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Guild of Old Magick
A free async auto battler where two spell books fight. You fill your book between rounds; then its spells cast themselves against a book another player saved.
| Genre | Async spell-book auto battler |
|---|---|
| Plays on | Web browser, desktop and phone |
| My role | Solo: design, code, balance and writing |
| Content | 534 spells, 200 augments, 19 enchantments, 16 monsters |
| A round | Augment, shop, PvE fight, upgrade, async PvP |
| Testing | Playtesting plus simulated runs by easy, medium and hard computer players |
| Status | Early version: three classes (Fire, Water and Wind Mages) |
Design notes
Spells are words on the page of a book. Capitals are active spells that cast on a cooldown, lowercase words are passives, and the word's color is its element. Where a spell sits matters: many spells help the lines just above and below them.
A run follows The Bazaar and Oaken Tower: win 10 PvP fights before you run out of lives. Here the lives are 12 Knights of the Round Table, and a loss costs more Knights as the run goes on. When the next loss would end the run, King Arthur arrives with an upgrade and an enchantment at once. Every round starts with an augment, a gift from the Lady of the Lake, and ends with Merlin, who upgrades or enchants a spell, and the monsters are figures from myth, each built only from spells a player can win from it.
Playtesting tells me how a build feels, but no one can hand-test every combination. So computer players at three skill levels play thousands of full runs, their saved books fight each other, and the results show which spells, augments and enchantments are out of line, how long fights last, and how often each kind of player clears a run. Those saved books are also the first opponents, until enough people play.
