Lately I've been noticing that numerous excellent indie titles have been released in the past year or so. And I always jump at the chance to talk about a good indie game. So, Magicka!

What's to say about this game? As a quick overview, it's an isometric Diablo-esque game where players need to punch in spell combinations in order to be used offensively in concentrated or AoE forms, or used on oneself. Eventually this turns into a spastic, friendly-fire filled, medley of chaos that ends up making for a fun experience.

What I Liked:

- $10 game
- No need for "epic loots." The items give you some amusing properties for your character but no specific numbers to worry about to separate yourself from the rest.
- And on that note, the whole game is skill based. It's all about executing spell combos as quickly and effectively as you can.
- The combinations are deep and "endless." There are eight different keys that you are assigned and up to four different iterations of a spell for the combos...well let's just say that's a lot of permutations!
- Riddled with surprisingly well-thought-out pop culture references. I just love that stuff. The humor is good.
- 4-player co-op!
- There aren't any pain points in this game. For example, death really has no consequence. Friends can revive you instantly. Many people might take issue that there isn't any incentive to perform efficiently, but trust me, it makes things more fun. Friendly-fire becomes part of the enjoyment of this game.
- No mana bars to worry about. Again, another pain point taken away! So spam away.

What I Didn't Like

- Single player is rather bland and tiring. You'll want to get this for the co-op experience.
- Checkpoints (where you'll be brought back to in case of everyone dying at once), are very spaced out. Not so much a big deal in multiplayer, but in single player it somewhat lowers the appeal of the game.
- Somewhat buggy. But it is an indie game. Personally, I've only crashed about once or twice though.
- No drop-in multiplayer! Not a game breaker, but I would've really liked to have seen this implemented.

So look at that, more good than bad from this game! And the bad stuff doesn't really take away from the experience as a whole anyway.

I've played a bit of it online with two losers who suck. It was pretty laggy, we had to use Hamachi and stuff, but I think that's mostly Magicka's fault.
The friendly fire sort of gives me the same problem Alien Swarm did, in that because it's a 2D game, it's practically impossible to avoid it. (Can't shoot over people.) Wouldn't be as much of a problem if there was a "recast last spell" button or something, so I can just stop casting a spell if someone gets in the way, but because it takes so long for me to do it, I just normally...Let them die....

It is a lot of fun though, needs voice chat too, so I don't have to use Skype to do so.

Yeah, it does get pretty buggy sometimes. They've been patching it consistently though, so hopefully they're just about finished working everything out.

And I'd agree with you on the friendly fire...almost. Initially I had the sinking feeling as I, too, found it reminiscent to dealing with it in Alien Swarm. With that game, in fact, I outright don't play with randoms at all because the friendly fire gets out of the control.

But here...I'm with you, I let them die too! But mostly because friendly fire has almost no consequence. At first my team and I avoided each other as best we could, but after realizing we could revive each other instantly, none of us really cared who or what we were hitting. As long as we killed stuff. Eventually battles became a chaotic storm of spells because of it, and I kind of like it that way.

I don't know about you, but there would always be that "one guy" that seemed to get in the way and die more often than everyone else.