Magic of Spring
See you in 2024!
So, Magic of Spring will not be released this year.
I have plans to expand the game in three ways:
1. Add easy mode.
For some people, the game remains a bit too hard, so a new mode is necessary to address that.
The current difficulty will be called hard mode and I am thinking about increasing difficulty in some of the mode's battles.
2. Add more lore.
There is a demand for more story content from many of the game's testers.
I'm considering adding several side min-areas to host the new story events and make the game's world even more interesting.
3. Unlimited conjuring.
Currently conjuring only works once: Once the player obtains a card from the object, that is it.
I am considering allowing to creation of cards per object, e.g.: If the player conjures three trees, the player gains three tree cards.
The duplicates of cards would be used to create stronger versions of the cards, e.g.:
Curiosity * (1 STAR)
3-cost 2/4
Gains 1 strength when attacked
Curiosity ** (2 STAR) - Combine 3 x 1 STAR Curiosity to create
3-cost 2/5
Gains 1 strength when attacked
Curiosity *** (3 STAR) - Combine 3 x 2 STAR Curiosity to create
3-cost 2/7
Gains 1 strength when attacked
Draws a card from the ordered deck when defeated
* * *
All of this will come later in 2024, as I am resuming development of my other project: Light of the Locked World.
Sorry for another delay, happy holidays, and until next time!
Demo update! Version 0.9.7: Penultimate
Just dropping an update to the demo as I have recently completed the work on Magic of Spring.
This is the last demo update before the release.
The demo remains essentially unchanged, just a bunch of minor things.
Meanwhile, my publisher's team is working on localization, which I was told could take up to a month, so for now release is at least that far away.
Thank you.
Development update #6: Final Steps
Last week I finished making card battles for Area 3, the final area of the game, meaning the game is completed gameplay-wise!
What is left is to finish placing Area 3 visuals, update a few old features to match the new layout of the game, do a number of polishing changes, and the game will be ready to ship!
That about sums it up.
I'm not sure how long that will take, but hopefully under a month from now.
See you then!
Demo update! 0.8.7: Landing Again
I've just updated the demo!
The demo features changes from 3 months of development:
- 20+ cards reworked, creating more synergy between cards.
- 20+ battles added with adjusted AI, design, and stats.
- Reworked area 1.
- The areas are now semi-linear instead of fully open.
- Changed card locations. More interesting cards in the early game.
- Moved Queen battle event close to starting of the game.
- Enemy AI is now simpler and less random.
- Attack ritual now deals less damage to wraiths.
- Attack ritual now requires no summons on the avatar side to deal 3 damage.
- Hand size increased from 6 to 8.
- Crafting costs rebalanced.
- Player started health reduced from 10 to 5.
- Cards now deal at least 1 damage or have an equivalent effect.
- Removed card effects that completely negate damage.
- Removed card effects that continuously generate health and strength.
- Wraiths now deal less damage and have more health.
- Reworked Invoke ritual: Merged with Chaos Trick.
- Reworked Eternal Motion ritual: Now generates additional warmth per allied summon.
- Reworked Second Wave ritual: Now draws up to 3 cards from the shuffled deck.
- Talisman-type card rework: Now with appropriate animations and better effects.
- Reduced starter shuffled deck size to 10. Can be upgraded to 20 at the rune forge.
- Added "deck vault" feature: Now you can have multiple decks and swap between them.
- New sound effects.
- Tutorial has been improved.
Known issues:
- Sometimes it is not possible to conjure a Soul card. Fixed with restarting the game.
- Minor visual bugs.
- Minor audio bugs as we're currently working on new SFX.
- Pyromancer trophy cannot be unlocked unless required cards are unequipped.
Please check out the demo and let us know what you think.
This update features a lot of huge changes, we are very interested in feedback about it!
Until next time!
Development update #5: Second Wind
I'm sure this sounds familiar by now, but - More delays!
Internal testing of the recent version has revealed new flaws - what I tried to fix with Progression 2.0 were merely symptoms of even greater problems.
Unlike what I did with Progression 2.0, I am taking a different approach now.
Instead of trying to fix things with "bandaid" changes, I'm effectively remaking the game from scratch - the only difference is that I have a lot of assets and mechanics to work with.
The changes so far:
- 20 cards reworked, creating more synergy between cards.
- 20 battles added with adjusted AI, design, and stats.
- Reworked area 1.
- The areas are now semi-linear instead of fully open.
- Changed card locations. More interesting cards in the early game.
- Moved Queen battle event close to starting of the game.
- Enemy AI is now simpler and less random.
- Attack ritual now deals less damage to wraiths.
- Attack ritual now requires no summons on the avatar side to deal 3 damage.
- Hand size increased from 6 to 8.
- Crafting costs rebalanced.
- Player started health reduced from 10 to 5.
- Cards now deal at least 1 damage or have an equivalent effect.
- Removed card effects that completely negate damage.
- Removed card effects that continuously generate health and strength.
- Wraiths now deal less damage and have more health.
More about these changes:
Synergy
I am now designing cards in bulk for purpose of creating certain decks.
For example, Ancient Wall, Drought Hive, and Cursed Land are a part of the "Porcupine" deck - which forces enemy wraiths to unfavorably attack Drought Hive, which now deals substantial retaliation damage.
Ancient Wall reduces enemy attack damage allowing Hive to survive longer and Cursed Land forces enemies to attack twice a turn.
The goal is not to force players into creating the "Porcupine" deck (and others) - but rather to be a sort of design "scaffolding" which helps me think about how cards interact with each other.
This so far has been rather successful according to the testers - there is more synergy between cards now.
Pressure
One problem that I was trying to solve is what I call a lack of "pressure".
In previous versions, there were many cards or situations where the battles would halt.
I have come up with new design guidelines to solve this.
For example, an old version of Ancient Wall would reduce the enemy wraith strength to a 0, and the enemy - unless it had damage wishes - would become unable to deal damage and threaten the player.
A new version of Ancient Wall sets the attack damage of the enemy wraiths to 1.
So while it is more defensively powerful, it does not prevent the damage entirely, meaning the player always feels pressure to continue destroying the enemy's cards.
1 damage is sacred: It's a guideline I follow now.
It means every card should deal at least 1 damage or have an equivalent effect.
This is why Determination - the community's favorite dandelion card - no longer gives 1 health to itself every turn.
This effect had the ability to negate 1 damage, so it had to go.
But I also trimmed the game from another direction as well.
While everything deals 1 damage now, it does not go much further than that.
Right now I consider "3 damage" as a lot of damage, that's another guideline.
In old versions, I was throwing huge attack numbers around, 5-6 damage effects were not uncommon.
I believe this led to a lot of one-hit-kills which made the game feel unfair and hectic.
I've also reduced the player's started health to 5 instead of 10.
Because of the Deconjure ritual - despite being weakened to be less oppressive - the player always has an aggressive advantage against the enemy.
With the player having 10 health, enemies needed about 20 health to match the player's aggression.
And high enemy health was a common complaint throughout the entire history of Magic of Spring - and even Magic of Autumn.
Now enemies can survive with just 10 health, and the player has to always guard the very limited health pool.
No more open world?
Magic of Autumn, a prequel, a prototype to Magic of Spring was not as open.
I did experiment with alternative routes in Magic of Autumn, so going open world seemed like a natural evolution.
With how difficult it is to balance the battles, perhaps this type of game is simply incompatible with the open-world design.
So I am changing the design of the levels to a more linear type.
The areas now will be a linear chain of connected "rooms" - there is freedom within these "rooms" and even a choice of how to progress further into the chain from room to room, but yeah, it's a lot more linear.
I am already enjoying being able to say "Hmm, well the player would not have access to this card here, so it's safe to <...>" - I hope this will reflect in a more confident battle design and a better experience overall.
The future
All of the above are the changes implemented and quite thoroughly playtested.
But the work is not over.
Crafting via rune forges, introduced with Progression 2.0 still needs work.
I'm thinking about creating a number of Talisman cards craftable via rune forges.
For example:
Life Amulet
Once per turn, if you have played more than 2 cards:
- Gives 1 health to your avatar
Obsidian Tiara
Once per turn:
- Reduces the cost of the next sigil played by 1
Necromancy Manuscript
While your avatar has 3 or less health:
- Increases the damage of the Deconjure ritual by 1
Or perhaps a card upgrade system?
Determination
1 health
1 strength
V
Unwavering Determination
2 health
2 strength
Both options seem pretty difficult to implement, so I'm hesitant to choose for now.
I also want to take another look at the rituals to increase the pace of the game and allow playing more cards per turn.
I am thinking about the possibility of drawing 1 card and generating one 1 warmth for the player for free, automatically, at the start of every turn.
There are also plans for new assets and new cards, including a selection of rune-only cards that would help me build more interesting battles.
Second wind?
The demo of this new direction that I am calling "Second Wind" - due to its significance - will become available publicly within the next two months.
The new goal would be to finish the game within 5 months from now.
Would love to do it faster - might reduce the amount of content to achieve this.
That's all the news for now, sorry for the long wait, and...
Until next time! ^_^
Demo update! Version 0.8.2: Rune Forges
Running a bit low on time, so I'll keep it short - the demo has been updated with all the changes I've promised in Progression 2.0!
This includes the Ghost content, card crafting, fragment chests, new rituals - and more.
Over 4 months of work since the last demo version.
Some of it is explorable in the demo area, so have fun, and until next time!
Development update #4
Happy new year! It's been a bit since I have made an update on Magic of Spring's development and this seems like a good time to do that.
So, Progression 2.0 I wrote about in a previous post is completed - all it needs is to add Ghost's dialogues.
There are also new dialogues from our protagonist Aeon!
I've collaborated with writer Lars Rune Fjeldavli once again for more of lore-filled goodness, I have a very good feeling about his work and I can't wait to see the players enjoy it.
I also did a lot of very nice changes with Progression 2.0 - the game is more ready for release than ever.
However, it will still take some time before the game can go live.
Most of it is release preparation - store page update, new trailer, marketing, testing, etc.
I also have some more plans to improve the game, but it's a bit early to write about those - that's for the next development update, I guess.
Well, I think I've covered all the news, thanks for following the game's progress!
Until next time!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/465020/Sector_Six/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1184450/Magic_of_Autumn/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1097560/Light_of_the_Locked_World/
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2152950/Beyond_the_Gate/
Small Moons: Beyond the Gate and other games
Just wanted to share links to games I am currently working on right now.
Beyond the Gate
I recently added this game to Steam: I plan to release it early next year.
It's a small game I made years ago - I decided to update it and release it on Steam.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2152950/Beyond_the_Gate/
It is an RPG (ARPG?) with loot and other procedurally generated content.
Light of the Locked World
My ambitious RPG! The project that I will work on when Magic of Spring is finished - in a near future!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1097560/Light_of_the_Locked_World/
So, yeah, I'm working hard as always to make the best games I can make for you guys and the next year is going to be pretty exciting!
Thank you.
Follow Small Moons to be notified about the new games
Development update #3: Progression 2.0
Currently, I am working on Progression 2.0 for Magic of Spring - a series of reworks and additions to make the game more fun and accessible.
Here's what's in it:
Fragments
Mirror shards will be replaced with fragments of three kinds.
Rune fragments
Obtained by breaking runes.
This is the main resource for duplicating and crafting.
Soul fragments
Obtained by killing bosses.
Soul fragments will be used to craft special, previously unobtainable cards.
For example, Fire Titan summons Searing Presence - after Progression 2.0 the players will be able to spend soul fragments to craft Searing Presence card and use it without summoning Fire Titan.
And yes, it will possible to craft additional copies of Soul card from soul fragments.
Life fragments
Obtained from various sources.
It will be possible to permanently increase the initial health of your avatar by 1 for 10 life fragments.
Rune forges
Rune forges is where the fragments are turned into new cards and where the life fragments are used to increase initial health.
Fragment chests
An additional source of fragments will be added: Fragment chests.
These are the classic video game treasure chests.
Ghost
In addition to the new card and resource rewards, I'm also adding more lore to the game as a different kind of reward.
Say hello to Ghost - the Isle of Fate's memory of a powerful conjurer, much like our Aeon.
The player will encounter Ghost in multiple places of the Isle, recording her observations of the Isle into echo recorder.
She will talk about her quest, about the Isle's history, and many other things, providing more details about the game's world.
New rituals and attack action
I'll move some rituals around: Second Wave ritual will be replaced with Chaos Trick at the beginning of the game.
Chaos Trick draws 1 card from the shuffled deck and creates 1 warmth, allowing the players to have some comfortable turns.
I also have an idea that should fix all empty turn and turn limit problems: Attack action ritual.
Instead of drawing cards or creating warmth, the player will get a choice to attack instead.
This will come with three options:
- Attack the enemy's sigil and deal 1 damage to it.
- Attack the enemy's wraith and deal 2 damage to it.
- Attack the enemy's avatar and deal 3 damage to it - damage is reduced if the enemy has summons.
This will be available to the enemies as well, so the battles will get a lot faster and more intense, even when all cards are used up.
Early game changes
In the latest demo version that I've released as a beta during Tokyo Game Show I've already buffed some early game cards, increased player's initial health to 10, and added card conjuring cues.
There will be more card buffs and early rune re-balancing.
I'll also add new easy runes right after the tutorial, so the player can get used to the combat before moving to a more open area of the game.
* * *
It will take make a while to deliver on these promises - but if I can pull it off, this should significantly improve the game ^_^
Thanks for reading and until next time!
New demo version is available in beta
Since the game is included in the Tokyo Game Show selection, I've decided to update the demo version. The current one is quite old and is missing major features such as game speed controls, the map UI, sprinting, and so on.
If you have issues with the older demo, chances are it is fixed in the new version ^_^
To access the new version:
1) Go to the properties of your Magic of Spring Demo:
2) Go 'Betas' section and enter code:
Thanks for your interest in our game!