The Spell Brigade is a great survivors-like/bullet heaven game. It has objectives within a run and meta progression. No missable achievements and completion takes around 35 hours, or a lot shorter if you can find someone to work together toward them.



Approximate amount of time to 100%: 35h without a boosting partner
Estimated achievement difficulty: 3/10
Minimum number of playthroughs needed: many as it is a rogue-lite
Is there a good guide available: Not yet, but you don’t really need a guide
Multiplayer achievements: Yes, there are achievements for dressing other players. However, the game allows you to queue up and play together with strangers and invite friends to play together.
Missable achievements: No
Grinding Achievements: Yes
DLC-Only achievements: No
Speedrun achievements: No
Time-gated achievements: No
RNG-achievements: Yes
Does difficulty affect achievements: Yes
Unobtainable/glitched achievements: No
I enjoy The Spell Brigade a lot. The addictiveness of becoming overpowered in a run, having objectives to work toward in the form of achievements that unlock skins/skills and new classes. As well as objectives during a run, you get tasks that will reward you with amazing upgrades if you complete the task within the time limit. The amount of options is also nice. Being able to play it as well in single-player as well as in multiplayer, doing a normal run or endless and having friendly fire (even in single-player) or not. It all allows you to select whatever you want for that specific run you have in mind.
The amount of content feels a bit limited atm with 3 maps and a lot of the same enemy design. However, I still enjoy the game a lot, and the 3 difficulty levels help out a lot as well. I also know that when I write this, an update is planned very soon that is being playtested atm. The game is in Early Access, so I’m sure we will see more content during the early access time.
I enjoy the gameplay a lot; bullet heavens are great. I also enjoy the fact that achievements are objectives in the game, and they will give you rewards in the form of new spells, maps, difficulties, classes, and outfits. None of them are missable, and they give you something to work toward. The only thing I disliked is that some of them are grindy while also having an ahead RNG element.
Speaking about the achievements, completion takes around 35 hours if you focus on the achievements. This time can be reduced a lot if you work together with someone to boost each other. Not only will that make the achievements to resurrect another player a walk in the park, it can also help with the grindy rng achievements. As there are achievements for doing those objectives that can come up during a run. For example, there is an event to collect mushrooms and an achievement to collect a crazy amount of mushrooms with a specific character. In multiplayer, a lot more mushrooms will spawn during that event. So if you’re able to work together with someone who knows you’re working toward that one.. instead of helping pick them up to clear the event as soon as possible, they can just let you pick them up all so it counts toward your goal. While they work toward another event and you let them do that one by themself when that one comes up.
I tried to do those grindy RNG objectives as quickly as possible by starting a new run and waiting till the first event in a run happens (about 2,5 minutes in a run, the first will pop up). If it was the correct one, do it and get the reward and then restart the run, otherwise restart the run as well. It felt like the time between events increased more and more during a run, while the first one popped up quite quickly during a run. My biggest advice would be to not wait for those achievements as the last ones you need because they are very boring if you only have that kind of achievements left.
I give The Spell Brigade 3.5 out of 5 stars.
This review for #thespellbrigade was written on 24 January 2025, based on the current Steam version of the game which has 60 achievements at the time of writing this review. This information can be outdated, for example, when the developer adds or removes achievements or releases (new) DLC.