Wild Shadow Studios’ Realm of the Mad God is appropriately named, to be sure.
Its mildly-massive multiplayer (up to 85 players can join a server) action is served up bullet-hell style in pixely, 8-bit goodness. Leaving aside things like plot or character motivation, after a brief tutorial (and the unsettling news the Mad God Oryx has trapped you in his realm to serve as food for his minions), the game drops you on a beach with a magic staff. All manner of pirates and snakes and Cube Gods then try to kill you. If you survive long enough, you can unlock new character classes beyond the starting Wizard. If not, you die, your character and its items are erased forever, and within 30 seconds, you’re back on the beach in a freshly-cloned 8-bit body, ready to kill more pirates and snakes and Cube Gods.
Realm of the Mad God is free to play, and now available on Steam, so the question isn’t really “Is this worth buying?” as much as “Should I invest time and finger-clicking energy on this?” If you like classic arcade-style shoot-em-ups, the answer is yes, definitely. If not, the answer is probably still yes. After all, what have you got to lose?
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Published by Wild Shadow Studios, Realm of the Mad God is available free-to-play on Steam and on the publisher’s site: www.realmofthemadgod.com.
