Introducing POWERS — the first update for Natural Magic

The first update for Waltz of the Wizard: Natural Magic is out — the POWERS update includes many new features that enrich the existing Natural Magic campaign!

New powers, new characters, new items, new environments—and a more diverse experience.

This update includes many things from our own list of features combined with popular requests from the community (thank you for the feedback!), focused on increasing diversity of the experience. Natural Magic introduced key foundations that will let us keep building more advanced environments, characters and powers, faster. The initial release showcased the bare core of some things, and we’re very excited to start expanding!

Here are key additions, expanding magic and the Fortress.

Magical powers

We are expanding the natural magic system, giving you seven new powers to control — in addition to the sonic scream, flexible casting and telekinesis system of natural magic—for a total of ten magical powers.

Lightning Bolt — Rubbing your hands together charges particles with electricity for a lightning cast.

Tornado — Swirls your hand in circles to form a tornado of particles.

Neutron Orb — This powerful attack condenses magic into a devastating neutron orb.

Neutron Explosion — If you’ve formed a neutron orb, you can make it explode to push enemies away.

Spectral Blade — A quick motion of closed fists spawns a blade. You can have one in each, and it leaves a satisfying streaks and realistic ectoplasm liquid dripping.

Spectral Orb —Bowling with magic is now possible. Simply do an underhanded bowling cast and see particles form into a ‘solid’ shape.

Spectral Shield — Quick crossing of your arms creates an instant block for incoming projectiles.

New and improved characters

We are introducing two new enemies in this release and making extensions of character behaviors. They pay active attention to moving things in the environments, react to your hands during melee, avoid dangers like explosives and additionally perform dodging maneuvers instead of driving straight for you all the time.

Demolisher — This automaton is magically programmed to detonate its explosives as close to you as possible.

Larvops Droppers — These larger Larvops rain down explosives!

New items

Behold, new creative types of grenades that are sure to make things feel like an explosive supersport. We also added nice little Obelisks to hold objects.

Magical grenades, mines and holy objects.

• Regular Grenade (pink) — Simple enough, pull the pin and it beeps until it explodes.
• Proximity Mine (yellow/gray) — Once activated, tentacles slither out of holes and can attach it to any surface. Once attached, it becomes a proximity mine that triggers when you or characters stand too close.
• Sproingbomb (orb) — Like the timer version, but bounces like a rubber ball. Sprooooiiiinng.
• Holy Hand Grenade (gold)— Bathe thine enemies in the holiest of forces.

New environments

Caves are colorful additions to the Fortress.

The main addition are colorful cave environments that are now present regularly throughout the whole campaign… Destructible stalagmites and stalactites included.

These new environments are occasional breakout areas that lead you into some of the many caves and tunnels that riddle the Fortress. Perhaps one day in the future you’ll get to see some of its native inhabitants that have evolved there throughout millions of years.

The Fortress and Larvops Dropper

The other new area is a special occasion in level 3 — the first look at what the Observer Fortress actually looks like from the outside!

Other improvements

For more technical details you can visit our Discord to find the release notes, but here are a few more improvements we’ve made in this update.

Tutorials now include holograms that demonstrate how to use each spell.

• More enemies appear in the early levels now for more diversity.
• Skully now welcomes you when you enter the Intro/Lobby scene.
• Teleport movement has been added.