- Visual and difficulty update - 21 May 2026
In preperation for the Steam Next fest the demo has seen an update to the visuals to make it easier for players to see enemies, bullets and traps. The demo has also been rebalanced a bit to make players see a bit more content sooner and made the learning curve smoother.
- Welcome to the Nightmare - 27 March 2026
Introducing Mr. Sparkle’s Nightmare; a fast, dark, skill-based take on spellcrafting and bullet hell combat!The spell crafting mechanic is at the core of the game, giving players near limitless freedom to combine runes to create crazy and exciting spells.Movement and difficulty has been carefully tinkered to always keep players on their toes and never allowing careless plays without punishment.The art direction, music and theme of the game is set up to match the gameplay, to intensify the experience of a hardcore bullet hell experience.The demo is out now - enjoy experimenting with spell crafting while dodging the chaotic bullet hell patterns skillfully!Happy Gaming-Mathias Zillo
- Mini-bosses, Healing & Selling - 20 August 2025
Hi everybody, here's a new update to the demo of Whiskers and Wizardry as I look to make the demo as polished as possible for the Steam Next Fest in October. Check it out!New Mini-bosses to face: 2 new mini-bosses joins lushwood forest to give players an extra challenge and more loot!Healing: Even though health is an important resource and the game is not healing heavy, I've added a fish in the shop that players can buy to gain some much needed health back!Sell runes: Captain Kroll in his shop are now able to buy your left-over runes for some additional mouse tokens. Make most of it and get the upgrades - or health - you need!Bug fixing:Some hitboxes was not very intuitive to players and are now adjustedThe Cat's Eye Laser attack now collides more precisely with enemies.Bug where UI was wrongfully placed when equipping runes, making upgrades or otherwise are now fixed.VIsual changes:Fla…
- Pits of Lushwood - Update 0.7.0.7 - 7 August 2025
Demo Hotfix update 0.7.0.7 is now live!The demo has been hotfixed of bugs, and a new terrain piece has been added; Pits.Push ground enemies into them to eliminate them, but be careful not to fall in yourself!
- Major Demo Overhaul - 1 August 2025
I'm happy to announce that the demo now finally has been updated with the big graphics and game design overhaul, that I've been working intensely on for the past 4-5 months. After a lot of great feedback and advice, I decided to make a big overhaul to the game, which identifies the following issues it had before:All-in on Bullet hell: The game has always been a bullet hell game, however it didn't lean fully into it. The enemies has seen big updates to their attack patterns and the game feels much more right in the genre. Oatmeal bowl problem: The rune system was cool, however, because you could have so much of everything activated at once, you ended up not really caring that much about which abilities you had. It all played the same.The enemies were all behaving similarly, making each room feel less distinct and the challenge design was not great. This has been heavily lifted and every…
- Challenge Design Revised! - 26 March 2025
The demo has seen an update, where the design philosophy of the challenges has seen some severe changes. This means: Each room is now hand crafted with care, for a more engaging experience, which makes each room feel like a little action-puzzle you need to solve. Enemies has been redesigned to play more distinct roles from eachother, making each of them stand out more and enabling players to become more aware of their patterns. Added a new enemy in the demo as it was fulfilling a much needed role when looking at the challenges of each room. Added a new form of trap that players need to avoid while engaged in combat. Damage of enemies has been increased, while their health has decreased, for more intense battles, that are more punishing, but let's you move on quicker when doing things right. Experience gained from killing monsters has increased, to allow for quicker leveling. Turned down…
- Playing around Lushwood Forest - 21 February 2025
Join me when playing Whiskers and Wizardry!
- Story, HUD and Baltic Steam Event - 21 February 2025
Demo 0.6.0.0 is here! The demo includes The story is told through a cinematic in the beginning of the game You can now select to play the cinematic and/or the tutorial again after the first playthrough The magic sequence is now displayed in the HUD, along with dash and spell cooldowns, to give the player a better overview of the current ability availability. Pleased to share this update just before attending the Baltic steam event! I will be showing a video of me playing the game while the event is running.
- Demo Hotfix 0.5.0.1 - 31 January 2025
Just updated the demo with a quick little hotfix adressing: Adding option for fullscreen windowed mode Letting the game run in background while loading. This should help players opening the game and browsing Steam while they wait for loading. Added tooltip for how to cleanse corrupted runes.
- Corrupted Runes have entered the Mr. Sparkle's Nightmare demo! - 30 January 2025
Today the demo version 0.5.0.0 is out - and it's a good one! I've had a lot of feedback from testers this past week and two of the major points were: The demo is a bit too easy, which means there's an issue with experiencing the power progression fully because everything dies too easy, and also it means you'll play for less time. The core gameplay of the spell crafting rune system and the feline power ups, seems really awesome and we want to lean as much into it as possible. On top of that they found some bugs that needs to get fixed. These are the areas I've tried to improve upon in version 0.5.0.0, which led to the following patch notes: Added rarity to runes (Common, Rare, Epic and Legendary). Only Common and Rare runes are dropped without Corruption (See below). Added a Corrupted Rune system to the core spell crafting system. Corrupted runes are either of Epic or Legendary rarity, b…
- Demo v 0.4.2.0 Live - 28 January 2025
Demo Patch 0.4.2.0 is now live! This is a smaller patch, but it includes some important hotfixes and QOL changes: Increased health on enemies at certain levels/difficulties. Made the curve a bit steeper to make it a bit less trivial in the later stages. Fixed issue with windowed mode Fixed issue when tabbing in and out of game Fixed bug with certain enemies early on giving 0 damage Updated movement speed of protagonist Better font in magic tome tooltip More info on how to equip runes in magic tome Easier handling of runes in magic tome Traps gives less damage and they take longer to activate Explanation in tooltip of what Enemy Powers are. Updated player collider slightly to fit where players think it is. Added graphics quality settings to make the game more accessible on lower-end systems. Fixed flickering when using the feedback reporting tool.
- Hotfix Demo 0.4.0.2 - 24 January 2025
I've just updated the demo with a small patch addressing some small issues I found when players were playing: Added proper control icons/names where appropriate when playing with controllers. Enhanced the auto aim slightly, to auto update when getting too far away from a target. Made an option for dropping runes with Y when playing with controllers. Made an option to auto-equip runes with X when playing with controllers. Adjusted the difficulty a little bit down on the first difficulty. Added appropriate error messages when players try to do actions they can't
- The demo is finally here! - 23 January 2025
I am super thrilled to announce that the demo for Whiskers and Wizardry is finally live! This also means that the playtest is taken down for now - it might get up later with a more complete build when the release date is closing in. The updates for the demo: New enemy power system: Each section provides a power for all enemies in the section. In the demo you can face 3 different powers at the moment: Immolation Pulse: Enemies creates an explosion around them every few seconds! Speedster: Enemies move 30% faster. Self destruct: Enemies creates a large explosion when they die - watch out! Loads of polishing, including: Better control sprites Cannot pick up items when you have a full inventory Better area of attack marks Better performance New boss screen to make players ready for the fight! Better markers for UI navigation - making everything easier to see especially on smaller screens li…
- From Playtest to Demo! - 17 January 2025
Today, I've sent my Demo to review at Valve and when that gets approved sometime next week (hopefully) I will shut down the playtest and support the Demo only. That said, the playtest has just been updated so that it is the same as the current Demo build - this means new content for you guys and a better play experience. More levels of the forest area The camp is expanded so you can see new areas - they cannot be entered in the demo though The winter and mushroom areas are prohibited now - instead the demo is entirely played in the forest area. When defeating the final boss (which has moved to section 9) the player is now met with a little bit of story instead of just getting a win-screen. Difficulty and progression has been adjusted once more. The goal is that the demo should encourage players to play about 3 run-throughs to get enough of a taste of the game. This should equal to about…
- Feline Powers and Difficulty Updated - 16 January 2025
I'm excited to share that the playtest update 0.2.0.0 is now live! This patch is a bit bigger and gives some more things to explore and experiment with, encouraging a bit longer playtimes than previously. Revamped the Feline Power system. Now it is a talent tree where you can pick 1 of 2 talents for each level you gain. These can be redistributed for each run in the camp. The purpose of this tree is for players to feel like they get great progression, and meaningful choices that affects how they approach their builds and playstyle in each run. New Feline powers: I've added 4 brand new Feline Powers to the game. Looking for synergies? Look at the Level 4 powers: Fire mastery: When damage from a fire based spell is triggered, the target becomes a living bomb that explodes after 3 seconds or when dying! In addition you start with the Fireball spawn rune. Poison Mastery: Each enemy infected…
- Playtest Hotfix #2 now live - 13 January 2025
The playtest is still going strong - thanks for everyone that plays and especially for the nice feedback you guys give! I really appreciate it! :) The patch includes: Fixed issue where some particle systems wouldn't render correctly Added 4 new levels to make more diverse runs Fixed bug where Steam Deck users would run into some big lacks rendering them unable to play the game. Added "quit to camp" and "quite to main menu" Fixed issue with gamepad/keyboard navigation in menus. Happy gaming - Mathias Zillo Zillo Games
- Playtest Hotfix #1 now live! - 10 January 2025
The playtest is going great and the feedback is rolling in - thanks for that, I really appreciate it! :) Based on the feedback I got, this is the first hotfix of the Alpha Playtest. The patch includes: Fixed issue where the ice enemies would end in an endless immortal charge state Fixed a crash bug for Steam Deck users - Steam deck should be supported now. Made small adjustments of texts and icons where they were a bit unaligned Added option to navigate up and down dialogue options with W and S Added option to pick a dialogue option based on numbers (1,2,3 etc) Added the option to instant-write dialogue text when left clicking on the panel (before you had to click outside the panel) Added tooltips to the HUD elements (coins, diamonds, health bar etc) Added an option to open the feedback/bug tool in the in-game menu Happy gaming - Mathias Zillo Zillo Games
- Alpha Playtest Live Now! - 10 January 2025
Excited to announce that the alpha playtest for Whiskers and Wizardry is now live! The playtest is a vertical slice (think demo) of the game, but it hasn't been fully tested for a demo release yet - I hope you'll help with that :) It would be a great help if you'd try it out and provide me some data/feedback that can help me improve the game and fix bugs. In game there's the option to provide feedback directly (for windows only), you can also help out with answering a survery with questions and finally you are able to provide questions/feedback in my Discord channel or on the Steam page forums which I check regularly. The playtest includes: - A short tutorial to get you going - A bunch of different spell runes for you to try out the innovative spellcrafting system - Metaprogression with tome crafting and a few feline powerups - a bunch of in-run upgrades - 3 different biomes with monste…
- Announcing Whiskers and Wizardry! - 6 December 2024
I am super proud and excited to announce the next title of Zillo Games: Whiskers and Wizardry! The game follows the exciting world of spellcrafting from Margoq's Lair, but takes a completely different take on it, where there's less focus on finger-twisting and more focus on the tactical aspects of crafting your spells. Inspired by Magicraft, Wizard of Legend and Spell Disk, Whiskers and Wizardry aims to provide a gaming experience which heavily encourages experimentation and exploitation of the overwhelming amount of builds and synergies.
