Evil Wizard

Evil Wizard was provided to us by the publisher for review. Thank you!

The heroes have won and your castle has been taken, it's time to fight back! Evil Wizard puts you in the titular role of the evil wizard himself needing to recover what's rightfully his. Save your henchman, pick up your sword and staff, and get these fiends out of your domain. Engage in fast-paced combat against unique enemies and bosses, utilizing your elemental magic to play to their weakness. With Metroidvania-inspired elements and humor injected into every corner of this world, it feels good being so evil.

Evil Wizard is a game I feel conflicted about overall, but I still thoroughly enjoyed playing. The beautiful pixel art, great animations, enjoyable combat, and great humor make for a fun time, but it does have some faults. The combat can feel a bit simple at times, though still fun, and it would be nice to be able to aim some of the projectile spells. You also can't switch spells on the fly and need to get them from the environment, which can be a bit tedious. On the bright side though, playing on the Steam Deck is going to be quite easy to do.

Evil Wizard - Steam Deck Performance

I was excited to see that, compared to the preview build, performance has massively improved! Without any changes, I was able to play at an almost constant 60 FPS with a battery drain of around 15W - 17W. As I was playing though, I noticed a few spots where framerate would dip to the low 50's high 40's, so for stability sake, I wouldn't play at 60. There were some open areas and bigger encounters with enemies that were the main causes of these drops.

There aren't many setting options that can be changed in this game, so there isn't much I can change to fix this, other than changing framerate. For the recommended build, I decided to go with a 40 FPS for significantly reduced battery drain and stability. The game doesn't feel as smooth as it could, but with a much nicer battery drain and a stable framerate, I was extremely happy with the results!

For those who want to push framerate more, I would recommend going with 50. 50 FPS still felt extremely smooth and, while it did drain up to 15W, stayed stable for the most part. It had some slight hiccups in the areas mentioned above, but they were unnoticeable unless you were looking at the framerate graph.

Evil Wizard doesn't support 16:10 resolutions, but it does have full controller support and cloud saves.

Conclusion

Evil Wizard is a wonderful action RPG that brings you into the shoes of a former final boss. While it is a bit linear and doesn't have much replayability afterwards, the journey through is an enjoyable and fun experience that made me laugh way more than I expected. I had a great time with this game overall, even with a couple missing QoL features I would have liked to see implemented and some replayability. It is also quite a good time on the Steam Deck and one I can easily recommend adding to your library!

Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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