A genre that has experienced a massive resurgence over the last decade is the roguelike, which underwent a rebirth in the West thanks to The Binding of Isaac. This is not a source of inspiration Folly of the Wizards is shy about flaunting with its UI design and general gameplay, which feels like ”What if The Binding of Isaac had a Zelda II: The Adventure of Link sequel?”. This, combined with an art style that makes one think of the highly topical Hollow Knight franchise, makes for a game that at first glance looks like a quite eye-catching title to add to the collection for any roguelike fan. However, looks can be deceiving, and is this the fate of Folly of the Wizards?
At the start of Folly of the Wizards, the player is immediately greeted with a beautiful introduction featuring fitting voice acting that effectively enhances the game’s atmosphere: a darker yet comical roguelike platformer. It doesn’t take many hours to get drawn into the dark world, and within minutes of starting, the player has interacted with some quite curious individuals that offer the young wizard help in a wide variety of ways, and an intriguing reputation system to gain or lose favour with them.
The game is ruthlessly difficult from the outset, throwing the player straight into the action – just like most fans of the genre want. The goal in a roguelike game is, after all, to become better and better at it over time, eventually beating it on a somewhat consistent basis. That is the first impression, about 10-20 minutes into this game. It looks the part of a competent roguelike, and the gameplay feels familiar, yet the controls leave a bit to be desired. Notably, the fact that the jump and dash buttons are positioned right next to each other on the shoulder buttons can take some getting used to, while the more traditional jump buttons remain untouched. Even then, after hours of playing, it still really isn’t fully comfortable.
This is an issue that is easy to think would be remedied by the game’s settings menu, which contains a little sub-menu for the controllers. This takes the player to the first letdown of Folly of the Wizards; the settings menu for the controller is not really a settings menu, but rather it just shows how the controller is mapped. A heavy sigh is let out. Welp, just get used to it. The game still looks good, and the music and sound effects are quite cool. Time to try again and finally get used to the unusual controls.
This is when more glaring issues not initially apparent become clear. When playing through the game, each floor has the same four NPCs to interact with, all with the same dialogue. The dialogue choice that initially felt like a cute and clever way to gain and lose reputation starts to feel like a repetitive chore to go through on each floor, and some fundamental problems with the relic system become more obvious.
The biggest problem is that it is extremely unclear what the relics are actually doing based on their descriptions. It would be fine if there were a menu that went into the technical aspects of what the relics do at the title screen. Part of the charm of the genre is to, over time, explore and learn what everything does. To pick up a trap relic is pretty fun if the player gets an explanation of what it does. Nope! There is still no explanation, even in the menu that lists all the relics that have been collected. Another thing on the title screen that would have been extremely useful, ultimately not doing what the player would expect it to do.
This is especially frustrating, as many of the relics are unclear about their functions, often doing nothing or having hidden conditions that activate them, and sometimes even making the game unplayable. In one run that went pretty deep, there was an unknown relic hanging out in the free relic room. Obviously, one picks up unknown relics in roguelikes. It is loot, after all. After picking it up, the character refused to aim properly, shooting bullets in seemingly every direction except the expected one. The run died shortly after despite a desperate attempt to save it. That was what the description meant, then. That particular relic, while frustrating, is one of the less problematic ones in the long term, as it is a relic that, upon pickup, is actually quite obvious in what it does.
Over time, it also becomes more and more obvious that the room designs are also quite limited, that there are very few different bosses, and that the NPCs indeed are as repetitive as one might expect at second glance. Folly of the Wizards starts to evoke that one feeling roguelikes in the first place were meant to prevent: predictability. The final nail in the coffin is when the game starts to exhibit some nasty bugs that kill runs. On one run that went very deep and actually had potential for a full clear, the doors randomly stopped working despite all enemies, treasures, and everything in the room being either killed or collected.
The experience described above is probably going to be the average experience of Folly of the Wizards. It is a game that has had quite a lot put into its presentation. It is a beautiful game from a graphical perspective, although one could argue it is quite shamelessly trying to hitch-hike on the recently released Hollow Knight: Silksong, as it is quite clearly aiming for a similar art style. The music and atmosphere are great. Even the NPCs, which over time start feeling like a choir, are at first ridiculously charming and give the player a sense of promise of good things to come. However, it is a promise that is never upheld.
The key to roguelikes is that they are designed to be games that remain fun, full of surprises, and unpredictable for players, even after hundreds of hours of gameplay. Outside of a few unlockable characters, this game reveals all of its cards within a few hours, and its cards are nothing but hot air beside that ace it first showed off with its beautiful presentation. Folly of the Wizards reminds to never judge a book by its cover, although not in a good way.
