Archmage Rises News

We’re back for a fresh new year of magic, mayhem, and machinations in Archmage Rises. The team enjoyed the week break and we’re back at it to finish combat Jan 19.

[h2]NEW Combat coming Jan 19[/h2]
WIP: The health bars are broken, but its starting to come together!

It really is all hands on deck this week to get combat out: James, Jessie, Josh, Jonathan, Michel, Mark, Nolan, Phil, Tyler, Zach, and myself.

• Last year, we hit an internal milestone Dec 22 of All Features Working. This isn’t every spell or monster, but every type of spell and monster and required features working. We did this to set a good foundation for when we return in the new year to not have to worry about features but instead tuning and balance.
  
• Combat includes a ton of new systems and spells. We are testing the entire game with a full battery of Test Cases NOW to see what broke in surgically removing one combat and putting in a new one. This is the earliest we’ve done this in a dev cycle. We’re trying to make quality a priority and do better this time. I’m expecting to find at least 99 broken things we need to fix.
  
• Added in the wolf racial ability to “Howl” which brings in more wolves to the fight.
  
• Spells for Arcane and Fire schools are being finalized with names, descriptions, and icons. We’ll share details on those schools soon.
  

That’s pretty much all there is to say: everyone working on combat.

[h2]A Little Slice of Time Off[/h2]

So what does a game dev do during a holiday to unwind? Buy games on Steam and play em of course!

Sometimes fans recommend certain games as inspiration for Archmage. I was able to pick up a couple of these including Shadows of Doubt, Pentiment, and Outer Wilds.

I played some Shadows of Forbidden Gods to see how the political actions and city network work.

TW: WH2 is like a warm cozy blanket to chill with.

But then I found myself falling in love all over again with Total War: Warhammer II. I have loved TW games since I first played Shogun. I spent too much of my time off “just one more turn!” conquering Old World with the Dwarves!

(I have a secret life goal to complete a campaign with every race. Please don’t tell my wife!)

[h2]FIXED:[/h2]

• Fixed bug where gold collected in dungeons was not being added to your total gold count
  

[h2]IMPROVED:[/h2]

• Improved the way NPCs select quests to request of the player
  
• Now opponents dice are visible when gambling (player requested)
  

This is the last update of 2023. Thanks for adventuring with us. It has been an adventure!

[h2]Quick Recap of 2023[/h2]

What a year! From getting a demo (sorta) ready for Next Fest in Feb, to Splattercat becoming a fan and posting some great videos, to launching into Early Access in April, to two major content updates across the summer. The game has grown. So has our following. We started the year with < 5,000 wishlists and now have 37,316. We’re near the top of Steam in a couple of metrics that matter to us:

• Top 15% lifetime units sold
  
• Top 13% in positive reviews
  
• Top 9% lifetime gross revenue
  

This all says to me: I’m not the only one who wants a real open world mage simulator!

[h2]NEW Combat[/h2]



It's all hands on deck on combat! We have an internal milestone to hit this Friday in order to keep Jan 19 on schedule. Lots of systems are coming online:

• Items, weapons, and armor
  
• Spell XP gains and progression system
  
• Monster AI to pick optimal battlefield locations and avoid harmful things like fire
  
• Storm school spells and debuffs
  

[h2]Dynamic Quests & NPCs[/h2]



In a recent discussion about the Rivals feature, people raised how ‘dumb’ the rivals are with not recognizing the player or speaking to you appropriately. We have all the data, we just need to connect it up. Given that there isn’t a lot of narrative work to do on Combat, Nolan took a stab at utilizing the new Dynamic Quest tech to solve this problem. And it’s working! He’s able to get far more sophisticated greeting for each relationship level and how long it's been since your last visit (very long time, long, medium, recent, very, recent, moments ago, and first visit ever).

Having NPCs recognize you, react to you, and talk to you based on relationship will come just after Combat ships Jan 19. Getting this working and out will really help get Dynamic Quests out in Update #3 Exploration.

[h2]Game Design: Spell Use In World[/h2]

I want to bring your attention to an important shift in the game design. Until recently, I’ve had the design objective to make each spell functional in combat AND the world. While it sounds cool, there are serious ramifications to doing this and I see now we need to pivot away from it. You can read more on why and what this means in this post:

https://steamcommunity.com/app/506480/discussions/0/4030222834124307825/

[h2]Christmas Time![/h2]

Die Hard is a Christmas Movie. Just like Elf.

The office will be closed next week and hopefully none of us working so as to enjoy Christmas with our families. This means we won’t be answering forum posts or Discord until the following week. Lots of new people are buying the game each day, so it would really help us if some of you veteran adventurers can help out the new ones in our absence.

We appreciate you all! See you in the new year with some new combat!

[h2]FIXED:[/h2]

• Fixed a bug related to quest givers that could potential prevent save games from loading (thanks to Ashpeef for the bug report)
  

[h2]IMPROVED:[/h2]

• Added option to disable rivals when creating a new game (requested by TakeMyLunch)
  
• Improved text highlighting during NPC dialogue to recognize more opportunities to highlight keywords
  

As we get closer to the release of the Combat Update we'll be sharing some info about each school of magic. Today we wanted to talk about the School of Ice Magic:



[h2]What is an Ice Mage like in the new Archmage Combat?[/h2]
Cold, Hard, Calculating.

The core gameplay behind our Ice Mage is mastery through controlling adversaries, primarily through target prioritization and measured spellcasting.

Most ice-based spells, in addition to dealing ice damage, apply a stacking debuff called Chilled. This debuff builds up on an enemy, eventually Freezing them in place.

Once Frozen,

• Enemies become locked down; they can’t move or attack for a turn or two.
  
• The next Physical Attack shatters the frozen effect and deals excessive extra damage.
  

The allows players to pull off devastating hits on frozen enemies by mixing in weapon attacks like a Battle Mage...

Or cleverly leveraging a spell that deals physical damage, such as our re-imagined Ice Lance.

We're knee deep in snow testing and tuning this school's spells. Just yesterday some changed some single to multi-target. What about targeting one enemy but adding debuffs to neighbors? It's changing every day as we find the sweet spot. Sweet, like maple syrup on freshly fallen snow. Try it, it's delicious!

As of today, here are some of the confirmed spells you'll be able to learn:

• Frost Bolt: Fling a frigid bolt of pure winter at the enemy.
  
• Ice Lance: Pierce your frozen foe with a mighty shard of ice.
  
• Sleet: Drive your foes before you with a relentless onslaught of sleet.
  
• Frostburn: Smother your adversaries beneath a deadly shroud of frost.
  

We'll have even more details diving deeper into the magic of an Ice Mage as we get closer to release.

What do you most want to see in the new school of ice magic? Let us know in the comments!

PS: If you haven't yet, we'd love for you to vote for us for the Indie Game of the Year Award! You can cast your vote here: https://www.indiedb.com/games/archmage-rises