izigame.me

I'll be honest with you guys:
Spellcaster University is not a good but a fun game.

The main problem and the elephant in the room is the fact that the game is not only card based but also relies HEAVY on RNG. Every, really every single aspect of the game is hidden behind a wall of RNG.
Be it dungeonsevents, faction events, the cards you get, the students and even the futures your students achieve or the skillset of the teachers.
Especially the teachers are a big problem as their pedagogy skill is set once you build their classroom and can only be changed by some items which are - you guess it already - are hidden behind RNG.

The handling of the cards is also incredibly clunky. Very often the hoovermovement "blocks" the mouseclock fording you to play veeery slowly. And ever so often pictures or placeable items are not recognised which can only by solved by building some rooms and then try it again. Cards are bought with mana of different magic schools and is always very scarce. As you run against the clock by evil forces marching in it so is possible to have a very important card of inventory or item on your hand but cannot be placed as you have to wait for more mana to draw (and get because of the overwhemling RNG) a room card.

So the most annoying problem is that you cannot plan ahead or use any strategy due to RNG. How cool would it be to design my students schedules in order to really priorize for the futures or anything.

That said - why is it a fun game and why the thumbs up?
Well, once you completely surrendered to the RNG and forfeit the idea of becoming a great planning and wise headmaster the magic of the game suddenly works like a charm.

Once you dive in into the pure RNG and absolute chaos you’ll have a blast with that game. The music is okay but the animations are great and beautiful. The ideas of the five schools of magic and the more than 160 achievable futures with small to big boni to your actual game are awesome. I had so much fun trying to find every possible future even though it is a shame that all achieved boni only count for the actual campaign.

As someone who also works in the branch of modernizing schools and therefore spend a lot of time witch teachers, parents and sometimes students I absolutely love it that they’re making fun of everyone in the cosmos of a school: The annoying overprotective parents, the glutenfree Eco-teacher, the old-fashioned teacher, the Inquisition, the ever demanding teachers of your school, the Hermine Granger Style of students and so on – I really had fun as the devs had a keen eye for their problems, sorrows and behaviour. And they even gave some of the mentioned some kind of “redemption arc” in the last level.

The dungeons are a great addition but a little bit underwhelming as the events are extremely repetitive and also suffering from the huge impact of RNG. But using the different schools of magic and traits of your students to crawl the dungeon is always fun.

The race against the time makes every single academy level very exciting and leaves you a little sad once you are forced to leave it behind.

So what are my wishes for the game?
First and foremost: An option which would let me choose between the impact of RNG. Pure Chaos or more finer nuances – for examples that every draw of card contains a room, an item and maybe a guaranteed drop of new students after x cards.

Secondly: An option to start a new campaign with all already achieved benefits from former campaigns.

Last wish: A possibility to control the futures a little bit more. It can be tedious to achieve certain futures as it feels frustrating to have 20 possible futures with a chance of 5% each.
But overall – I was having a blast playing the game and want to thank the Devs for their great work and awesome game!