Slaves of Magic News

Hello everyone!

This month, we have done a lot of work on a new mission type, called base evacuation! In this mission type, the resistance will need to hold up the invaders long enough for the evacuation. Let's see how it works in detail.

[h2]Campaign side[/h2]



A quick reminder of how rebel bases work. Every region has multiple territories, and the resistance can have one secret base per region, in one of the territories. If at any point the territory with the base loses all loyalty to the resistance, the rebel base will be exposed, and the base will be attacked by the army that caused the loyalty loss. So managing the loyalty of territories with a rebel base will be very important if the player wants to avoid this kind of mission.

In case there are other valid territories for the resistance base in this region (so territories with non-zero loyalty), then the base evacuation mission will trigger. How much of the base will be evacuated will depend on the performance of the player on the mission. On a failed mission, or if there are no valid territories to evacuate the base is automatically destroyed.

[h2]Combat side[/h2]

The combat map will be generated using the rooms that have been built in the campaign layer for the base. A reminder of how it looks in the campaign layer:



Every buildable room has a combat map equivalent. Few examples of parts of the different rooms:









The mission itself will be the inverse of what the resistance is used to. The mission starts with the resistance units semi-randomly placed around in the base, with the enemy's first wave teleporting in. The player will have 1 round to try and make the best of the given situation, but depending on the circumstance, it can be a very tough fight!



The player units can retreat at any point like in a normal mission, but the objective is to defeat 3 waves of enemies. The end result depends on how many waves have been defeated. In case of 1, the base will be evacuated, but the rooms are lost. In case of 2, a random 2 rooms have been evacuated as well, and in case of 3, the full base has been successfully evacuated.

[h2]Closing thoughts[/h2]

Unrelated, but a piece of very good news is that we have found a great composer who did a great job creating custom-made music for the game. Thanks to this, we will have control over the copyrights of these tracks, so there won't be any issue for content creators who will want to create videos about our new demo! While you will need to wait for the demo to check out the tracks themselves, but the composer has a Youtube page with great tracks if you are curious about what to expect here.

So that's it for today's devlog! As always, if you like what you see and want to show your support, the best way to do that right now is to join our Discord here. Otherwise, see you next time!

Hello everyone!

I thought it would be a good idea to talk a bit about our plans for the start of this year! We have a good and a bad new.

The bad news is that we will remove the demo from the store on Jan 30. I hope everyone who was interested in it has already tried it out in the 3 months it has been available so far. The reason for the removal is that we feel it doesn't really represent the current state of the game anymore. But we don't want to backport every change that has been made since then into this demo.

Now onto the good news! We are planning to release a new demo in spring with both the campaign layer and the combat layer, so for the first time, you will be able to try out the whole experience together! It is a very exciting moment for us, seeing all the systems in action together, and getting it into the hands of the players.

But learning from the previous demo, we would want to present a more polished version to the public, and for that, we will need your help. Considering the number of systems interacting in the game, it is just pretty much impossible for the two of us to find every bug. So we plan to have a closed beta test for this demo, which will be accessible from our Discord. I will make another announcement when we are ready to start this closed beta but if you would be interested, you can already join our Discord here.

Hello everyone!

I hope you had a great holiday season and let me welcome you to this year's first devlog about Slaves of Magic! I think we start this year with a bang, as we have completed the first finished tileset for the game.

[h2]Changes since the demo[/h2]

People who have taken a closer look at the game's campaign map could notice, that generally, it has 4 regions. Every region will have its own tileset and the ones you will see in the pictures are based on a temperate climate with medieval European architecture.



In the picture, you can see the reworked temple. It received a lot more details all around, plus as you can see we have added light emitting wall torches as well, rather than the old standing ones.



But that is not the only change for the temple! We have added some environmental storytelling as well. These temples are repurposed by the invaders as a base of operation, as they masquerade as the returned gods. They have erected new statuses to their image, as they try to destroy and replace all kinds of depictions of the old gods.



You can find some quite worrisome sights if you take a look into the priest's private room. You can only guess what kind of experiments they are conducting in secret! In addition, you can see that the lighting system has been reworked to support multiple colors of light as well.

But of course, that is just one of the many hand-made tilesets that have been created for this region. While I want to leave some for you to explore in the game, I want to show you one additional smaller tileset, which has some interesting new features as well.



As you can see, we have added support for the visual representation of damage to the environment. You will be able to find ruined houses like this one by default, but this was done in preparation to support environmental destruction so that combat can destroy houses as well! We just need to actually add skills that destroy walls and obstacles!

[h2]Closing thoughts[/h2]

So that's it for today's devlog! As always, if you like what you see and want to show your support, the best way to do that right now is to join our Discord here. Otherwise, see you next time!

Hello everyone! This year's last devlog is about presenting our new reworked artwork for the campaign map, plus other gameplay changes related to it.

[h2]Campaign art rework[/h2]



Let's start with the flashy bit! Every asset on the map has been reworked, and their size and positions adjusted. Take a look at a few examples of how it looks.











[h2]Typical month[/h2]

But not only the art change but the gameplay as well. In our previous devlog we talked about bases, and how they function, so if you are interested in that I advise you to check that out! Today we will talk about the invaders, what are their goals, and how they want to archive them. When the player clicks on their holy city, they will see an intelligence report which shows some vital information about their general resources.



You can see 3 important values:

• The first is their supply level. Its level will affect the number of units on missions, plus they can use it to activate stronger missions for their armies (like building a new base).
  
• The second is their research level and progress. When they reach a new level new they will receive new stronger units.
  
• And third is how dangerous they think the resistance is to them. While this doesn't have any immediate impact it does affect AI decision-making.
  

At the start of every month, the AI assigns missions for the armies, taking into account these 3 values. For example when the resistance is deemed not dangerous, they will more likely to choose high-risk high reward missions, while they choose a more slow and steady approach if the resistance put up a fight. There is a bit of randomization added to the choosing and assigning of missions so that the player can't accurately predict the exact missions.

But what are these missions? There are 3 common missions:

• The first is tax collection. If the army succeeds in it, the invaders will gain supply, and the region's loyalty value will be reduced by 1. How much supply will be gained depends on the region's loyalty value at the start of the mission. Generally speaking, they will receive a high amount at 4-5 loyalty, medium at 1-3, and low at 0.
  
• The second is abduction. This mission is nearly identical to tax collection but instead of gaining supply, the invaders gain research progress.
  
• And the third is a crackdown. This mission does not provide any resources to the invaders if successful but will reduce the territory loyalty by 3.
  

There are other missions as well but those cost extra supply to conduct. One such mission is to build a new forward base:



This mission can't be countered by the player and will build a new forward base for the invaders in a region which does not have one already. Besides in the first month, this can only be played on a territory that has 0 loyalty. An enemy forward base will provide extra supply and research progress for the invaders at the start of every month, and makes countering missions in that region harder. Later in the game, the resistance can learn how to destroy these, but till then, they will pose a big problem.

Throughout the month, these armies will conduct their given mission at a randomized time. When they start their mission, the player will be presented with a screen like this:



There is an important part, namely the enemy amount. The quality of the units on a mission will be defined by the army size, but the amount will depend on this value. You will get a summary of what modified this value, but in general, it depends on the enemy supply level, if there is a resistance/invader base in the region and the current loyalty value of the region.
[h2]
Closing thoughts[/h2]

So, that's it for today's devlog! As always, if you like what you see and want to show your support feel free to join our Discord here. Otherwise, I wish you a great holiday season, and see you next year!

A recording of an interview with the developer plus let's play of the demo with kormakrtv.