There is definitely sparks of awesomeness in the game, but sadly the game doesn't tell us enough on the go, and the fundamentals are boring.
The main story is in short: you are crowned to be Chancellor of the city. You send your "working" mages around the city to focus on aspects of it, use the aether (money) to build and upgrade buildings, or buy things. You have to face tempest events which consist of days of: physical/magical attack, exploration, or "harvest" days, semi-randomly, not letting your defenses to fall and the Important Tree to be destroyed. All of this happens so you can propel through a quest that is collecting diary pages of your precedessor, because he disappeared and this isn't fishy at all.
The game takes place entirely on the single screen you see on screenshots. Through "storms" are called tempests in-game, the UI is entirely different from the one shown on the screenshots. The small, round icons used for items in the lower left corner are much bigger. Trait bonuses on the top right are huge rhombuses, the red guard - blue mage circles are filled in, while they are cropped out at the bottom of the screen, at 1920*1080 resolution. Like they swapped the PC UI for a mobile one, or did a complete overhaul since they made the screenshots for the store page.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3248656568
(Last depot update for the game happened in 2019 July, almost 5 years ago, and there are no news of the game since August of the same year)
Good things:
-You can unlock traits with your advisors, and in your next game if you pick them, they bring their scaling bonuses to the table. Many of these traits unlock (and level) though multiple playthroughs.
-Persisting story between "roguelikeish" gameplay
-Mechanics are being unlocked through quests and new runs
- Random events are fun, but they get repetitive as you're on your 4th-5th-Xth run
Bad:
- Each game basically starts the same, the only difference is your current stage in the quest, some advisor bonuses, and the semi-random order of... 3-4 different events during a tempest. There aren't really gameplay differences, no strategic depth.
The game is riddled with spelling errors that a simple spellcheck could have solved. Missing letters, mixed up letters, and sentences like "and are beathe owners are beaten"
- The advisors are quite different, but I think there are 10? and you get to pick from two at a start. And you still have to collect money, build-upgrade everything, and have 2 mages in every scenario. Overall it feels like the endgame is just being dragged further and further, while you always have to dredge through the very slow, and uninteresting start.
Everything considered, it's a game that has potential, but the weakly implemented restart-revive system leaves much to be desired. The story is not interesting enough to keep me going, and the game is repetitive and uninteresting enough that it's just not fun to play it to get the story going. A game can be really enjoyable if the gameplay or the story is strong enough to carry the product. In Mittelborg's case neither of them is up to the task, and considering the non-present developers, I don't expect this to change.
It may be worth to keep an eye on the devs, the concept is good, with enough polish it can turn into a good game.
