The Cursed Library in Beautiful Spores has spells hidden throughout its procedurally generated floors. Getting your hands on them means fighting through creatures, dodging rooms full of projectiles, collecting coins, and gradually turning whatever magic you find into something capable of clearing the place out.
Frosty Cap LLC’s twin-stick roguelike launches today on Steam, mixing bullet hell combat with spell building and plenty of upgrades to stack together. You begin with something manageable, add a few effects, find something else that works with it, and eventually there’s magic flying absolutely everywhere.
One Spell Can Become a Much Bigger Problem
Combat has you moving and aiming independently, dodging through enemy attacks while firing your own spells back through whatever gap you can find. New spells can be discovered as you explore, while coins earned from fights can be spent on upgrades that change what they do. Keep adding the right effects and a fairly ordinary attack can quickly become something much nastier, especially once several parts of the build start working together.
That makes every new upgrade another chance to push whatever you’ve already created a little further. You may find something that makes an existing spell stronger, adds another effect, or suddenly gives an ability you weren’t interested in, a reason to stay.
You’re Not Getting the Same Library Twice
Every run rearranges the Cursed Library, changing the floors and rooms you’ll fight through along with the spells and upgrades you find on the way. So there’s no single build waiting to be assembled every time.
One run could hand you the pieces for a ridiculous combination early on. Another may leave you trying to make several less exciting options cooperate until something better turns up. Either way, you’re constantly deciding whether a new upgrade actually helps what you’re building or just gives you another bit of magic to throw at the room, and there will be plenty of rooms that need it.
The bullet hell side of Beautiful Spores means enemies can cover the screen in projectiles, leaving you to weave between attacks while keeping your own spells moving in the opposite direction. The stronger your build gets, the more you start contributing to the problem. Eventually, everyone is throwing something.
Things Can Escalate Quite Quickly
That constant back and forth between surviving fights and making your spells more ridiculous is what keeps pushing a run forward.
Every room cleared means more chances to earn coins, find another spell, or pick up the upgrade that makes everything you’ve already collected work a little better. Then it’s onto the next part of the library to see whether the build actually survives contact with whatever is waiting there. Sometimes it will, and sometimes there are simply too many things on screen.
With procedurally generated floors changing each attempt and different combinations of spells and upgrades to experiment with, Beautiful Spores is built around seeing how far you can push whatever magic the library gives you before the run finally comes apart.
The game launches today on Steam for PC. The Cursed Library is full of powerful magic waiting to be discovered, but it’s also full of things that would quite like you to stop discovering it.