$19.99Nine Parchments Spell First, Apologize Later
Chase lost parchments with untrained magic, where your biggest threat is usually a friend's spell.
Is Nine Parchments worth it?
Nine Parchments is worth it if…
- you want a couch co-op game where the fun comes from friendly fire and shared disasters
- you like fast spell-slinging action with elemental counters to learn
- you enjoy unlocking characters, hats and staves across repeated runs
- you would rather laugh at a chaotic defeat than grind a perfect strategy
Screenshots
Spells first, safety later
You play apprentice wizards who skipped the part of wizard school where they teach you not to set yourself on fire. Dozens of spells are out there to discover, and you pick up new ones after boss fights, choosing from a random trio that forces real decisions: take the healing circle, the chain lightning, or the big fireball you will absolutely hit a friend with. Elements counter each other, so matching the right spell to the right creature matters, and shields and immunities keep you swapping spells instead of spamming one favorite. You shoot while moving, blink out of trouble, and level up your character along a skill tree to shape a build that fits how you like to fight.
Friendly fire is the whole point
Your spells do not check who they hit. That healing circle you drop at a friend's feet works just as well under a monster's feet, and a careless beam can end a teammate mid-sentence. The game leans into it: you can resurrect fallen friends, or finish them off, and settings let you reflect or share friendly damage if you want new flavors of disaster. It also creates genuinely clever moments. Two wizards can cross their beams into one bigger, stronger beam, and more wizards make it wilder. The real threat in a fight is often not the monsters, it is the person standing next to you, and that is exactly the fun.
A good pick for a group night
The rules take a minute to explain: move, shoot, do not hit each other, fail at that last part constantly. Up to four players can play together on one couch or online, and the chaos does the entertaining for you. Someone heals an enemy by mistake. Someone's lightning locks down half the team. Someone falls off a ledge during a fight that was going well. Rounds are short level-sized chunks with battles broken into sections, so it is easy to jump in, laugh at a disaster, and deal another one. The look helps too: bright, colorful, hand-drawn fantasy that stays cheerful no matter how badly the run is going.
Co-op built for a crew
This is a game made to be played together, with a full co-op campaign for one to four players, local or online. Enemies scale with the number of wizards, so a bigger group means bigger fights, and the friendly fire plus resurrection system means you are always saving each other or causing the problem in the first place. If one of you survives, you can bring the others back, which keeps a run alive past the point where it should have ended. There is also an Arena mode for when the campaign is done. Fair warning: there is no way to replay a single level, so if you miss a collectible, that run has moved on without it.
Can you play it solo?
Can you play it solo?
Yes, the campaign works alone with one wizard, and the friendly fire becomes your own problem instead of your friends'. But the game is clearly built around a group: the crossed spell beams, the rescues and the accidents are where it shines, and a solo run of the roughly ten-hour campaign can feel repetitive. If you have even one friend to play with, you will get much more out of it.
What do you actually do between fights?
You collect. Fallen enemies and hidden chests drop hats and staves, hats being purely fashionable and staves being genuinely powerful, and leveling up lets you pick new paths on your character's skill tree. Characters themselves unlock through quests as you play, each with their own skill tree and starting spells, and several have multiple variations with different spell sets, which is what gives a second run a different feel.
Is it hard?
It can be, and much of the difficulty is self-inflicted. Enemies counter your elements, carry shields you must break first, and some project immunity auras, so you need to read a fight and swap spells rather than hold one button. Falling off a ledge kills instantly, friendly fire is always on, and checkpoints do not come after every battle. The flip side: battles are split into sections, so clearing one restores your health and mana and keeps the pace moving.
Is there a story?
A light one. The setup is simple and easy to follow: an explosion at the academy scatters nine spell parchments, and a group of underqualified apprentices sets out to collect them. A narrator and the banter between characters carry the charm more than the plot does, and the characters talk differently depending on who is in your party and where you are. Nobody is here for the twist ending.
