Wizard and Minion Idle (WAMI) is an idle game inspired by NGU Idle, which I reviewed about six months ago. The basic concept is fairly simple, you cast spells to accumulate “Attack” and “Defense” which you use to go through “stages”, unlocking gameplay mechanics and features that all synergize together to ultimately improve your attack and defense some more. These features were a bit more engaging for me than they were in NGU and I had a good time with WAMI! I wish I could’ve stayed with it until the ‘end’ but at some point progression felt like it was dragging on forever and I didn’t know how to improve it, so I stopped.
Let me say it upfront, why are all idle games so immature? I’ve rarely found one that wasn’t making dumb jokes, but anyways you’re not playing WAMI for the story or art. The core loop is fairly fun; You make mana (and other resources) at a set rate (that you can improve) up to a specific amount (that you can improve) in order to defeat enemies, gather gold and experience (both of which improve different things). After a while you can Reincarnate, giving you a bonus based on the highest stage you’ve beaten, how much mana you’ve spent on certain upgrades, and so forth, which in turn gives you a bonus to many stats on your next reincarnation.
You quickly get rituals that temporarily burn some of your mana to get bonuses for that reincarnation alongside demons that you can assign to tasks that give you more bonuses, you get an Adventure minigame where your Minion fights enemies of various rarities, gathering equipment that helps you in many ways - I enjoyed this Adventure one more than in NGU - and you can boost your minion using a few different resources. There are daily rewards, world bosses, dungeons (which are only glorified progress bars, but they feel meaningful when you unlock them), a weird ‘generator’ system to passively improve various stats, fishing, crafting, material gathering… There’s a lot!
And there are also fun challenges, like in NGU - but less trollish - where you have to beat a certain stage under specific conditions - not being able to use spells, reincarnate, automatically reincarnating, etc - that unlock more mechanics or give you more bonuses. You also have trophies, which are daily points that you can spend on more meaningful upgrades, the battlefield has you fight wave after waves of enemies by summoning creatures, there’s a big perk system where you reset your town bonuses to get points to buy upgrades, I could go on. There’s a lot to do in WAMI, and I really enjoyed that.
At around stage 470, I got stuck. I got stuck for a few weeks and there was no progress in sight. Maybe I should’ve pushed on, but I lost interest, doing the same daily routine every day to improve ever so slightly some numbers kinda got to me, and I stopped. Still, WAMI is pretty good and has a lot of soul. If you want to spend a few months on an idler, it’s not the worst choice!
