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What is Free Play Friday. Well it’s a weekly article on free games out there in the world. The game could be casual flash games to Free 2 Play MMOs to free downloads. The only condition is you must be able to play the whole game without spending a cent to do so. So enjoy this week's Free Game Wizard 101. I'm sure by now you have seen the web ads for Wizards 101 well I finally broke down and decided to check it out. I wasn't quite sure what to expect but I can tell you when I entered the game I was pleasantly surprise both with the game play and quality of graphics.
You start off as a student of Ravenwood School of Magical Arts. For as long as history has been recorded, the school has taught young Wizards to harness the abilities of all seven magic schools. The magic of Fire, Ice, Storm, Life, Myth, Balance, and Death are taught here by the school's esteemed faculty of full-fledged Wizards. You first meet Headmaster Merle Ambrose as he steps you through how to be a wizard. Shortly afterwards you meet Malistaire Drake, who ran the school of Death Magic but for some reason he and Merle had a falling out and Malistaire took his whole part of the Death Magic with him. Throughout the game you find out more about what happened.
Game play is fairly simple but can get complicated quickly. At its heart Wizards 101 is a 3D world with combat handled much like collectable card games. You have a deck of cards or spells and when you enter combat you pick a card out of a random draw of cards. Your spells could be creatures you summons to attack or buff spells. As you level up you get more and better cards. While you start with only one school of spells you can freely learn spells from other schools of magic. Outside of combat the game plays much like other MMOs. You can get quests and explore the world. If you need to rest to regain health or mana you can either explore and find wisps that will restore your health or mana. Or you can just go play some mini-games. The mini games are some standard casual games you seen all over the place. You have a Joust remake, a match making games some Tetris style games and a Dig Doug clone. They aren't bad and some a quite easy. Besides gaining health and mana you can also win gold and items if you are good enough.
Graphics are simple for the game but are done very well. At full resolution with everything turned to high the game does looks great. The world is sectioned off into little parts while it does break up the game when exploring the areas load really fast so its not too bad. Everything is really colorful and flows well together. You can own your own house or tower and decorate it as you wish. It’s a fairly simple system but allows a good number of choices when placing furniture and items in your house.
Overall I was surprised at this game. While its clearly a family friendly game its also deep enough for older gamers to enjoy it as well. I loved the combat as it reminds me of Magic the Gathering in the way it plays. If you are looking for something different give Wizards 101 a shoot. I don't think you will be disappointed.
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