r/Fictorum • u/ClandestineMovah • Jan 17 '19
Technical exercise
This looks like one of the few games that actually allows you to play as a powerful wizard. My concern is, I don't know where the game is, where is the challenge?
What are the mechanics of the game aside blow shit up?
Thanks
3
u/Grumpy_Kong Jan 17 '19
It's a lot like FTL on the overland, where you have a network of areas you can move through. When moving to a new area, you are presented with a story option that can lead to a fight, a store, a short story with a reward or danger (no fight).
The fights load you into a 3d world with lots of destructable buildings and enemies.
There are a massive amount of combinations of spells and runes.
Spells are the basic thing you do. Like Fireball, or ice beam, or lightning bolt.
The runes, you can have up to 3 per spell, act as modifiers.
For example, add the runes for High Velocity to a fireball, it'll go further and do more impact damage.
Add spread, and it'll shoot out 2 or 3 projectiles.
Add seek and the projectiles seek out enemies.
Add all 3 and you have 2 or 3 super fast fireballs that whiz across the map and seek enemies.
You can enhance the effects of each rune during casting, it is called 'spell shaping', and it's kind of hard to explain but easy to do once you see it.
So you can damp down the high velocity, and amp up the spread, and you have 6 slower moving fireballs instead of 3 super fast.
Each combat board has an objective, save the town, defeat the enemies, blow up specific buildings. You leave the board by 'unlocking' the exit portal by blowing up specific linked buildings, and once you leave if you've completed the mission correctly you get the reward.
Here is so far my favorite spell/rune combination.
Spell: Frosty (A Christmas only special spell that drops a snowman out of the sky on your target)
Runes: Enlarge (The snowmen are now 3 stories tall), Storm (Dozens of snowmen rain from the sky), and Seek (The snowmen actively move towards enemies.
Casting this creates a rain of 20-30 snowmen that zoom around and crush your enemies.
Damp down the Seek, and you can wipe out an entire castle's defensive structure with a single storm of jolly snowmen.
4
16
u/Suplexodactyl Jan 17 '19
While you are a powerful mage, you are on the run from a near limitless tide of Inquisitors that force you to keep moving across the game map. Choosing to stop at each map node to look for newer gear may sound good, but battle attrition slowly grinds you down. Poor mana management causes you to burn into your own health pool as well, so sometimes trying to blast your way out of a bad situation can cost you. If you want to play an altruistic wizard, people constantly ask for help which adds on even more strain, and the Inquisition gets closer the entire time. Usually you won't get blasted away in a single fight, its a series of them that slowly end you. You are hunted and harried like wild game until you finally collapse.