Video Game / Wizard of Legend

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Wizard of Legend is a 2D top-down action Roguelike developed by Contingent99. You play as a wizard adventuring through a series of randomly-generated dungeons, with each section of levels themed after a member of the Council of Magic that will be battled.

In the history of the Lanova Kingdom, the Council of Magic held the annual Chaos Trials. Clearing them proved the participant to be worthy of becoming a Wizard of Legend. A wizard visits the Lanova Museum in the present day to learn about Arcana and the Chaos Trials, but at the end of the exhibition, the Insignia of Legend brings them to the past. The next thing they know, they are a last-minute entree taking part in the Chaos Trials.

It was released for PC on 15 May 2018. You can buy it on Steam here or GOG.com here. Contingent99 has also partnered with Humble Bundle to release Wizard of Legend for PS4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch on the same date.

Followed by Wizard Of Legend 2 that features 3D graphics and co-op gameplay.

Tropes of Legend:

• Awesome, but Impractical: Double Subverted; Chaos arcana is extremely powerful and easily end a fight, but not all spells in this category are very effective as the lowest hitting spells (a Portal dash that doesn't damage) and a needle spell that only does 7 total damage. The impractical part has 2 flavors: the first comes from the very high cooldowns with a whopping 12 seconds for the Null Flash Agent. The second comes from that many of the chaos summons will not attack inanimate objects, such as elemental chests.
  • Aqua Beam (Water Arcana) plays this straight as it is a huge beam that can blindside opponents, but the player is completely stationary and vulnerable for 7 seconds.
  • Lightning arcana is partially downplayed on the impractical part as there are only 3 spells that don't apply shock, but all are very flashy (by nature).
• Barrier Warrior: Certain spells are honest to goodness defensive spells. That being side, all those spells are great for ramming through opponents at the same as protecting wizards from attacks. Most notably some water and earth arcana are the more defensive oriented as the former provides a Bubble Shield with a dash of Deadly Forcefield, while the later has literal stone shields and entangling/rooting vines sprinkled with poison.
• Blow You Away: Curtesy of air-based arcana, which can also grant wizards temporary Super-Speed and Super-Reflexes. Some spells can also make opponents slower.
  • Charm Person: Mentis Imperium (Latin for 'mind control') can be used to temporarily make opponents your allies via Cupid's Arrow. In other words, it clouds there judgement (with a cloud and swirling hearts over their head).
  • Do Not Touch the Funnel Cloud: Exploited as any air arcana appears as swirling air currents with various tornado/twister/cyclone spells. Like water arcana, air acana have a vast weather based names such as rushing typhoon, tearing whirlwind, and breaking twister. Protective whirlwind (signature) is the logical extreme when charged as it creates a wall of overlapping 5 vortices that can also be directed when released.
  • Make Some Noise: Air arcana includes a few spells such as "Mach Stunner" that revolves around sound waves.
• Boring, but Practical: Basic arcana are not as grand or flashy as others, but they lack cooldowns and can't be removed unless being replaced by another basic. They be boosted more frequently than other arcana, notably providing a great combo with glove relics, status inflicting relics, or candy relics.
• Cardinal Gem Connection: In the game, some of the gemstone relics are associated with elements: Neve's Ruby is associated with fire, Neve's Sapphire related to water, and Neve's Emerald to earth.
• Cards of Power: The arcana that the player must equip to use spells all take the form of cards; additionally, many of the enemies in the Chaos Trials are summoned into the dungeon via giant cards.
• Cast from Money: A Cursed Relic, Armor of Greed, causes you to lose gold upon hit in exchange for a huge boost in armor.
• Clothes Make the Superman: Your robes can give you various bonuses, such as the robe of Vigor raising your health and defense. The ones you start off with doesn't give any bonuses until you get enough robes, however.
• Color-Coded Elements: All of the elemental arcana are of a specific color.
• Dark Is Not Evil: While the cursed relics are definitely dangerous, they are not inherently evil. Nox, likewise, is a shady but ultimately benevolent character.
  • Although there are a few downplayed examples such as Double Trouble and Double Toil, although they are both more risky rather than outright evil.
• Dishing Out Dirt: Earth based arcana naturally. The spells often appear as rocks/stones and mineral-like (ala obsidian daggers)).
  • Green Thumb: A subset of earth arcana are plant related spells usually vines that both entangle/root and poison opponents. Interestingly, there is a Petal Power spell and a Plant Mooks spell that "uproots" a cactus familiar and when charged up, a dancing ballet.
  • Ground Pound: As an earth spell, natch. This can be seen with the earth stomp agent and ward of stones spells.
• Elemental Rock–Paper–Scissors: One element is effective against the other in the following cycle: Fire > Air > Earth > Lightning > Water > Fire.
  • Also crosses over into Logical Weakness as earth is eroded by air (included dispersing poisonous clouds), earth grounds lightning, lightning separates water, water extinguishes fire, and fire is amplified by air.
• Element Number Five: Except contrary to the numbering, this does not apply to Lightning, as it's grouped together with the other four classical elements, having a weakness and resistance just like them. Instead, there is a sixth element variant with Chaos, which represents the raw power used to create arcana.
• Evil Debt Collector: A cursed relic; Ominous Loan Note works this way as after grabbing it, any gold afterwards goes off to the paying the debt until it it disappears from your inventory.
• Fire/Water Juxtaposition: A relic, Poem of Fiery Rime, is a fire-ice variant, boosting fire damage as well as certain water damage. It also adds the chance of burning and freezing for the respective elements.
• Fragile Speedster: Wind Sovereign Shuu is extremely fast and evasive like his element air. He is also the only Boss that can fly making this trope even more prevalent.
  • Nogg's Heavenly Boots spell this trope out entirely as they allow you to evade more while doubling the damage you receive.
  • Neve's Quartz is a partial inversion as it increases speed and evasion. When paired with certain evasion-related relics can give you more than 100% evasion. Interestingly, the game creators made sure this isn't a Story-Breaker Power as Master Shura's phase 3 will quickly nullify the relic based evasion and tournaments have their own rules.
• Full-Contact Magic: All basic spells are either melee or mid-ranged. Dash spells are essentially a boost of speed and evasion with a dash of damage.
• Glass Cannon: Fire arcana can be placed into this category, as many of them are heavy damage and massive explosions. Flame Empress Zeal is a prime example in universe as the resident Kick Chick; she is very fast and deals massive explosions on the battlefield. Thunder Twins Juno and Suman, are also glass cannons as they are fast and powerful, but take a hell of damage when caught.
  • A Cursed Relic named after this trope raises damage dealt in exchange for lowering your max health.
  • Another named Double Trouble lets you deal double damage, but you'll also take double in return.
  • Neve's Ruby increases all damage through fire spells while Neve's Citrine increases crit damage and stuns through lightning arcana.
• Gravity Master: Chaos is a mixture of this trope, and Space Master as it allows wizard to Weaponized Teleportation along with creating astral clones. Master Shura in his phase 3, shows how broken this type of magic can be.
• Heal Thyself: Wizards can heal themselves through health orbs and a Healing Potion often found in the Relic shop and occasionally the Doctor. Some cloaks, have increased healing and a few relics do the same. It is implied during the museum tutorial that the orbs are Health Food with a relic called "Raspberry Cookie Box" that causes the health orbs to drop more frequently.
  • Mana Potion: In a sense, sigature spells gain charges when attacking opponents.
• Heart Is an Awesome Power: Many spells can come off this way, most notably the Bubble Gun spells, which surprisingly enough have a high knockback. Throwable/projectile weapon spells fall into this category, notably shuriken spells as they can initiate fights, stun opponents, and break explosive barrels.
• Instant Runes: Magic circles are fairly common often used in conjunction of summoning-based arcana (and a way to guide the spell). Queen Freyja and Empress Zeal both make use of of these type of magic and the former can move hers across the battlefield.
• In the Hood: Some wizards, but not all, wear robes with hoods that cover their heads and mask their faces. Master Sura puts on his hood during the second phase of his fight. The chaos mages (ie elemental variants) and Nox, the Unfortunate wear hooded robes. Interesting the latter even has a relic that gives you his robe along with some "perks". Rogues and archers have a scarf variant while Knights, Lancers, and Summoners have a helmet variant.
  • Wizards can equip different head gear which will appear over the hood or replace it entirely.
• Justified Tutorial: The game tutorial takes place in the Lanova Museum, with its special opening allowing you to go through it as if it's a Chaos Trial while learning the game mechanics.
• Like Cannot Cut Like: Downplayed. Enemies do take less damage from arcana of the same element as them, but they still do damage from all spells.
• Limit Break: When fully charged, an enhanced version of your equipped signature arcana can be used. Several relics and builds are focused around spamming your signature as frequently as possible.
• Limited Loadout: Wizards have access to large quantity of arcana, but they may only bring one arcana within four categories, plus one relic.
• Made of Explodium: The Chaos Trials have a number of rooms that are occupied by exploding barrels. It's very easy to bait enemies into detonating them, too.
  • By equipping relic called Whimsical Explodium, a wizard may cause the defeated enemy to explode.
• Making a Splash: Water arcana allow wizard to control both water in all its forms even freezing opponents.
  • Heal It with Water: Neve's Sapphire when fully unlocked grants wizards a 50% increased in healing they received.
  • Ice Magic Is Water: Ice-based arcana are classified under the water element, most notably at least 3 relics boost water AND ice arcana alike. Ice arcana also has two decoy spells to lure in opponents.
  • Weather Manipulation: Most of the water arcana is named after watery/oceanic phenomenon such as rip tide, wave front (a projectile/durable water shield), and perfect storm (a literal storm of hail and mist).
• Mighty Glacier: Frost Queen Freyja (pun intended) is this in universe as she only has bursts of speed, but primary freezes and barrages opponents. It helps that she has a spell that allows her to turn into a an actual glacier (wizards have a similar spell that allows them to become briefly invulnerable and freeze opponents).
  • This is noteworthy as her actual glacial spell can be dodges by running around her in a circle (no matter the level)
  • Silver Spinning Top (cursed relic) makes wizards slower, but doesn't affect damage.
• Mythology Gag: So many of them as per a fantasy/magic based game.
• Natural Elements: Most arcana fall under either fire, water, earth air or lightning. The rare exceptions are under chaos-elemental instead.
• Non-Elemental: Downplayed with the rare element, chaos, which has neither advantage nor disadvantage against any of the other elements. However, it is resisted by Chaos-elemental users, notably Master Sura, head of the Magic Council.
• Not Quite Flight: As there are not flight spells in-universe, there are several jump arcana that allows wizards to avoid attacks. Water arcana provides two platform spells (Heroic Maelstrom and Glacial Getaway), with the latter being an actual icy surfboard allowing wizards to glide over pits. Air arcana has the spell 'Evading Zephyr' that allows opponents to run over pits when active. The Hummingbird Feather relic is specifically made to run over pits.
  • Wind Sovereign Shuu as mentioned above, is the closest the game as to flying as he hovers around the screen when fighting.
• Odd Name Out: Lightning Maven Juno and Thundering Ace Suman amongst the "royalty" of the other council members. Justified as they were added as an updated after the other 4 members were already in game. One could also argue they are the royal champions.
• Our Mages Are Different: Rather than full-on spells, the Arcana seem to be equippable cards in-universe.
  • In-universe, there are two consistently mentioned types of wizards. Artisans who create relics, and Virtuosos who paint arcana into existence.
• Playing with Fire: Fire based arcana, can inflict burns and scorch the ground. Naturally majority of spells are Fireballs. There are also magma/lava spells.
  • Burning with Anger: The appropriately named spell Fuelled Berserker that speeds up basic arcana. Becomes more literal when enhanced as it has sparks and tiny explosions flying off everywhere.
  • Stuff Blowing Up: Many fire arcana comes from a vast array of explosive spells including a Flaming Meteor spell to boot.
• Power at a Price: Cursed relics have negative effects that comes together with positive ones... Though some of those negative effects can be diminished, or even ignored outright under the right circumstances.
• Rewarding Vandalism: Some props leave behind coins or health pickups when destroyed. Every once in a while relic or spells will be dropped, but that;s usually when defeating opponents or opening chests (ie mimics).
• Rainbow Text: Damage counters are colored orange when a target is hit with an elemental weakness, and blue when the target is hit with an elemental resistance. Critical damage is incased in red text. Healing is green text.
• Simple, yet Awesome: Many arcana can fall into this category most famously, "Knockout Boulder" which literally is just a boulder being summoned and thrown at opponents, yet inflicts high damage on impact, stuns/disperses groups, provides a decent defense/parry, and can inflict large radius status effects to groups (when boosted by any relic from Hunter's satchel).
• Shock and Awe: Lightning based arcana provide excellent stun and critical hits. Expect a few Chain Lightning spells, notably thundering chain. This arcana specifically is built in Spam Attack.
  • Extra-ore-dinary: While there are only two direct metal spells for wizards, the Thunder Twins play this more straight. There are two relics that amplifies lightning arcana called Indra's copper piper (Hindu God of Thunder) and Battery of Taranis (Celtic God of Thunder). The metal theme is even carried over in the lightning part of the dungeon as it is decorated with Tesla coils (which is also a relic in itself that allows for arcana to shock opponents).
• Shout-Out: A number of different examples.
  • One cursed relic is a double-sided knife called Titan's Equilibrium.
  • The outfit Shift strongly resembles Raven.
  • Some achievements are references as well.
    • ULTRAAAAA: Land a 50 hit combo on any boss.
    • Flawless Victory: Defeat a boss without taking damage.
    • I Make This Look Good: Unlock 9 outfits.
    • Gotta Go Fast: Clear the Chaos Trials in 25 minutes.
• Spontaneous Weapon Creation: Several arcana involve briefly creating spears, shields, whips, and blades out of magic. Earth arcana is known to have a few drill based spells.
  • Elemental Punch - All the elements have a punch and kick oriented spell. Air is unique as the punch spells are more slash oriented.
  • Shaping Your Attacks: While most spells appear as spike, beams, or orbs, a vast array of spells are uniquely shape namely dragons, but also fists, arrows, discs, and electrical fans. Frozen Bait (water arcana) takes this trope to an eleven though as it is a puddle with a frozen decoy and large shark that freezes opponents on chomp down.
• Spinning Piledriver: Terra Ring, an earth arcana: strictly Awesome, but Impractical, as despite its massive single-target damage it doesn't work on anything you'd want it to. Heroic Leap (Air Arcana) has a logical extreme variant of this trope as it is a jump arcana that also unleashes an air vortex that pulls in opponents while in the air.
• Status Buff: Not a magic game without some type of buffs. There is even a relic that buffs the buffs.
• Stone Wall: There are various relics and outfits that increase armor, allowing for defensive-oriented wizards to employ this trope while still having a good offensive. Earth Lord Atlas (pun intended) is a great example of this trope as he is very much a barrier warrior. This is very much noted with his actual stone wall spells. The earth variants of knights can incase themselves into boulders, literal stone walls.
  • Neve's Emerald (earth arcana) increases armor and allows wizards to ignore stuns and knock back. In a literal since allowing opponents to become stone walls.
• Training Dummy: The Lanova Museum, your house and the marketplace have several dummies to test your arcana on.
• Trapped in the Past: The player wizard is blasted to the past after the tutorial. Getting back to the future is the main goal of the protagonist, though this is easier said than done.