Wand & Order: 4,000 items to sort because a cleaning spell turned into a tornado

To be clear from the start: this game has no release date yet, its store page simply says coming soon. So this is not a review, it is a reconnaissance. But the premise is too good not to cover.

The pretext

You are the Alchemist's homunculus, tasked with cleaning the workshop. You tried to cheat by casting a cleaning spell.

A single mistake changed it into a tornado spell.

It went completely rogue and scattered thousands of items across three zones. Now you have to chase down your own creation and clean up its mess before the boss returns.

It is daft, it is well written, and it mechanically justifies everything else in the game.

The scale, which raises a smile

The studio announces its three zones with numbers, and they climb fast.

The Archives, around 470 items, where you sort dozens of different tarot decks back onto the right shelves.

The Wand Workshop, around 1,300 items, to sort by material and by school of magic.

The Alchemy Lab, over 2,200 items, between potions and ingredients across tin cases, jars and glass bottles.

That is close to four thousand items in total. For a genre often criticised for being too short, nobody will accuse them of skimping.

The idea that might save it

The risk of a sorting game is obvious: after seven hundred items it stops being a game and becomes a job.

The studio has clearly anticipated it, and offers two answers.

Automatic stacking. You no longer align objects yourself: select, click, and the pile forms perfectly.

And above all, cleaning spells to unlock. Alchemical Vision to highlight every item belonging to a set. Magnetic Vacuum to attract nearby items matching the one you are holding. Auto-Place Magic to float what you are carrying straight onto its correct spot. And these spells upgrade, with speed growing exponentially.

In other words the game turns the chore into progression. The more you sort, the cheaper sorting becomes. That is the right answer to the question the genre poses, and it is what makes me want to follow it.

What we will be watching at release

Three things.

Do the spells arrive early enough? If the convenience tools unlock too late, the first hours will be painful and nobody will see what follows.

Does sorting stay a problem? A sorting game has to require a decision, not merely an action. Sorting wands by material and by school of magic promises exactly that, provided the categories overlap.

And co-op. The game plays solo or with others. Sorting in pairs is a good idea on paper, provided the game handles the fact that two people rarely sort the same way.

No price and no date for now, developed and published by OnSkull Games. We will come back to it when the date lands.

Do you sort by colour or by category? That argument belongs on the InsertCoins Discord.