Spellcaster University

pretty fun, some reviews said its way too luck based but they probably just didn't understand the faction interaction system. For example: you aren't supposed to roll for all your basic classrooms via the gold card packs, you can easily buy them from the merchants. The game could definitely do a better job at telling you these things but I personally enjoy the lack of hand-holding. I saw some people complaining about the length of the "matches" being either too long or you not having enough time to enjoy the university you built, which means they clearly did not see the option to increase or decrease the duration right as you are making the campaign.

打的肩膀都酸了，好不容易撑到进度条满，以为可以打魔王了，然后我竟然弃城而逃了？？一点正反馈都没有，不想再玩了！！策划吃屎吧

I love this game. A lot. I was overjoyed the new update would finally fix my issues, but teachers are still getting stuck (walking into the wall endlessly). When you don't have teachers, well, your students don't learn anything, and basically, you are stuck. Apart from this issue... It's amazing game for chilling. Build a school, build it effectively, keep up your reputations... Choose wisely. The humour in this game is exactly my type of humour. Kudos. I would recommend it to everybody, but since teachers are getting stuck all the time, I cannot recommend it at all - frustration instead of fun...

This was a close one! So the core mechanic here is that you draw and play cards, most of which create rooms, and students and teachers use the rooms. The most important rooms are classrooms, which generate Mana and XP when used. Mana turns into more cards, and XP improves the student. Students eventually graduate and generate a "Future" based on their levels. You have goals, and a limited timer before the university is destroyed. Completing goals improves the next university, adding a mild roguelite element. So your goals might be "Generate 8000 Light Mana" and "Graduate 24 Paladins" and a Paladin is a student who graduates with at least 2 Sacred, 4 Heroism, and 2 Retribution. So then you hopefully build a bunch of Light Magic classrooms where they'll learn those skills and also generate light mana. Or the deck refuses to give you light magic classrooms and you repeatedly draw janitors closet-shadow magic-nature magic as your three options. I think where my frustration arrives is that there are simply too many random elements. I build my university out of random rooms to fulfill random goals which I do by educating random students with random teachers. Some of the subsystems are hugely impactful, others don't seem to be. Also, it does that roguelite thing where sometimes you get a quest ("Collect four dragons" in my game) that seems to be completely reliant on low-probability RNG and it just sits on your screen, mocking you without any way to work towards it. Random events require resources for all the best options, which means you're encouraged to keep approx 200 of every flavor of mana on hand. This isn't especially hard, but it is another thing to constantly keep in mind. There's nothing more frustrating than having to tell someone "Go away, I can't help you! -15 Rep!" because you have 140 Light Mana and the "Of course I'll help! +15 rep!" option costs 150 Mana that you would've had in ten seconds.

I really enjoyed this game and finished it once. Just beware there are a decent amount of bugs still in this game. Some of the card text contains strange code tokens in brackets. What made me stop playing was game breaking pathing bugs where a teacher couldn't figure out how to get to his classroom. It would have been nice to be able to load a previous save, but this is a rougelike so you can't do that. I would still recommend, but watch out for these bugs!

I'm honestly torn on whether to give a positive or negative review for this. I think I'm leaning positive since it is from a small developer. Is it possible to have fun playing this game? Yes, absolutely. But overall it feels unpolished, especially when you compare the experience to other colony/base building games. I think nearly every feature could use some quality of life improvements to make the gaming experience more fun. My biggest complaint is lack of information. It feels like I'm making most decisions arbitrarily, which makes the game less fun. One example: we are told to provide for the needs of our students and teachers - health, food, sleep, sanity, boredom. We are warned that if students can't fulfill their needs in the school, they'll leave to fix them which wastes time. I would expect the statistics book to give information about this, how many students can the current rooms support? how many students are leaving the school to eat? But that information is not available. It is frustrating that you are essentially "stuck" in any screen that requires you to make a choice - drawing a card from a deck or in the middle of dialogue. You can't check any information that might be relevant for your decision. The dungeon crawler aspect is confusing. It is kinda fun to explore and make choices through the dungeons. But it feels like you have very little control over whether your students live or die, they go from absolutely destroying every enemy to suddenly all 4 die in one combat. But that's just not really my style of game anyway, and at least you have the option to just ignore that feature. I have mixed feelings about the general gameplay loop. Spend a few years building up a magic school, struggle to complete the truly random goals you've been given, and then the evil wizard shows up and you have to start over with a new school. My instinct is to always try to make a great school, optimize everything. But then you have to start over. I can definitely see how that loop would lead it to be highly replayable for some people. But so far for me it has mostly just felt frustrating having so little control over when you abandon each school, especially when I'm in the middle of trying to fulfill the goals. Maybe I should play on an easier setting or something lol Overall, I think I'd suggest trying this game out for yourself. If it seems like something you'd enjoy, you'll definitely get some hours of fun out of it. It is definitely a really cool premise for a game. I do hope the devs continue to make improvements to it. I'm probably going to try it a couple more times to see if I can find a playstyle that works for me. But at the moment I'm feeling kinda neutral on it overall.

Nothing inherently wrong with the game, just didn't really get into it. Completed the first round of the story/campaign but do not feel motivated to go further. I do not usually play games like this, but was thinking it would be more like the Fallout Shelter game, which it was not. The game had great reviews and the trailer looked semi-interesting, but maybe these types of games are not just for me. Will keep this in my back pocket for a rainy day or if I randomly feel like playing something like this again.

都2025年了，这游戏还会在游戏过程中突然卡暂停（可以操作但是无反应BUG），导致存档报废。建议观望玩家别买，辛辛苦苦玩了那么久，一个BUG导致心血全部没了，而且BUG出现率超高，基本无解。

Gameplay: ★★★★★ Art Style: ★★★☆☆ Balance: ★★★★★ Replayability: ★★★★★ Technical Requirements: ★★★★★ Bugs: ★☆☆☆☆ Overall: ★★★☆☆ Verdict: I enjoy the game but it is buggy.