In Spells & Secrets, you embark on your first day as a wizarding student at the magical Academy of Greifenstein. A mysterious incident sets strange releases wild creatures and an ever-changing chaos to reign over the school.

You must solve puzzles, find powerful artefacts and develop your powers to cleverly combine spells and rescue the school.

Spells & Secrets is a deep and motivating rogue lite experience that invites newcomers to this rewarding genre with its adventure story. Free the wizard Academy of Greifenstein from magical creatures by using your spells in creative ways. Play in local co-op with your friends or family, customize your own student wizard, solve mysteries and find powerful artifacts in this modern magical world.

Merge Games & developer Alchemist Interactive are excited to confirm wizard school rogue-like Spells & Secrets will be heading to Gamescom, dropping a studio commentary and Q&A ahead of the event.

Florian Mann, CEO of Alchemist Interactive, the Düsseldorf based developer with a love of all things magic, speaks about the unique challenges and design choices involved with building Spells & Secrets. Exploring the growth of the game from early concept to where it is today, Mann breaks down everything from designing a deeply interactable sandbox experience to customisation, story, original soundtrack and more in the new interview.

In a recent Q&A, Mann expanded on the inspiration behind Spells & Secrets.

“A school is an environment most people have made their own experiences in and therefore can relate with,” he commented. “Furthermore, a magic school makes a great setting! You can throw your wildest ideas into it and with a little bit of tweaking nothing will feel odd or stand out in a negative way. This was really enjoyable during the development! Players will encounter their schoolmates and the teachers of the academy of Greifenstein,” Mann remarked, discussing creating an authentic magical school experience. They will be able to join different student factions, which will open up unique spells and progression.”

Asked what inspired the team to make Spells & Secrets a roguelike and how much the world utilises procedural generation to build its environments, Mann replied, “We are fans of the roguelike genre so there was always interest in creating something in this field. However, we wanted to give it our own flavour. We generate from a set of carefully designed components like rooms, enemies and items, then arrange and combine them procedurally. Because we know that each of these components works well on its own, we then get interesting gameplay situations from the countless combinations that are created.”

Merge Games, Alchemist Interactive and Rokaplay will be heading to the show floor at Gamescom giving players a hands-on taste of ‘Spells & Secrets’ with the latest demo.

‘Spells & Secrets’ is available to pre-order now at all good retailers, including Signature Edition Games for only £24.99 / $29.99 / €29.99 on Playstation 5 and £29.99 / $34.99 / €34.99 on Nintendo Switch.

Key Features:

• Combine numerous spells in creative ways as you battle magical creatures and solve puzzles
• Create your student wizard from extensive customisation options and unlock more possibilities as you play
• Play solo or with a friend in 2 player local co-op mode
• Find powerful artefacts and useful potions to augment your skills and navigate tricky situations
• Rescue your classmates from the ever-changing Academy of Greifenstein
• Improve your character and spells permanently
• Easy to learn for rogue-like newcomers
• Creative approaches are rewarded right from the start, forge your own unique path!

Spells & Secrets is coming to nintendo Switch, PS5 and PC in October 2023.