Despite the overstuffed quality of this ambitious package, it's hard not to admire the noble attempt Spirit Mancer makes to capture diverse genres and blend it into a game with whimsical pixel art and breezy combat.
When the dust settles, I’ll remember more of what Spirit Mancer got right than where it stumbled.
Even when a game is flawed, it can still make a remarkable impression if it strives to simply be different. Better to shoot for the moon than wade in the dredges of safety.
My feeling for Spirit Mancer was crystallized about three hours in, having touched upon the numerous parts of the game developer Sunny Syrup Studio threw at me. I had decided to progress with the main story mission, having spent the past half hour or more knocking out side missions and grinding upgrades to make my character stronger. The level began with a moving train chase, eventually leading to a fight on a spiral staircase where the dizzying climb framed the boss in the background rising up in his glass elevator.
And then I tried to grab some currency that had exploded out of an enemy and fell off the staircase. My character disappeared. I could move left and right, watch the staircase rotate, and even see the circular shadow indicating where the game registered me to be. But I was stuck below the stairs and couldn’t magically get back up. And I had to restart.
A fear set in as I worried that my progress would have regressed to the start of the level, which was already quite expansive. Thankfully, I started back on that staircase and was able to move on to the boss.
Spirit Mancer often reminded me of key thrilling moments from past gaming memories. The Western level of Tiny Toons Adventures: Buster Busts Loose!, a similar staircase level from Dynamite Headdy, fighting Kremlins in Donkey Kong Country. Perhaps that’s where Spirit Mancer should have attempted to nestle itself, an action platformer with one or two tricks up its sleeve. Instead, it is a game juggling several engaging but disparate parts, all pulling for the player’s attention.
The game takes place countless centuries after the realm of man and the realm of demons–referred to as Inferno–brokered a peace treaty, only for the Demon Queen to break that trust, causing mankind to seal away Inferno. In the current day, a mercenary group is sent on a mission to stop a ritual that is attempting to open a portal into Inferno, potentially allowing demons to flood into our reality.
One of Spirit Mancer‘s strengths is that it does not take itself too seriously. Protagonist Sebastian is cocky and his gusto results in the portal being opened and his team being sucked into Inferno. Sebastian–or technically the other playable character Mary–has been designated the “Chosen One” of legend by a village of pigs to set things right. Ironically, whether cute or not, everything in Inferno is considered a demon and this fact is used to moderately humorous extent.
Much of the narrative is about ping-ponging between typical biomes in Inferno to acquire an artifact that will help return the group to Earth and seal up Inferno again. However, the player quickly learns that all is not well in Inferno and there is dissent amongst the ranks as the Queen’s war may potentially cause chaos for demon-kind.
While no character is uniquely different from one trope or another, there’s a real effort by Sunny Syrup to write dialog that’s warm, goofy, and meant to make the player chuckle. Frequently I was left smiling after a cutscene or wondering what silly excuse the game would have to send me on the next leg of the quest.
The heavy-lifting is done by the intricate pixel art found throughout Spirit Mancer. Its plot might not be anything to write home about but the detail of not only the main cast but the numerous enemies and NPCs is outrageous. It strikes you from the beginning when Sebastian and Mary are shooting and slashing at demons, at the spectral dragon that upgrades attributes, and the surprisingly frequent setpiece bosses and moments in the main missions.
There’s a confidence in these models and at how effectively they paint a picture of Inferno. Spirit Mancer is very much an art-forward game, employing this style of visuals not because its trendy but because it speaks to the vision Sunny Syrup has.
That vision extends to one of the core fundamentals of Spirit Mancer: demon sealing. As the Chosen One, Sebastian can weaken a demon and then seal it, capturing that demon and turning it into a card that can be used to summon that specific entity. The game features about 100 summon cards, each with their own unique sprites and animations. While marketing may purport this quality of Spirit Mancer as akin to something like Pokemon or other card-based combat systems, I don’t have enough experience with the latter to make any lofty comparisons. Personally, the summons felt similar to Ender Lilies: Quietus of the Knights where the player could use a specific spirit as an attack or movement ability.
Think of these card summons as one-use effects that primarily dole out damage but can also heal or buff the player. Demons will either stay in the place where summoned and dish out an attack, sweep an area, go in one direction, or follow the player around until their use up their turns or attacks. To add in complexity, players only have the ability to hold a certain amount of cards without upgrading their capacity. Sealing a demon with a full deck will cause an earlier card to be taken out of the deck to make room. More powerful summons cost more–usually around 50 points–with most being about 20 points.
On the most basic level, this aspect of Spirit Mancer is moderately enjoyable and quite flexible. There is a sense of power in being able to bludgeon an enemy only to capture it and use it later, almost like Kirby sucking in and spitting out enemies at will. Sebastian and Mary also have a gun attack and a melee-based ability. Over the course of the game, players will find different melee and elemental abilities that are infinite-use primary attacks and are different depending on what character you play as. Additionally, each character has a basic gun attack that never runs out of ammo but can discover guns in the field that have limited ammo.
Before a demon can be sealed, players must first weaken its defenses. These are indicated by color-coded bars. A green bar will deplete faster with elemental abilities, the blue melts with gunfire, and a purple bar easily succumbs to summoned attacks. Sturdier enemies and bosses will have multiple layers that need to be shaved off before they can be captured and players can kill the demon if they focus on raw damage over required attacks.
In general, these systems make sense for 2D action platformers like Spirit Mancer. And there is a breezy quality to its combat as players can be somewhat strategic or go in and blast away with a flurry of attacks. Yet there’s a flaw when these elements come together.
Part of the issue arises from the insane amount of upgrades the player can unlock over the course of this relatively short game. Players can upgrade the core attributes for Sebastian. They can increase the efficiency of each elemental attack. They can upgrade the quality of each demon card. Gold can be used to upgrade the single-use guns. Materials can be used to craft cards using formulas. These materials can be gained by fishing, farming, or sending pig mercenaries out on missions.
When it’s all said in done, it would take tens of thousands–if not a few hundred thousand–of three types of gems and countless gold to upgrade everything the game has. To put it bluntly, the economy in Spirit Mancer is completely out of control. If a player wished to merely play through the game, they would barely be able to afford these upgrades. The solution? Grinding.
But even the grinding is kind of bizarre and easily manipulated. Once a player unlocks the Adventurer’s Guild and pays for a couple pigs to go out on a mission to bring back materials, they can unlock an instant reward loop. Simply start a side quest to kill five waves of enemies that ends in about a minute and reap the rewards. Rinse and repeat until you have enough of whatever currency for upgrades.
I realized the efficiency of this loop before starting the mission in which I had to reset during the chase for the boss. I maxed out one tree of my elemental weapon only to realize how daunting it would be to do all the weapons I had yet to discover. When I went to try and upgrade cards, I realized how pricey it was and was kind of turned off.
Compounding this issue is that Spirit Mancer‘s level design and enemy logic does not necessitate this complexity. Most enemies take a few beats to attack the player, meaning that you could dodge roll and jump through any opposition to the end of the level or boss. While the player won’t earn any cards, they also won’t risk taking damage and losing lives–which is an annoyance I wish Spirit Mancer didn’t have because losing all lives also means losing any gold on hand that wasn’t stored in the bank.
I won’t lie, multiple times I implemented this method of just running past everything to beat a few side quests. And then I ran into an immensely frustrating one that tasked me with killing a specific marked enemy. I spent almost ten minutes running around the level with no direction killing everything in sight until eventually stumbling upon the enemy. It simply wasn’t fun and multiple times I considered quitting because it wasn’t a part of the main quest in the first place.
This is truly where Spirit Mancer stumbles. Sunny Syrup obviously is ripe with ambition because the numerous mechanics and ideas here kind of work. But in this package they don’t synergize in a way that is entirely satisfying for the player. Should the optimal path through dozens of enemies really be dodging through them? Well an end-of-level results screen gives players a grade and it’s possible to go through each level not dying, killing everything, fulfilling special requirements (i.e. no gun kills, only sealing demons, only summon kills, etc.) but I couldn’t imagine accomplishing that for every level, especially since some of them are incredibly long.
Players should want to engage with the systems a game has in place for combat and navigation, especially in a competitive genre like this. And Spirit Mancer tries its damnedest, often with success and flourish. But the sheer volume of stuff to do stands in opposition to the relative simplicity of its levels, allowing players to brute force their way through expensive upgrade paths and circumventing the more interesting card system.
Spirit Mancer is a wonderful first attempt by Sunny Syrup Studio to craft a unique game built on familiar mechanics and classic platformer moments. Behind its overly complex and stuffed systems, there’s a beautiful game possessing stellar art and a lot of heart. Those wanting a different kind of platformer will find a haven here. And hopefully these foundations will be put to use again in an equally robust, confident game.
