Not all abilities are created equal because there is an imbalance when it comes to how many of these abilities function. A lot of them either do very little damage, are very difficult to hit for the opportunity cost, or are doing something counteractive. On the other side of the coin, there are abilities so strong that there is very little point in not using them. Due to this, many of these abilities fail to change the way a person would play. Not helping the fact that every enemy has basic AI pathfinding as they all simply rush toward you, with a few enemies shooting a projectile every once in a while.

Like many action roguelites, there are paths to take toward the boss that can determine what type of loot drops, procedural-generated levels, permanent passive upgrades to purchases after every (failed) run, and difficulties/modifiers to further increase the difficulty. Unfortunately, there isn’t much else to Arcane Blast after you complete a run or two. There aren’t any lore bits scattered throughout to piece together some worldbuilding. There aren’t multiple playable characters to choose to change up playthroughs. As mentioned before, there are higher difficulties and modifiers such as increased cooldowns for all your abilities, but in the end, they don’t change how a person will enact a playthrough.

Moral warnings and concerns are few. The biggest outlier is the use of magic—given the title. There are a lot of arcane aspects to Arcane Blast, but they are not attached to any given existing following. It seems to be a generic magic system simply for fun. Violence is all magic-based, with enemies disappearing or poofing into smoke after death. Some supernatural elements are in play like one boss being a genie character, ghosts appearing as enemies, and even players if you manage to get a co-op game going.

I may seem negative, but don’t get me wrong! Arcane Blast is not a bad game, it’s just an okay one. It plays competently as I’ve done multiple runs without a single glitch or crash happening. The most intense moments only drop as low as 45 FPS when I’m running on average 200+ FPS. It is that outside of the third-person view and arcane setting, Arcane Blast doesn’t do much else to stand out and didn’t keep my interest for long as I’ve experienced dozens of roguelites—and it may not keep others interested. Although, if you like the aesthetic and want a more starter-friendly entry into roguelites, I could see it being a satisfactory purchase or gift.