The Magus Circle: you draw your spells by hand, and even botched sigils work

The survivor genre has become so codified you can describe one without launching it: you move, the spells fire themselves, you collect upgrades.

The Magus Circle breaks the second part: here, your spells do not fire themselves, you draw them.

Drawing to cast

You actively trace arcane sigils to cast your spells.

And the studio immediately adds the reassuring line that made me smile: you do not need to be an artist, even the most crudely drawn sigils still hold magic within.

That is an important design choice. A drawing game demanding precision would be unplayable in the middle of a horde. By accepting rough shapes, the game keeps the tension of the gesture without turning every spell into a calligraphy exam.

So the question becomes: do you remember the right shape, and do you have time to draw it now. That is exactly the right place to put the difficulty.

The rest of the proposition

Twenty unique spells, augmented by six hundred possible upgrades, promising very different combinations from one run to the next.

Four planets to cross, with colossal bosses at the end.

Six playable mages, each with their own skill trees, abilities and, in the studio's phrasing, emotional baggage.

And a manor to explore between runs, to get to know your fellow mages and uncover the secrets of the Circle. Add familiars to unlock, winnings to wager, potions to concoct and a garden to grow.

The setting is pleasant: magic itself is under siege, you find yourself in the middle of a cosmic war you did not sign up for, and you have nothing but your wits and your best scribing hand to protect the Circle.

The most important point: the hardware

It is rare for a technical section to be decisive, but here it is.

The game supports drawing tablets, touch screens and controllers, and the studio explicitly recommends a mouse, drawing tablet or touch screen for the best experience.

It also gives a precise warning: if your drawing tablet uses Microsoft Ink, you have to disable that setting for your drawings to work. Note it, and it will save you ten minutes of confusion.

And for controllers, where drawing is inherently slower, the game offers accessibility settings that slow or freeze time while drawing, or a button press mode.

That is an elegant answer to a real problem, and it shows a team that thought about people who do not play with a mouse.

What to know

The game launches today, developed and published by By Witchlight, with no price displayed and no reviews as I write. It is single-player, with adjustable difficulty.

My reservation concerns the repeated gesture. Drawing a shape is fun for an hour; the question is whether it stays pleasant on your thirtieth run, when you know all twenty sigils by heart and trace them mechanically.

The answer will probably depend on the generosity of those six hundred upgrades: if they genuinely change the shapes you draw, the game renews itself. If they merely raise numbers, the gesture will eventually tire.

But the idea is good, and it fixes the genre's main complaint: in a conventional survivor, you watch your character play. Here, you play.

Your ugliest sigil that worked anyway? We want the screenshot on the InsertCoins Discord.