Magic in games usually means clicking a button and watching something flashy happen. However, in The Magus Circle, launching on Steam today, spells aren’t just abilities, they’re drawings. Actual sigils you sketch mid‑battle, each one carrying its own arcane weight.
Created by By Witchlight, It’s a vampire‑survivors‑style roguelite at its core, but the moment you start drawing your first spell, it becomes something else entirely.
Spells You Literally Draw
The Magus Circle’s biggest hook is its spellcasting system. Instead of selecting spells from a bar, you draw sigils to cast them. Don’t worry though, they can be messy, imperfect, rushed, or carefully traced. The game doesn’t demand artistic talent, even the roughest scribble still channels power.
Across a run, you unlock and combine 20 spells with more than 600 possible upgrades, turning your spellbook into a shifting, unpredictable toolkit. One run may lean into massive area blasts, while another could revolve around familiars, shields, or rapid‑fire sigils that melt through the Tide. You adapt to whatever fate hands you, and half the fun is discovering combinations you didn’t expect to work.
A Cosmic War You Didn’t Ask For
Magic is under siege, and you’ve been dragged into a cosmic conflict you never volunteered for. You’re tasked with protecting the Magus Circle as humanity’s last real ally, using nothing but your wits and your best scribing hand.
Runs take place across four planets, each with its own enemies, pacing, and colossal bosses waiting at the end. The Tide doesn’t stop coming, and every map feels like a different kind of pressure test. Some runs feel controlled, and others feel like you’re barely holding the line.
Six Mages, Six Stories, Six Ways to Break Everything
Between runs, you return to the Circle’s manor, a place full of secrets, oddities, and mages who are powerful, flawed, and carrying their own emotional baggage. You can play as all six, each with unique skill trees and abilities that push you toward different playstyles.
Some mages lean into raw damage, others specialize in control, familiars, or defensive magic. Learning each one feels like unlocking a new angle on the game.
A Roguelite That Wants You to Experiment
Like any roguelite, you won’t get the same tools twice. Some runs hand you incredible synergy, while some force you to improvise. However, because spellcasting is tied to drawing, even familiar spells feel different depending on how you use them.
It’s messy in a good way, the kind of game where a run can collapse because you panicked and drew a sigil badly, or succeed because you accidentally discovered a combination that shouldn’t work but absolutely does.
With hand‑drawn spellcasting, hundreds of upgrades, six playable mages, four planets, and a manor full of secrets, The Magus Circle is shaping up to be one of the more distinctive roguelites releasing this year. It’s playful, strange, expressive, and built around a mechanic that makes magic feel like something you’re actually shaping, not just selecting.
Magic is art — and this game leans into that idea completely.