Wyrdwood Wand, Wizard Schools (with 100% less transphobia)
this is a wizard game with an alien invasion plotline in it
Touchstones: Wizard School media, Lovecraftian Mythos, Studio Ghibli, Chuubo, Final Fantasy Tactics, Sports Anime
Genre: Wizard School tactics Game
What is this game?: Wyrdwood Wand is a tactics game heavily inspired by D&D 4e, where players play as young (usually) mages growing up and studying in the prestigious citation needed Wyrdwood academy
How's the gameplay?: Wyrdwood Wand is heavily based on D&D 4e, its a crunchy tactics game with really fun and intuitive character creation which splits up characters between their party role, and the nature of their magic, one giving you broad strokes of a role, and the other cementing it's specifics, if you're familiar with how 4e plays you're familiar with how this game plays, and if you're familiar with 5e there's a little bit of a learning curve but it's still a pretty easy to learn game, Wyrdwood also features a fairly robust roleplaying system, that has a clean split between tactical and goofy spells, meaning characters can have silly spell options without having to break their spell bank
What's the setting (If any) like?: Wyrdwood is set in the world of Gliss, a setting with quite a bit of interesting lore and tidbits, but for now all you need to know is that Gliss is currently recovering from a massive war against an alien species known as the Wix, the world got kinda screwed by this invasion, population is small at around 300 million humans, towns are small, and technology hasn't quite reached the height it did before the war, think your stereotypical ghibli setting, but with more aliens and cthulhus. the Wyrdwood verse also has something called "Destiny", a mysterious force protecting humans from deadly blows, this is something that's mostly a gameplay term but it bleeds over into lore sometimes. Oh right I forgot to mention, in this world hats are incredibly important, if you don't wear one, good luck casting spells!
What's the tone?: Wyrdwood's wand is mostly fairly lighthearted, it can touch on topics of warfare and imperialism, but its a silly world full of goblins that can turn any object into a gun, and nigh-immortal reptilian orbs
Session length: Fairly long, 3-4 hours is not uncommon
Number of Players: 3+, 5 is recommended
Malleability: Wyrdwood's mechanics are actually not very tied into its setting, if your setting is primarily consisting of spellcasters you could run it in Wyrdwood probably
Resources: As wyrdwood is a fairly new, obscure, and in development game there's not too many resources, there's a google spreadsheet that works wonders, a few scattered bits of homebrew, and other such things
I REALLY like wyrdwood, its lighthearted and silly aesthetic combined with genuinely fun gameplay and character creation sell you into its world where really weird shit happens casually and where hats are vital for spellcasting.