Archmage Rises cover
Archmage Rises screenshot
Steam
Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Simulator, Indie

Archmage Rises

Build 0.1.6c is Live!
This patch fixes a bug that prevented some "kill" quests from being completed.

Build 0.1.6b is Live!
This patch resolves some remaining issues with combat not ending tied to our updated quest tooling. It also contains a fix for some players not being able to travel between dungeon rooms.

Build 0.1.6a is Live!
This hotfix should address most, if not all, of the issues with [???] showing up in an NPC's dialogue when discussing quests.

Other fixes include:

  • - Some people experiencing issues with combat not ending after defeating all enemies
  • - Some save games not loading properly

Build 0.1.6 is Live!

NEW:



  • Steam Cloud Saves! Hurray!
  • New Female Portrait set


IMPROVED:



  • Temporarily disabled the break chance on harvesting tools (hatchet & pickaxe) due to many reports they are breaking way too easily until they can be better balanced.
  • Adjusted how NPCs answer when asked where another NPC is. Now they will tell you where they will be instead of where they currently are so that they are a little bit easier to find. This is a first step into a better solution overall.
  • Expanded the number of NPCs that can enter a building, and added a scroll wheel to see all of the NPCs when inside a building (this should also help with finding NPCs)


FIXED:



  • Fixed some of the NPC schedules so that every NPC will show up in a public facing building at least once per day.
  • Fixed bug with relationship bar not changing colors on some relationship levels
  • Fixed a bug with some instances of ambushing a monster results in being ambushed and vice-versa
  • Fixed a bug with levers in dungeons not spawning/working correctly, resulting in dungeon doors that cannot be opened
  • Fixed a bug that prevented keys from being used to unlock the associated door in a dungeon
  • Fixed the way that fallbacks on custom NPC portraits are handled if a custom NPC portrait is missing


KNOWN ISSUES:



  • There is a known issue in this patch where NPCs will say that they require [???] resources or enemies killed in their dialogue. This does not affect the ability to complete the quest, and the correct numbers will show up in the quest log. It is due to an upgrade on our quest tools and we're working on a fix for this.


Apart from fixing the issue mentioned above, this will likely be our last patch update prior to the release of the Mage Tower.

The Mage Tower Cometh Aug 10th
We're excited to announce UPDATE 2: THE MAGE TOWER will be releasing on Aug 10, 2023, which is just under 2 weeks away.

The Mage Tower is a key feature of the game, allowing you to build your own personalized sanctuary and pillar of power (or several) within the world of Archmage Rises. Mage Towers will become your home base, granting you extra perks and actions, some of which are only available in your tower.

For those who played the demo, you may have experienced an early tile-by-tile version of this feature. Our original plan was to fix the bugs, improve the UI/UX for tile and room selection, then re-release it as part of this update.

But all that changed as the Tower Team sat down and started iterating on what we had. It just wasn't as fun as they felt it could be... It took too long, was too confusing, and while tile-by-tile was neat it was really tough to make a tower that looked good (unless you are a decent pixel artist). So we've rewritten it with a whole new UI paradigm. It is faster, more streamlined, and everyone can make a tower that looks good. Power to the people! ːwinter2019joyfultearsdogː



How To Build Your Mage Tower:



Mage Towers can be built next to any town. You can acquire the land for your tower by speaking to the Town Mayor of the town you'd like to locate your tower near. Once you have secured a spot for your tower, you can begin constructing your mage tower.

You can have as many towers as you desire.

Mage Towers are built room by room vertically, horizontally, and even underground, using our new Build Mode. Each room you build will increase the storage capacity of your tower.

Once you've built a basic room, you'll have the option to convert it to one of a variety of feature room types (listed below), provided you meet the requirements. Each feature room grants you specific benefits and actions.

Rooms You Can Build:


We're expecting to get 10 room types into this update, including:

  • Bedroom - gives the option to Sleep and Treat Injuries (injuries make a return in this update)
  • Study - allows you to “Study a Book” similar to a Conclave Chapter
  • Blast Chamber - allows you to increase your Magic XP (or blow your leg off, or some other unintended consequence) through experimentation
  • Library - allows you to increase your Magic XP at a slower, but safer pace through Research
  • Dining Room - gives you the option to Dine In at your Tower
  • Storage Room - significantly increases the storage capacity of your tower
  • Games Room - provides entertainment options (similar to the inn), each of which will add a temporary buff


A lot of work went into this new Mage Tower, we basically did more than expected. This impacts the other features listed on the roadmap for this update. My feeling was we had to get the tower experience right first and foremost.

We'll have more details and a screenshot next week, once final art is complete.

We're Updating our Price and Price Strategy
Pricing an indie video game is very hard.

I believe I made a mistake pricing the early access game at $30 USD right now.

To test this, we ran a 67% off sale for the last 2 weeks. This spawned several questions wondering if it's a sign the game might be abandoned.

No: Archmage Rises is still full steam ahead full active development with 12 full time devs.

Short of death, nothing else has or will stop me from making this game.
While hard, this is the best job I've ever had and the team feels the same.

Before Jul 16


Before the 67% experiment:

  • Daily average sales 7 a day, or about $200/day.
  • New customer reviews ~50% positive.
  • Returns ~11% of sales

After a successful launch, where we were in the top 10 selling games on steam for a little while, we were heading in the wrong direction, dipping into Mixed recent and Mixed overall.

We read every single review. A significant number of negative reviews (and even some positive one) seem to all say "This game in its current state is not worth $30 USD. When done? Yes! But not now."

After Jul 16


Moving the price to $10 USD (via a sale) obviously resulted in a big spike of 1,100 sales off our wishlist of 38,000. That is great, expected, hey it's $10k I didn't have before. But not the data I was looking for. I wanted to see the no-hype boring old long tail daily numbers at the end of the sale period when it is organic traffic discovering the game. It is not possible for me to know the psychological impact of $30 - 66% = $10 vs just $10, I recognize it is an intangible thing I cannot measure.

  • Daily average sales are 90 a day, about $900/day (4x revenue)
  • New customer reviews are 17/19 positive (89.4%, up ~40%)
  • Returns have dropped to 3% (down from ~11%).


Beyond the numbers, the feedback in reviews and forum posts is $10 is the right price for right now.

Numbers show Customer Activity.
Reviews and forums show Sentiment.
When Customer Activity and Sentiment are in alignment you know yer onto something.

I got it wrong, so now I have to make it right.

Our New Pricing Strategy $10->$40


Steam strongly advises devs to charge "for what the game is today" not "what the game will be" and to then increase the price along the way or at 1.0 full release.

Minecraft is one of the most successful games ever, and Notch did his own "Early Access" of staggered pricing $10, then $20, then $30 at release (Bedrock).

I ignored that advice. I fell into a trap of thinking I'm smarter than Steam + Notch combined ːsteamfacepalmː There are many reasons but I'll list two in order of importance:

  1. My sense of loyalty and appreciation to the super fans that pre-ordered at $30 long before Early Access.
  2. All the indie biz advice (newsletters, people like Simon Carless and Chris Z, other indies) all say "don't price too low! You can always go down but never up!" I was following 'best practices'


I had the right model right in my face and didn't follow it.
Time to pivot. Now I am.

It was always my intent to sell the 1.0 version of Archmage Rises for $40. This was hinted at in the Early Access blurb "priced differently during and after Early Access?" Apr 24 2023.

My thinking was the $30 price point was a sufficient Early Access discount for jumping in early. It isn't.

Starting today the regular price is $10 USD.
Then it will be $20
Then $30
Then $40 at 1.0

We will soon be updating our Roadmap to show the pricing changes which will occur at release of that Content Update Milestone.

For anyone reading this who bought the game at a previous higher price, I'm sorry it will be cheaper for a while. Your early support was integral to us being here right now. I can't thank you enough.

I'm trying to figure out how to do this indie dev thing well. I do and will make mistakes along the way.

Fortunately we have the same goal: enlarge the player community, sustain the development of the game, and deliver the complete game experience.

I believe this new pricing strategy achieves our goal.

I hope this helps in understanding what's happening and why we've chosen to reduce the price. Thanks so much for being on this journey with us and we're super excited to get Mage Tower out to you.

Build 0.1.5 is Live!

NEW:



  • Added 2 new female portrait sets


IMPROVED:



  • Adjusted lockpick prices to fix weird pricing behaviour
  • Increased odds of finding resources in world map
  • Adjusted amounts of resources that can be found when exploring hexes
  • Adjusted wood and stone so they can always be found where they are expected to be found based on map features (such as trees visible on map, etc)


FIXED:



  • Fixed a bug that caused buying items from a market to result in the cost being 0 gold and not receiving the item
  • Fixed getting items for free from the market if you try to buy and don't have enough money
  • Fixed a bug that sometimes causes NPC's job labels not to get updated properly
  • Fixed NPCs being able to sell services/items outside of their respective workplaces, which caused other branching issues
  • Fixed skill quest icon being too small
  • Fixed a bug with being able to drag weapon attack off of the HUD
  • Fixed a bug with navigation system causing NPCs to tell you that some towns were "12 years journey north" or some variation of that
  • Fixed a bug on character sheet that caused equipment slots not to update properly when equipping new weapons and gear
  • Fixed a bug with glowstone not working properly
  • Fixed a bug that caused some players to get stuck when trying to flatter an NPC
  • Fixed a bug with town theme distribution that cause some world gen seeds to fail
  • Fixed a bug where quest related NPCs know about other quest NPCs that they talk about
  • Fixed a bug that caused NPCs to swap places when using services at the inn
  • Fixed a bug that caused combat encounter backgrounds to show a dungeon during outdoor combat if you've recently been in a dungeon.

Build 0.1.4a Is Live!
This is a quick hotfix to address a bug experienced by a handful of players that caused a failure when trying to load a saved game.

Build 0.1.4 is Live!
Here's what's new in this week's patch:

NEW:



  • 4 new quests
  • New male NPC portrait set


IMPROVED:



  • Updated dice rolling sounds
  • Added validation checks for keywords when loading a world so that those keywords/resources (and relevant quests) are exclude from dialogue options in worlds where those resources (and potentially races in the future) don't exist. This should prevent, for example, a snowmoss gathering quest from being triggered in a world where snowmoss doesn't exist
  • Rooms in the inn now recover all Stamina
  • Camping now recovers all Stamina
  • Updated all resource-gathering quests to have a 84 day (12 week) time limit temporarily while we make some adjustments to resource generation. This should help with being able to complete quests on time when struggling to find resources.


FIXED:



  • Fixed several issues that were causing quest-related NPCs to go missing, preventing some quests from being completed
  • Fixed bad directions being given for snowmoss, which was preventing the gather snowmoss quest from being completed
  • Fixed the herbalist job so that it can produce herbs to be sold in the Market
  • Fixed the description of honey so now NPCs accurately describe which types of hexes it can be found in
  • Fixed a bug where NPCs will give directions to an exhausted resource node when being asked where to find a specific resource
  • Fixed a bug that caused the camping menu when using a campsite to disappear
  • Fixed a bug that caused a stray window to appear when resting at a campsite
  • Fixed a bug that causes conversation windows not to be cleared properly when quitting a game while in a conversation with an NPC
  • Fixed a bug that caused dialog options not to display for some NPCs
  • Various little quest fixes and typos

Roadmap: How to Read Our Build Numbers
First off, I want to say a huge thanks to this amazing community for supporting us in making Archmage Rises as best as it could possibly be! All of your feedback, bug reporting, suggestions, etc has been super instrumental in helping us tune the game, fix bugs, and create a gameplay experience that we all want to play, so lots of gratitude from all of us on the dev team to all of you!

As we work hard toward our next big update (The Mage Tower), I wanted to share with you players, both new and returning, how to read our build numbers and use them to follow along with our development roadmap.

As you may have noticed, our build numbers come in the following format: 0.1.3

In the example above, here's what those numbers mean...

0 - This indicates our "stage" number. 0 means that we are still in Early Access. When this number reaches 1, we are considered released and feature complete. That doesn't mean we're done updating the game, but does mean that all of the core features of the game are now available.

1 - This is our major update number that corresponds to our major updates listed on our roadmap (which you can see below)

3 - This is our regular "in-between" updates, which we usually release on a weekly basis. These are mostly focused on bug fixes, optimizations and in some cases new content.

You might also see a letter at the end, which usually indicates a hotfix to quickly patch up a crucial bug that may have been introduced in the latest release. Hopefully these are few and far between ːsteamhappyː

So that means that when you see these release numbers, you can quickly get a sense of where we are on the roadmap:

0.0.X - Initial Early Access Launch
0.1.X - Update 1: Townsfolk Update
0.2.X - Update 2: The Mage Tower
0.3.X - Update 3: Exploration
0.4.X - Update 4: Crime & Punishment
etc.

I hope you find this info useful, and stay tuned for another weekly patch update that should be going out later today!

Phil

PS: Here's the roadmap that I mentioned above (in case you haven't seen it or wanted a reminder):

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