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[Will Alvein]

Hello there, I'm a frequent lurker that sometimes contributes to this community.

Very recently I released a game I've been working for a while on, it's not a huge game but I think you people might be interested on it and enjoy playing it.

Tower of the Archmage is a roguelike with heavy focus on spell crafting, it allows you to create many different kinds of spells and customize them with runes you find through the dungeon or by leveling up.

It's not a very complicated roguelike, it's turn-based, though you don't have a hunger system nor an item system, instead all the focus is on creating your own spells and trying to reach the top of the tower, where you will find The Archmage, and challenge him to a duel to become the new archmage. Instead of a more traditional MP system, you have flux points that go up as you cast spells, if your flux points are more than your maximum capacity, you'll start experiencing random effects that can be quite harmful, though you become more powerful when your flux is higher.

There are also "unique creatures", that will appear randomly on certain floors, which are stronger than normal creatures and will often rewards you with artifacts, runes with unique abilities that you can use in your spells.

Some screenshots:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It's a flash game if it matters to anyone, the good part about that is that you can play it for free, which I'm sure most people enjoy doing. Here's the link if you made it this far and are interested in playing:
http://armorgames.com/play/15981/tower-of-the-archmage


As a final note, I would like to say that the whole reason I made this game is that I love roguelikes, it's heavily inspired by a lot of games that I found out through this forum, but probably some of you will realize its main influence is Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup, the whole Flux System comes from the miscast spell system of that game, and unique creatures are also something straight from it.

That's all, I'd like to know what you people think, hopefully you enjoy it and have fun playing. I myself think it's rather fun and it has a good amount of replayability and different builds you can make!

[Mephansteras]

Looks interesting. I'll have to give it a try.

[BlitzDungeoneer]

This seems fairly interesting. I'll probably writ eup a review of sorts here when I'm finished playing.

[freeformschooler]

This is really neat!

The only thing I could suggest is having some sort of visual effect to match the described effects (e.g. fire for a weakening spell with the fire effect).

[BlitzDungeoneer]

I died before I even made it to the second floor.
Granted, I actually started with the satirs right beside me, ad decided to explore so that was partially my fault. I agree with freeformschooler's suggestion though. Add in some visual effects. Now, onto the pseudo-review;
Controls: They're actually fairly inuitive, even if you've never played roguelikes, escially since the spell assignment is similar to most RPGs. The tttorial at the start helps quite a bit, so this gets a 10/10.
Graphics: Well, they're damned good, especially considering that this is a roguelike. They're not eyecandy like most graphics in TOME4 seem to be, but they're damn good. The animation helps quite a bit. Still, some visual effects to distinguish spells would be nice. I'll give this 7/10.
Spell-Crafting: I'll be honest, and say I was pleasantly surprised by this mechanic. There aren't many games that allow you to make spells, so I don't have much to compare agains, but this is still awesome. Now, if this was implenmentedin a game by a company that could make AAA graphics...
Still, 9/10. Would be nicer if the runes had better names, though. Really, that's my only complaint. That. and every spell I saw (so, 4) looked the same.
Combined score of 26/30. Not that my opinion says much, I haven't done any reviews before this.

[Zireael]

Spell crafting is great and the controls are OK.

[BlitzDungeoneer]

Spell crafting is great and the controls are OK.

Ladies and gentlemen, my wall of text in a nutshell.

[Sergarr]

This game has spell-crafting?

Hell. Fucking. Yes.

[BlitzDungeoneer]

This game has spell-crafting?

Hell. Fucking. Yes.

Yep. You collect runes, and then you use those to create spells. You can name them too. I believe the max amount of spells you can have is 20, bu then you can modify existing ones into completely new ones, so yeah. And each time you die/win?, you get to pick one rune and then your successor has that rune at the start.

[Neonivek]

It is fun though you will get a lot of duplicate runes.

I also noticed that the game does have noticeable diminishing returns and a lot of the runes you will get after a certain point become useless. Though I consider that to be the nature of the game. Especially since I noticed that my direct attack spells became less useful. I didn't even notice that artifacts were randomized as well until I took closer looks.

In fact in my good run (where I only lost due to an ambush with several weakening enemies) my main combination was a powerful cloud area burst... and a cheap direct attack spell with an artifact that allowed me to "Add the power of a cloud under the enemy to the power of the attack", Oddly enough I named the spell "Breathe Deeply".

I only really have two suggestions
1) Add the enter key (to climb stairs) to the key bindings. I was really confused when I played at first, because I didn't know how to go down the stairs (when really I could only go up). It is minor but ehh an improvement is an improvement.
2) You miiight want to fix up a few of the artifacts. Some are surprisingly not useful.

[BlitzDungeoneer]

So, what are people's favourite classes? Mine is alchemist. I like the whole creating wall schtick he has, and the clouds that deal Damage Over Time. I think that's the corect term for it, anyway.

[Neonivek]

So, what are people's favourite classes? Mine is alchemist. I like the whole creating wall schtick he has, and the clouds that deal Damage Over Time. I think that's the corect term for it, anyway.

I find them to be the same in the end. At a certain point you are likely even going to stop using your starting runes if you get lucky enough.

[Will Alvein]

Thank you for the feedback! I'm very glad you people are liking it so far

That's where I remember your name from - in the tourney before the last one, you told me about Vault Guardians and what they did - then I died to them anyway!

Yeah I really like Dungeon Crawl: Stone Soup, I've participated in a few tournaments for the bay 12 teams, I can even claim to have finished the game with a 12 runes win, though only once

The graphics are simple and cute; reminds me a little of Powder. Was that intentional?

I've actually never played powder but I did watch some youtube videos of it (I often leave let's play videos on the background on my computer while doing other things ), I did however look at a lot of roguelikes and how they did their graphics when trying to come up with a style, though honestly what ended up being the biggest inspiration are the GBA Fire Emblem games (I know, Fire Emblem looks much better, but still).

Big wall of text.

I'm very glad you like it! I also appreciate you taking your time to write your thoughts, I basically made the game with the idea of having a spell crafting system first, which is why I removed many of the mechanics that are common in roguelikes, so the game wouldn't be too complicated (A lot of them were left out because it was too much work, though. I would love to have had deities and different branches).

Some very interesting stuff was said, go read his post

Yeah you do get a lot of rune duplicates, I couldn't come up with an idea to fix that which didn't involve adding a lot of extra content. Which of course would be nice, but also A LOT of extra work

I also agree about the artifacts. I mean, I think all can be very useful, but some are really bad if you're not using some specific builds. If you have good ideas for artifacts I'd be interested in them, though, they could still be added.

I find them to be the same in the end. At a certain point you are likely even going to stop using your starting runes if you get lucky enough.

That's mostly right, you could end up with the same spells by the end of the game with any of the classes, though you also get some very good runes by leveling up with each class that's unique to every class, and you get some runes guaranteed while leveling up if you're interested in certain builds more than others.

So probably choose your class depending on what you'd like your strategy to be:
Melee-fighting and buffing = Pugilist.
Old-school powerful magic from far away = Conjurer.
location-strategic and versatile = Draconian.
Lots of clouds and blocks = Alchemist.

Then again you could just make a character to get some of their runes then get killed and keep them to your next character, it's all fun.

[Neonivek]

Is it possible we could have some sort of rune storage so we don't have to use them up with out next character? I know that is a bit much to ask.

[BlitzDungeoneer]

Any examples of an artefact? I didn't get that far, what with the second floor in both games that I got that far being packed with enemies at the entrance, but I might be able to come up with something.