Grimoire Demo Has First-Person, MOBAish Spell-Slinging

Wizards! None are more video games than the noble wizard and their host of elemental spells. Wizard duels, wizard fights, wizard squads, wizard books: MOBA-inspired first- and third-person spell-shooter Grimoire plans to feature all this and more. Three man studio OmniConnection have it up on Kickstarter looking for $42,000 and there's a single-player wave-defense "combat preview" you can try out right now.

Having had a lil' play, it's got some good ideas. Character selection is determined by which school of magic you specialise in, which can then be customised with utility and mobility spells. The defensive spells operate as intended, being mandatory to survival. Separating skill sets by school gives a nice flavour to each different selection, though with only ten of these intended in the final release there may be a lack of variety. Allowing total customisation could lead to some very broken combos, but with the power of the defensive spells this may not be an issue.

While they're billing it primarily as an FPS, the increased situational awareness of playing in the optional third-person mode naturally makes it far easier to play. That puts it more in competition with the likes of Smite, but hopefully the option will remain in the final version.

The demo's available through the Kickstarter page, where there's still plenty of the $10 early-bird get-the-game tiers remaining at time of writing. It'll be $15 once they've dried up, with release planned for January 2015.