It always feels weird when a franchise lies dormant for a while, a studio decides to come up with a game meant to feel like either an homage or a spiritual successor to said franchise, only for it to be revived from out of nowhere, rendering the homage somewhat obsolete in the process. It’s an odd feeling when playing Wizordrum, because it’s not a bad game at all – in fact, it’s a pretty decent retro-styled FPS. It just so happens that it tried to convey the look, feel and gameplay of a particular franchise that is also readily available, in remastered form, for modern consoles: Heretic (and also Hexen, I suppose).

Casting fireballs acts like the pistol in Doom.

You boot Wizordrum up, and you realize you’re in very familiar territory. A first-person shooter set in a medieval, fantasy land, where you can select a class for your warrior, and then proceed with the adventure, defeating hordes of monsters with either your melee weapons or spells that function like your typical Doom-esque ranged weapon. There’s your self-explanatory fire spell, a rod that conjures ice spells, and so on. Levels are maze-link in design, there’s secret passages and treasure to unveil, there’s no platforming but you can freely aim on all directions… well, you get the point. It’s a clear nod to Heretic, to a point you could have told me it was a mod for the original game, and I wouldn’t have been able to tell the difference.

Freeze enemies with the ice staff, then smash them with your mace. It never gets old.

The issue in this case is that, well, if I want to play Heretic, there’s one hell of a remaster that came out not long ago, developed by the actual wizards at Nightdive. Even if Wizordrum features decent level design and never feels glitchy or poorly made, there’s always this lingering sensation I could be playing a vastly improved version of the original game instead. Furthermore, one with a better art style – Wizordrum features the same design principle, but its visuals are a bit too colorful and bright for what’s supposed to be a dark fantasy game. In some moments, dare I say, it even felt cutesy. That’s not a good thing in this case.

You brought a magnum to a wizard fight.

Make no mistake, by no means is Wizordrum a bad game. The game features some good level design, and it’s simply impossible to mess up a gameplay loop inspired by Heretic and old-school Doom. But this is the issue: it’s just a very derivative game, whose main appeal (it being heavily inspired by Heretic) feels less impactful after the release of Nightdive’s Heretic remaster collection. If you’re a die-hard fan of retro-styled shooters, don’t worry, this is still a good call, as long as you don’t mind the fact it totally struggles to stand out from the sheer amount of similar games out in the market.

Wizordrum is available now on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, PC and Switch

Reviewed on Switch.

A copy of Wizordrum was provided by the publisher.