Unity Magic Academy [v0.2.3] [WildPear Games]

3.40 star(s) 7 Votes

Cappyman

New Member
Jan 30, 2024
8
9
I do enjoy the game but the grind for materials and the new player power in the portal game is kinda crazy, maybe scale it back by half or double the rewards gained
 

WildPear

Newbie
Game Developer
Mar 10, 2024
55
142
can someone tell me what idiot made it so that any time I click on options, the game window becomes smaller?
Most likely, this is due to the fact that the "fullscreen mode" checkbox is unchecked in your settings.
Accordingly, when you apply the settings, the game collapses back into the window.
Thank you for reporting this.

Because dev IS an idiot
We are just trying to make an interesting game, based on our experience.
Therefore, quite often many things turn out imperfectly or badly - we carefully read the reviews and try to improve.

Aside from the growing degree of tedium with replaying up to the new content, as mentioned,the game appears to have a hardcoded value for the windowed mode that it resets to upon closing the settings. This is not ideal.
Do you have the fullscreen mode checkbox checked in the settings?
Replaying became a necessity in the latest patch due to changes in the quest system, starting storyline and save data format.
In the future, we will try to avoid resetting progress, as we understand how annoying replaying is.

don't forget how apparently it's fucking impossible to kill the 2nd boss on the frost world because apparently dev took a page out of capcom's book when they made Devil May Cry 3. I get the feeling this game won't last long with how inept the dev is
I was able to defeat the boss with starting spells and without leveling up.
Yes, it can be difficult and require a bit of luck, but that's what leveling up is for.

Of course, our balance is not perfect - alas, we cannot afford to develop the game for several years, honing the balance and mechanics before releasing it.
Therefore, we move in small steps, making changes based on the feedback from our players.

There's a surprising amount of people raging over things only an illiterate would struggle with in here. Apologies to the devs for the absolute troglodyte behavior on display here.
Thank you for your kind words. As developers, it is very important for us to see not only negative reviews.
We understand that a player is more likely to write to us if something happened to them or they didn't like something, than if they are completely satisfied.
After all, if everything is good, then you just have fun, and if it's bad, a person wants to throw it out somewhere.
But that doesn't make it any easier for us when we see aggressive and angry comments.

Where is Lilian? For the Quest "The Vengeful Spirit" Looked allover, All other quests done, am i missing something?
She works at the tavern in the evenings. She should be standing behind the bar.

I do enjoy the game but the grind for materials and the new player power in the portal game is kinda crazy, maybe scale it back by half or double the rewards gained
Thank you for the feedback. As developers, it's difficult for us to assess the balance because we know the game.
We'll think about what we can do.

so because we're talking about technical issues like the game window size changing after leaving the settings, we're raging? no. we are pointing out how these issues are going to negatively affect the game's popularity. but I forget precious little snowflakes of the current generation can't handle criticism and need a safe space
Yes, I agree - it's an annoying bug.
But there's always a difference between "What moron came up with this? These stupid idiots can't do anything" and "Guys, it would be nice to automatically set "fullscreen" in the settings if I already enabled it via Alt+Enter, otherwise it constantly minimizes my game."
This is not about "snowflakes", but about banal "politeness".
However, in any case, thank you for reporting this issue to us.
 
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WildPear

Newbie
Game Developer
Mar 10, 2024
55
142
Android when?
More like "where"?
Yesterday we just released the Android version for patrons. But it's still "alpha", meaning it may contain bugs, inaccuracies, and balance issues.

Someone uploaded our pre-alpha here without our consent - which led to a certain influx of negative reviews (surprisingly, there are bugs in the closed pre-alpha version).
Accordingly, we will upload the Android version here simultaneously with its public release.

Of course, other people can do it (it's still a pirate site), which again can lead to problems like "what idiot did this?!".
All we can do is try to help everyone who encounters problems.
 

shakunimama

Member
Feb 7, 2021
139
71
I like how I played this grindy ass game on my Android, kept it installed so I dont lose my save and the next update my save is unusable.
 

bsr2

Member
Apr 11, 2018
152
262
Nothing better than old saves not working....And now having to endure all that grind again...
 

Garrokin

Newbie
Aug 14, 2020
51
25
Perhaps, if for some reasons, it is problematic to keep backward compatibility of saved games from previous version, then a 'skip unseen text' option, known from RenPy games can be proposed? It would allow to speed run through the content, that players know well from previous versions?
 

WildPear

Newbie
Game Developer
Mar 10, 2024
55
142
5th picture is the same as summertime saga MC aunt house and garden
Until you mentioned it, it didn't even cross my mind. Yes, the composition is very similar, but I'm not sure our artist played Summertime Saga. Maybe they found the same basic reference.

I like how I played this grindy ass game on my Android, kept it installed so I dont lose my save and the next update my save is unusable.
Nothing better than old saves not working....And now having to endure all that grind again...
We are very sorry, but changes in the quest system and at the beginning of the game required us to reset the progress. Otherwise you would not have received the content from the new update.
In the future we will try to avoid resetting progress.

You can open the game menu by pressing the Esc key, hold down the LMB at the top of the pen and drag it to the very bottom, then release the button. This should give 50 of all basic resources.
Already read dialogues are skipped if you hold down the Ctrl key.
We'll think about adding a "give me 10,000 damn resources" mode.

Perhaps, if for some reasons, it is problematic to keep backward compatibility of saved games from previous version, then a 'skip unseen text' option, known from RenPy games can be proposed? It would allow to speed run through the content, that players know well from previous versions?
Yes, we have such a possibility - you need to hold down Ctrl.
In the next patch, we will try to add a tutorial window about this functionality.
 
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Garrokin

Newbie
Aug 14, 2020
51
25
Yes, we have such a possibility - you need to hold down Ctrl.
In the next patch, we will try to add a tutorial window about this functionality.
Thank you! Tutorial would be most welcomed, as I'm keeping pressed the Ctrl key and nothing happens. But perhaps I'm doing something wrong, perhaps some options need to be switched on for this to work properly.
 

WildPear

Newbie
Game Developer
Mar 10, 2024
55
142
Thank you! Tutorial would be most welcomed, as I'm keeping pressed the Ctrl key and nothing happens. But perhaps I'm doing something wrong, perhaps some options need to be switched on for this to work properly.
This will work for text you've already read. Most likely, you haven't read it before (yes, unfortunately, in this patch we also updated the saving of read phrases)
 
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LewdHat

New Member
Jul 25, 2019
4
3
Do you have the fullscreen mode checkbox checked in the settings?
Replaying became a necessity in the latest patch due to changes in the quest system, starting storyline and save data format.
In the future, we will try to avoid resetting progress, as we understand how annoying replaying is.
Fullscreen is not enabled in the settings.
You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

As for replaying, it's good to hear that there are plans for a skip-till-unread functionality - though I can forsee frustration with the resource grinding for the minigames and the portal. While on first time playthrough I don't actually think it's that bad of a grind, nor that difficult, changes necessitating replay could quickly make it a pain point.
 
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Habish

Newbie
Mar 6, 2021
29
17
WildPear Hello!

I really like the game! Like everything is nicely animated and fun but I also have some feedback about the stuff that I didn't like :C

First one would be the minigames... They seemed really fun at first , but the spawn logic of new tiles is really baaad and it often gets me stuck without good moves to make. I guess what I mean is the game can't be prolonged for that much long since it starts forcing the player to either break not needed tiles or to waste too many turns on trying to get some energy back ( This is another issues , which I'll cover below... )

My imediate thoughts are for you to try and see if you can borrow some better logic from open sourcw projects that make zynga games... idk or tweak the logic so that it starts spawning usefull tiles a lot more often

As for the energy - 9 energy tiles being required just to get 3 turns back is pretty steep.... Maybe make the enrgy tiles more rare but increase the rewards? Like every single energy tile you break gives you 1 or 2 turns - and maybe rework the energy system into combo system of some sorts , when you combo 4 or more tiles you get a point , collect 9 points for extra 3 turns. ( For example combo of 4 tiles gives you one point, combo of 5 tiles gives you 2 points and so on... one extra point as a reward for making a bigger combo ). This makes it wayyy easier, like now you don't have to go out of your way wasting turns in hopes of getting some of it back - which often doen't happen


If you want me to summarize the experience I had playing both minigames - the one where you collect wood starts really good , as in you can get 10+ wood easily on the begginer board, but as more and more tiles start spawning it gets hard to collect any more wood - my games usually end up with 18 wood or less , out of whichn I get 10-12 from the first few turns and later spend 10+ turns on nothing zzz


The other game where you collect rock is even harder... Like after 3-4 turns I have to start breaking single tiles just to get some resources - it often is not worth to break other tiles, like usually one would think it's more efficient to clear the whole board from junk when you start running out of good tiles - but if you do this the only thing you get is more junk tiles spawning xd - so I had to resort to breaking singles just to make the grind easier to pass through..

So yeah... In my oppinion minigames are the real issue, quests not so much - although I didn't enjoy completing them for the reasons of being too annoying I think they are well written and the only reason I didn't enjoy is cuz they kept pointing me back to the unfun way of grinding the resources :L If you can imporve the minigames I think these would get more fun as well, idk if you should honestly do anything about them till then - but there's like one thing that I didn't like whihc is quest related... and that's having no visual indicators of what your current quest is! Like when I complete a quest I'd rather rather have some indicator on the top left of the screen tell me where I should go next than have to open the book and search for it in there :p ( If you need some inspiration on how to do this I can probably find you some games that do this really good , it's just that none come to mind rn so I'd have to refresh my memory xd )

Another idea which comes to mind is having something like notification dots on the map - place a dot to indicate that place has some activities for you to do

And that's all from me xd

Sorry for the rant but the grind is starting to get to me ... I see a new update but idk if I want to waste more time on the grind from the start or not :p ( Probably would if there were any new scenes with the reporter xd ) Update: oof nvm the mobile version is out of date anyways xd

Maybe some day you'll add a way so we can play new content only - really nice addition , so peps that lost their saves don't have to grind from scratch - but I understand it's not the biggest priority rn...

I don't want all this rant to make you feel bad ... like really ... I like the game and it has a LOT of potential ! The scenes are AMAZING and lots of good stuff is already there just some tweaking is needed to make it more fun , which I don't think should be too hard to do ( Maybe the minigames are bit too hard but I still think it's relatively doable - xd )

Keep it up! I look forward to seing more updates , it's become one of the few games that I keep track on :oops:
 
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Habish

Newbie
Mar 6, 2021
29
17
It's pretty simple. In the mobile version, these keys are displayed on the screen.
In the next patch, could we bring them to the PC version as well, if that's convenient?
Some way of registering swipes - up , down , left , right - would be nice as well but it's not the end of the world having to press the buttons for now
 
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Habish

Newbie
Mar 6, 2021
29
17
don't forget how apparently it's fucking impossible to kill the 2nd boss on the frost world because apparently dev took a page out of capcom's book when they made Devil May Cry 3. I get the feeling this game won't last long with how inept the dev is
Frost world? What game is that?
 
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WildPear

Newbie
Game Developer
Mar 10, 2024
55
142
Fullscreen is not enabled in the settings.
You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

As for replaying, it's good to hear that there are plans for a skip-till-unread functionality - though I can forsee frustration with the resource grinding for the minigames and the portal. While on first time playthrough I don't actually think it's that bad of a grind, nor that difficult, changes necessitating replay could quickly make it a pain point.
Yes, because the fullscreen checkbox is not checked, it accepts it every time you close the settings. I'll make a note of the current window state for the next patch.

Some way of registering swipes - up , down , left , right - would be nice as well but it's not the end of the world having to press the buttons for now
Wow! That's a great idea, and it just never occurred to me. I'll add it to the to-do list.

Аnd your other feedback is very detailed and helpful - thank you!
I've made a note to myself:
  • About the energy. I've been thinking about rewarding the player for long chains for a long time, and energy is a great solution. The player won't have to spend their turns on a separate match, and longer chains will reward them with extra turns.
  • About generator tweaks. We're currently using a smoothed random distribution - it tries to generate all pieces evenly, but still randomly. Removing the energy pieces would make it more likely to drop useful ones, but I'll try to make time to explore other algorithms.
  • About quest markers - we will show active tasks in the list on the left, and in the journal we will make separate checkboxes to disable specific quests. I would be grateful if you could show me some references where you think this is done well.
  • We'll think about implementing markers on the map that would indicate that something has changed in the location.

Frost world? What game is that?
Yes. He's about our game. In the new update (which is 0.2) there's a new mode with world generation and battles.
It would be cool if you find the time to play it and come up with more cool ideas.

Right now there's a cheat for resources in the game:
  1. start/load the game
  2. press Esc to open the menu,
  3. hold down LMB at the top of the pen lying to the right of the menu
  4. drag the cursor to the very bottom without going over the edges
  5. release button
 
3.40 star(s) 7 Votes