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Imagine if JK Rowling wrote her next novel on the side of a speeding lorry. Not while it was speeding, impressive as that would be, but imagine if, in some weird avant-garde experiment, she decided to pen Harry Potter and the Midlife Crisis on a plain white truck trailer and then drove it around the country for people to read as it passed. How long would you follow it, craning your neck out of the car window and squinting at the permanently markered words, before you decided it was no longer worth the trouble?This bizarre thought bounced around my brain for at least half my time playing Lichdom: Battlemage - the same half wherein the game ceased to be capable of holding my attention. This is because Battlemage, developed by Xaviant Games, is a single, smartly crafted system deserving of a much better game to facilitate it. Although I appreciated the effort that has gone into realising the idea, there came a point where I grew exhausted from chasing after the bloody thing.
Battlemage (let's dispense with the silly "Lichdom" part, shall we?) is essentially a first-person shooter with spells. There are no swords, no bows, and none of the sneaking that you usually see in a fantasy game. Battlemage focuses purely on magic and mayhem. You assume the role of an initiate mage whose name and gender are yours to choose. Oddly, the game doesn't inform you gender is optional until after you've chosen your name, which led to me playing as a female mage called Marley.
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