Bubblegum Wizards is a vibrant and surreal urban fantasy that I think might be closest in genre to something like Earthbound or Yakuza Like A Dragon or maybe Seinfeld---although it clearly walks its own path.
The PDF is 23 pages, rad, dipped in colors that work in perfect counterpoint, a lite brite of rules text and gorgeous vibesy illustrations.
Lore-wise, you are a wizard and you live in the city that all cities became. You get your mana and spells from a lingering piece of the non-city world called the Corner Store, which sells them as bubble gum and trading cards. You use them to fight vampires.
It's rare to see a game concept swing this wildly, and it's beautiful when the bat makes contact with the pitch. The setting WORKS. It taps into some sort of primal nostalgia while also giving you creative room to freewheel and get weird---as long as you can do it with a straight face.
Imagine, like, a citypop version of Tsutomu Nihei's Blame! or Daniel Polansky's A City Dreaming. That's what this is.
Mechanically, Bubblegum Wizards is on the cusp between lightweight and medium weight. Think Blades In The Dark.
You have Vibes, which are skills you roll, and you also have Thresholds, which determine how much sweat (damage) you can take phyiscally, mentally, or socially before you start rolling to see if you take serious consequences. You also have Luck, which you can use to soak damage and manipulate dice, and which you gain by gambling hp on difficult rolls.
In addition to these stats, you have gumballs and foil cards, which you can take social damage to purchase from the Corner Store. Cards can be tapped against objects or creatures to permanently take on their power. Bubblegum is spent to trigger card effects.
The costs and effects of cards are loosely handled by the GM, so this is definitely a design-while-you-play-it kind of game---but in an engaging and fun way, similar to the Jojo's ttrpg.
Character creation involves picking a class, which comes with a starting package of items, but a lot of what you *do* as a character involves what you choose to card and how you manage your luck levels, so your class choice doesn't really lock you into a playstyle. Advancement is minimal, and only boosts your stats and thresholds by small amounts at the end of major arcs.
For GMs, advice is given on running the game, and there's a bestiary, but a lot of what you're doing is introducing plot beats, ticking clocks, and giving the players lots of fires to put out. If you prefer simulationist style play, Bubblegum Wizards might not click with you---it's a narratives and currencies game all the way through.
Overall, this is one of the best rpgs I've read lately. I say that a lot, about a lot of games, but that's because a lot of games are good. Bubblegum Wizards in particular is good at presenting a wonderful, intuitive setting, mechanics that perfectly match its style, and a neat little engine that rewards freewheeling and design-on-the-fly. If anything I've said here sounds good, absolutely get it.
Minor Issues:
-By raw, I think you can cheese Luck, using it to reroll dice on wagers and negate the sweat gain from failed wagers. The GM can immediately put a stop to this, but if they don't clock the issue in time it could be disruptive.