Revenge of the Mage: two years of early access, a 1.0, and still ten-minute freezes

One player summed Revenge of the Mage up in a sentence I find perfect in its cruelty: this game is great for wasting your time and making no progress.

He was talking about the crashes. He had crashed twice and frozen three more times in two hours.

And yet there is good in here, which is why the article is worth writing.

What it is

A first-person action roguelite, launched into early access in January 2025 and promoted to version 1.0 yesterday.

The idea fits into one image: instead of watching a character cast spells from above, the camera drops down into the mage's cowl. You see the destruction with your own eyes.

You pick an Ancestor, each with their own elemental powers, and unlock more as you play. On each level up you are offered cards from a pool of over thirty, upgradeable several times.

The reference players reach for is the right one: a player with twelve hours writes that it feels like playing Risk of Rain 2 in first person, and he is correct. The same sensation of stacking powers into absurdity, but seen from inside.

There is also deck building, gear crafting and permanent upgrades.

At 9.69 euros.

What works

The players who like this game all say the same things, and they are consistent.

The movement is good. A player with fifteen hours, by now a critic, concedes it: the mobility is pleasant and the spells, while simple, are solid enough to be fun.

The density is there. Level variety, enemy count, and that escalation where you end up clearing a whole screen with one gesture.

And the content-to-price ratio is excellent. One British player puts it bluntly: for four quid you cannot get more content, and it runs perfectly for him, he is not sure what everyone else is on about.

Hold on to that last sentence, because it is the heart of the problem.

What does not work, and has not for a long time

155 positive reviews out of 195. And the complaints are not impressions, they are lists.

Crashes and freezes. Several players describe the same thing: the game locks up mid-fight, often after about fifteen minutes, and has to be force-closed. In a roguelite, where the run is the unit of progression, a freeze at minute fifteen is not an annoyance, it is losing everything.

One player puts it well: even if there is potential, you cannot enjoy it if every round is a coin flip between finishing and crashing out.

Optimisation. It comes up in nearly every negative review, and in some positive ones.

Rewards that vanish. One player reports loot deleted after a run. That is the worst possible bug in this genre.

And a card that disables your own character. The same player describes a plus 140 per cent reload speed upgrade that made him unable to reload at all. A bonus so strong it breaks the mechanic it improves is what happens when you add cards without testing the extremes.

The two design complaints

Those will not be fixed by a patch, and they deserve stating.

You cannot aim your big abilities. A keyboard and mouse player explains he has no way to control his ultimates or his area attacks: you activate them and hope they land where you wanted. In a first-person game whose entire argument is putting you inside the cowl, being unable to aim your most spectacular spells is a contradiction.

And progression does not register. One player asks it directly: the devs need to decide whether this is a roguelike or a roguelite. He explains there are permanent upgrades, but that they are so unimpactful you never feel stronger between runs.

That is the most serious complaint, because it touches the reason you queue up again. Another player says the same thing differently: the opening upgrades are insignificant for a newcomer who specifically needs a leg up.

Controller support is judged poor, which is a line you rarely read that bluntly.

So what

There are two Revenge of the Mages, and you can see both in the reviews.

The one that runs, on machines that get along with it, is a generous and enjoyable little roguelite shooter for under ten euros, which players have pushed to twenty-five hours.

And the one that freezes at minute fifteen for others, and has stolen a year of repeated attempts from them. The player who has been coming back since March 2025 repeating that the game has potential describes exactly that: a wait that will not end.

Going 1.0 after nearly two years is announcing that the wait is over. The last few days of feedback say that for some players, it is not.

At this price, it is a reasonable bet if you are willing to test it inside the two-hour refund window. Launch it, play three complete runs, and see whether your machine is one of the lucky ones.

Drawn a card that broke your own character? That is a category of its own on the InsertCoins Discord.