Mind Over Magic News

[h2]Thank You For Playing![/h2]
The Mind Over Magic Early Access debut has been amazing thanks to all of you who have jumped in, played a ton, submitted reviews, and sent us your feedback.

We already have a large list of what we hope to achieve over the coming months. The exact ordering and timing of releases depends on what we learn during development and from feedback. Going forward we’ll update the roadmap frequently.

[h2]Where Things Stand[/h2]
We knew that setting a colony-sim in a magic school would be interesting to gamers looking for very different ways to play. This made Mind Over Magic both a huge opportunity and a big challenge. You’ve made it clear how you’re feeling about where things are and we appreciate it!

Broadly speaking:

• If you bought the game looking to build your own magic school and fill it with delightful students and staff in our grim world, you’re probably having fun with it and are likely creating large and creatively designed schools.
  
• If you arrived looking for the sort of challenge where mistakes and missed opportunities mean starting over and there’s always room to improve, you’re likely feeling that you’ve solved the game and that we’re missing some key elements.
  
• There’s too much grind, not enough going on in the Underschool, and combat is lacking depth and integration with the rest of the game.
  
• Players who’ve gotten deeper into the game are craving ways to customize Mages, move them around the school faster, feel the game evolve and present new challenges, and higher framerate plz!
  

[h2]OMG. Just Roadmap Us.[/h2]
In terms of overall cadence, our plan is to release impactful visual, performance, and QoL improvements interleaved with major feature updates that impact gameplay. We expect to release a significant update every 3-5 weeks. Releases will always be posted to our “prerelease” Steam Beta first, usually for a week or more. If you’d like to actively help us shape these updates, we’d love to have you join our Discord community and check out the pre-release updates.

[h2]What’s Coming Next?[/h2]
[h3]QoL + Art Update[/h3]
In the next week, we’ll release a QoL and art update featuring:

• New Vivified skin
  
• Wallpapers for the Conservatory
  
• Drag-select on the ground, floors, and walls along with improved multi-select
  
• Performance updates
  
• You can check it out on pre-release now.
  

[h3]Major Gameplay Update[/h3]
We’re prototyping changes to Relentless mode that will likely become our next Major Release. Some of our goals for a Relentless update:

• Raise the baseline challenge of the game in multiple ways, from repelling the Fog to maintaining Conviction to how much you need to prepare for events coming your way.
  
• Have the game demand your full attention and encourage an ever deeper understanding of the mechanics. We expect to see some schools in shambles!
  
• Improve the grind by adjusting or removing simplistic gates and working toward always having multiple possible goals to be working toward throughout the game.
  
• Lay the groundwork for how the game will continue to evolve as you play further and further.
  
• Enhance Relaxed mode with many of the game flow changes without necessarily making it less relaxed.
  

[h3]QoL + Art Update[/h3]
An art-focused release with:

• More Mage skins
  
• More wallpapers
  
• New dances
  

[h3]Dragons[/h3]
Shhhh…

[h2]Wait! Is That All?![/h2]
Absolutely not. If you’re not seeing that thing that you believe is critical (yup, yup, fast travel), it’s likely that:

• We also want it, but have a vision that requires us to get some other pieces in place first.
  
• We think some related things we’re doing will improve that problem you’re having.
  
• We just had to make a call on how to prioritize and keep moving forward, but we’ll get there!
  

Thanks for reading all this, playing Mind Over Magic, and being so supportive by sharing all of your feelings about the game.

Build notes...

[h2]Performance[/h2]

• Performance improvements when construction blocks are constructed or deconstructed. More in progress.
  

[h2]Trapdoor Vine[/h2]

• Unstable Anemone and Trapdoor Vines spawn throughout all of the Forest instead of only in some parts.
  
• Top-tier Cleanse Fog costs now come into play further from the school, so it is easier to locate the reagents needed to perform that ritual.
  
• Trapdoor Vines no longer sprout more Trapdoor Vines in rain.
  
• New visuals for the Trapdoor Vine's Binding spell. Added animations and new FX for mages bound by the Trapdoor Vine.
  
• Fixes for visual positioning of Trapdoor Vines, both in planters and wild.
  

[h2]Battle Reward Balance[/h2]

• Poltergeists drop Hallowlily Bloom when defeated.
  
• Battles from 2 Skull or greater Battles when Exploring the Underschool grant 2x more Arcane Scrolls.
  
• The Burrower Larva is now a 2-Skull battle and grants 2x more Arcane Scrolls.
  
• Battles from Invasion events, Lava Biome Battle crystals (Incendiary Crystal and Infernal Crystal), and Fog Cleanse Battle crystals (Malice Crystal, Animus Crystal, and Rancor Crystal) grant 1/2x as many Arcane Scrolls, to put them in line with Exploring the Underschool rewards.
  
• Fog Push Mining Crystals (Foggy Crystal, Misty Crystal, and Gloomy Crystal) now more often drop Smokepearl, with significantly reduced chances of dropping meals and potions.
  
• Misty and Gloomy Crystals will no longer drop highest level potions.
  
• Misty and Gloomy Crystals now only spawn after reaching a high enough MAGE score.
  

[h2]Quality of Life[/h2]

• Trial Completed feed hover and Medallion hover text show more information.
  
• Updated Trial and Medallion icons and added new borders to indicate level.
  
• Show an alert in the feed when a save completes.
  
• Show Time Since Hire for Staff when selected.
  
• Crop Plot descriptions now explain the differences between crops.
  
• Room Type requirements that require a specific number of furniture items will now use the word "Exactly" for clarity.
  
• Removed Quilted from schedules and consumable rules.
  
• Standardized group sorting for schedules dropdown, consumables dropdown, access buttons, and assignment buttons.
  

[h2] Art and Sound[/h2]

• Painting sounds added! Squish! Slurp!
  
• New Animations and FX for the Oraculum ritual and Air Refinery Hatch Ritual.
  
• Planters powered by Nature Magic are now visually distinct.
  

[h2]Improvements and Fixes[/h2]

• Removed 'cannot be demolished' from Foundation description, now that they can be demolished.
  
• Raven Cultists now get Saw a Corpse & Catharsis statuses.
  
• Monsters killed by the Growth spell's Thorns effect will properly count towards Trial requirements.
  
• Changed 'The Shattered' and 'The Vivified' to just 'Shattered' and 'Vivified' across the board for consistency.
  
• Improved feedback when a refining beast needs meals or affection.
  
• Updated Feeding and Affection need text to remove reference to Schedule and to clarify that Feeding can cause refining speed to go down to 0%.
  
• Fixes to some strings that could not be translated.
  
• Fixed loss of hotkey control when using Research Search text field.
  
• Wizards with Insomnia no longer restore Sleep need when restoring HP in a medical bed.
  

Community members have developed translations of the game into new languages, so we added support for Steam Workshop Language Packs to help distribute the translations.

To get started, we put together a guide to using and/or developing Language Packs for Mind Over Magic.

LANGAGE PACK GUIDE

Thanks again for playing and all the feedback!

- Add a Copy To Clipboard button to the change log as immediate helper for non-English translations.
- Put crops that got moved out of their planters back into their planters.
- Fix to crop plants getting teleported away from their planters if construction is done directly above them.
- Fix built-in Group names not translating on language switches after initial game creation.
- Fix to internal error that may not be player-facing.

Additional fix for some mages not leaving when they should. Time to go!