ABRACA Review

ABRACA – Imagic Games is a party game developed by Ankama Studio who have worked on games like Kromaster Arena and Wakfu. Advertised as a Real Party Game, Abraca cannot be played online and only supports controllers with 1 person on keyboard. Bringing back the couch gaming genre of yesteryear, Abraca comes packed with several modes and maps to waste away the hours with friends.

Story / Setting

Set within Imagic, a land where fairy tale creatures roam, depicted in an almost Disney-esque way with “Frozen” practically stolen straight from the book. Like usual the Damsels are stolen away and the Princes must go rescue them, though the damsels will beat each other up to aid their princes. Prince Charming, Hansel, Yeti, Big Bag Wolf, Don Quixote all get ready to save their respective damsels.

To actually save them they must traverse through several castles to reach their women who are trapped within, with a lock on a chest. However before they can they are cursed to turn into frogs every so often, awaiting the love of their damsels to turn them back.

A match can last between 10 – 30 minutes depending on how well players do, as well as the settings on the maps as there are shortcuts and turn timers to set.

Gameplay

With 5 maps, 5 game modes and 3 separate game styles, there is a lot of variety to have in this game. You can choose between Race or Arena for group games and Challenge for single player tasks. Race is split into 2 halves, Arena mode is a battle royale between the damsels, Challenge scales in difficulty with tasks set for each character.

The standard race is like a combination of Battleblock theatre and Brawlhalla. The first half of the race mode is to run through several segments of a castle, jumping over chasms and avoiding the guardians who defend the castle from intruders, of which the other players can inhabit to control. The second half is a brawl between up to 4 damsels in several modes, from crown control, Deathmatch and coin grab, whoever wins gives the most health to their Prince.

Arena is basically the second half of Race, with the damsels and you can choose from; The Crown of Disagreement (hold the crown the longest), Last one standing (Free for all), Gingerbread Race (collect), Cauldron of Fortune (grab coins and bank them), Royal Brawl (Death match), Random to select between all of those.

Each character has their own moves and skillsets, the bigger characters are slower but have further reach on their attacks, the Frozen princess does ranged attacks at lower damage whereas Red Riding Hood is fast and high damaging. You can jump with A, Melee with X, Ranged attack with Y, roll with bumpers, or if you are a ghost you can possess the guardians with any face button.

Overall Thoughts and Feelings

The music flows beautifully between the levels, fitting each of the environments perfectly. Each segment of a castle has its own variation of the levels music, progressing through the entire castle, blending amazingly together and making the overall experience that much better and immersive. The music isn’t too overbearing but you might want to turn it down to hear your friends as you play, or to listen to when the guardians want to attack you.

With a lack of Online play there is a lot of potential for this game to be great, but since you’re stuck with whoever you have close it can feel as if you can’t really play this game. Fitting more with families or students who readily have people available to play with, if you’re not one of these demographics then this isn’t a purchase you’ll feel fine with.

There was quite a few times where the game would crash, lag or simply take a long time to load which really slowed down play time. The most recurring one was the last level would just freeze on the loading screen where it shows the princes getting ready to start. Besides the hiccups it does have here and there the rest of the game is pretty stable.

Overall ABRACA– Imagic Games gets a 6/10, its fun for a few minutes but it steals too much from others games already out, and those games do it a lot better. If you already have a party game for you, your friends and family there isn’t much that Abraca will bring to the table, unless you are fans of Brawling games or Runner genres like Brawlhalla or Speedrunners respectively.