I started playing and enjoying the battle royale sorcery sim Spellbreak right around the time Spellbreak was shutting down. Developers Proletariat, Inc. announced plans to bring the servers back down in August 2022 amid an acquisition by Activision Blizzard, and that put an end to many happy hours spent skating on conjured ice ramps and throwing rocks around like rabbits. Yep, I’m the kind of sorcerer who’ll throw rabbits if there’s no spare rock.
Thankfully, it turns out that Proletariat has resurrected their creation and passed it on to future generations in the form of a free standalone Community Edition available on Itch.io. You’ll need to host your own server or join another group if you want to play multiplayer, but it’s still a nice little gift and I’m happy to pass it on to you, the active and productive Magenauts of Rockus Paperus Shottegonne.
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This is certainly not “news”, I admit, it’s nothing new. The Community Edition was released in December 2022, months before I joined the RPS as a full-time Scuttlebutt Conjurer. I just came across this, thanks to former RPS Scuttlebutt Conjurer Dominic Tarason. You may accuse me of being “bad at my job” based on this, but I would quickly say that a warlock is never late, never early – he comes exactly when he wants to, and besides, if you don’t shaddap, I will kiss you with an electric hose.
If you've never played Spellbreak, here's a quick summary: It's got the usual battle royale premise of a big, multi-biome map where people race to the centre to earn power-ups and gear drops, but it spices things up with, well, magic. As with Magicka – Magicka! Darling – you can combine spells from different elements to create some properly apocalyptic wonders. It's also very fast. These aren't your typical octogenarian wizards in heavy, star-spangled robes. They're hot teenagers running around like ninjas.
If you've downloaded the Community Edition and are looking for opponents and advice, the Elemental Fracture Discord seems to be quite crowded.