I completely missed that ace wizard battle royale Spellbreak had been brought back from the dead

Free community version outlives the acquisition of developers Proletariat, Inc

I started playing and enjoying battle royale wizarding sim Spellbreak just in time for Spellbreak to get shut down. Developers Proletariat, Inc announced plans to yank the servers back in August 2022 in the course of being acquired by Activision Blizzard, bringing an end to many happy hours spent skating on conjured ice ramps and hurling boulders around like bunny rabbits. Yes, I am the kind of wizard who hurls a bunny rabbit, if there are no boulders to spare.

Happily, it transpires that Proletariat have resurrected their creation and handed it over to posterity in the shape of a free standalone Community Version, available on Itch.io. You’ll need to host your own server or join another group if you want to play multiplayer, but all the same, this is a lovely gift and one I’m delighted to transmit unto you, the active and efficient Magenauts of Rockus Paperus Shottegonne.

This isn’t strictly speaking “news”, I'll grant you, inasmuch as it is not new. The Community Version released way back in December 2022, months before I joined RPS as a full-time Scuttlebutt Conjurer. I've only just stumbled on it care of former RPS Scuttlebutt Conjurer Dominic Tarason. You might accordingly accuse me of being “bad at my job”, but I would immediately retort that a wizard is never late, nor is he early – he arrives precisely when he means to, and also, if you don’t shaddap I’m going to sock you right in the kisser with an electric tornado.

If you’ve never played Spellbreak, here’s a quick summary: it’s got the usual battle royale premise of a large, multiple-biome map with people competing for power-ups and gear drops while racing to the centre, but it spices things up with, well, magic. As in Magicka – Magicka! My beloved - you can combine spells of different elements to produce some properly apocalyptic whizbangs. It’s also very fast. These ain’t your classic octogenarian warlocks in heavy, star-spangled dressing gowns. They’re hot young people who zip about like ninjas.

If you’ve downloaded the Community Version, and you’re looking for opponents and advice, the Elemental Fracture discord seems quite populous.