Reinventing spellcasting?

I recently came across the very new developer Arrowhead Game Studios, with an upcoming title named Magicka that looks pretty interesting. The basic concept seems to be a fantasy dungeon crawler where the focus is placed on spellcasting. This is a not a very uncommon setting per se, but the thing that really draws my attention is the way the spellcasting is presented with a somewhat novel mechanic. The player will mix and match different magical properties to a variety of effects in order to find combinations that suits the desired task. There's allegedly thousands of possible combinations to discover.

Screenshot of Magicka, taken from the official website

From the video clips available at the game website the game doesn't seem to take itself or its fantasy setting too seriously, which in my opinion could be either a lovable laugh at the expense of overused clichés or simply an attempt to hide an uninspired story and lack of an interesting game world under the veil of humour. We'll see how well they pull it off.

According to this hands on preview at Gamespot the game doesn't factor in skill points, a leveling system or even gold or other currency. There is supposedly loot to be had though. This could also swing both ways, it could potentially intensify the action by taking away distractive and unnecessary mechanics. It could, however, just as well mean that the game becomes stale quickly due to lack of incentive to keep playing.

The game mechanics concerning spell casting has the potential to bring a refreshing touch to the genre, but I do see the risk that the game tries to live on these new mechanics alone, which is something I don't think will work. It will need the complete package to fly, not only a single novelty. Time will tell, as always, but I will definitely be keeping an eye on this title.

All the best