All other games from the same studio have the same features.

In fact, the whole point of their games is that they are coop games where is easy to accidentally kill your allies in hilarious manners. It is the reason for example why to cast stratagems you use complex key sequences, it is intentional so that you can make mistake and cast the wrong thing.

It's actually a really nice spell casting system. It lets you have a ton of different spells with only 4 buttons. It rewards memorizing the most useful (like reinforce). It gives a way for things like the squid disruptor fields or whatever they're called to mess with your muscle memory while still allowing spells. It would be way less interesting if it was just using spell slots like so many other games.

The only wrong thing I've been throwing is the SOS Beacon instead of a Reinforce, which is just annoying, and not just once. It makes the game public if it was friends-only and gives it priority in the quick play queue. So that can't be it.

The dialing adds friction to tense situations, which is okay as a mechanic.