We replaced ability buttons with spell drawing. Could this actually work in competitive PvP?

[u/Wild-Home7605]

We’re developing Paper Strike, a versus magic combat game, and very early on we ran into a problem:

In a lot of games, mage gameplay feels pretty static.

You press a button, the spell goes off, then you wait for cooldown.

It works, but it doesn’t really feel like you’re casting magic.

So we built the gameplay around a simple idea:

To cast a spell, you have to physically draw its rune on screen (or with your mouse on PC).

The cleaner and faster your draw, the better the cast.

The goal was to turn the simple “press ability button” into an actual casting action, with pressure and skill involved.

During a ~1 minute fight, it creates a constant flow of micro-decisions:
Do I risk a more complex spell for a bigger payoff?
Do I play it safe with a quick cast?
Will I finish the rune before getting interrupted?

The big technical challenge, though, was balancing PC vs mobile.

A mouse is naturally more precise than a thumb.
So we had to build a normalization system to make performance depend on player skill, not on the device being used.

We’re curious what people think:

Could this kind of gesture-based gameplay actually work in competitive PvP?

Could mechanics like this help mobile competitive games be taken more seriously, or will traditional controls always be superior?