbook. After a few mishaps during your first magic lessons, you’re banished to the basement where other misfit wizards have banded together to look out for one another. After spending several years in the bowels of the building, the school comes under attack and Elementine finds himself with no choice but to let you out of the basement. But, of course, your attempts to fight back against the assailants don’t quite go to plan…
Taking a big step away from the usual RPG fare, Leximan‘s gameplay takes a very unique approach – your actions are based around words, and language is your most effective tool. During encounters with other characters (fighting, helping, or generally sorting out some kind of situation or other), a jumble of syllables float around the bottom of the screen, and your job is to figure out which words you can make out of them before dragging the letters to your spellcasting box. For example, if an opponent is throwing fireballs at you, countering their attack with something cold, wet or icy is probably a good idea. You’ll often be able to find multiple possibilities, but there aren’t really any wrong answers – if you don’t choose the “correct” one, as long as you enter an actual word that can be made from the letters on screen, you’ll always get some kind of weird and wacky response before being given another chance to try again. Outside of these encounters, Leximan has many other tricks up its sleeve – it constantly finds new ways to change up the “combat”, pays an unexpected homage to a recent indie hit, and includes plenty puzzles, minigames and other secrets and surprises that are much better left to experience for yourself.
Along with its creative gameplay ideas, Leximan‘s art style – reminiscent of a modern take on a BBC Micro / ZX Spectrum version of Undertale, if you can imagine such a thing – is tremendously well done. Much like the game’s dialogue, it’s quirky and slightly eccentric but always endearing, with tons of warmth and humour. The soundtrack is similarly excellent, although it could maybe do with a few more tracks (partly to reduce repetition, but also because what’s here is really great so it’d be nice to hear some more tunes by the composer). And most impressive of all, the whole thing was put together by a team of just three people! If offbeat magical fantasy Pratchett/Python-esque weirdness is your kind of thing, you’ll find Leximan is an absolute joy to play.
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