Magic Academy 0.8 (Renovatio): Journey rebuilt from scratch

We’ve put a huge amount of work into getting this update out on time!

Subscribers can already play the 0.8 (Renovatio) alpha, and it will most likely stay in alpha a bit longer than usual. In this update we’ve practically rebuilt the balance and the entire card part of Journey.

So much has changed that it’s hard to list everything, and we know that not all of it may work correctly or feel comfortable yet. But we’ve reached the point where we can’t test all these ideas without our players, so we’ll be glad of any feedback on the rework.

Quests and scenes

• The new quest «Behind Enemy Lines» brings us closer to the finale and shows Camilla from an unexpected angle.
• The new quest «Wonderland?» is the finale of Rose’s Personal Conflict.
• The shark inquisitor: comics and CG.

Shops and outfits

• Olivia has finally received new stock for her shop. Going forward we plan to give every character their own clothing line (including Tom).
• New outfits for Rose, Victoria and Lillian. The nude version unlocks after you buy all the other outfits.
• The phrase that opens a shop no longer fades out after your first visit and now has its own icon.

Card system

• All cards, effects, enemies and their actions from the previous iteration have been completely reworked.
• On top of the basic shared collection there are five themed collections, each with its own playstyle:
  • «Resonance»: enemy attacks charge your spells.
  • «Rage»: manage your rage, deciding when to take risks and when to calm down.
  • «Elements»: poison and fire make your enemies suffer while you stay safe.
  • «Runes»: gain and spend runic symbols to empower your spells.
  • «Chain»: play lots of cheap spells and manage your deck to give the enemy no room to breathe.
• Card rewards after battles are new: an algorithm helps you build your deck, offering «starters» for collections you don’t have yet and «boosters» for the ones you’ve started. Putting together the build you want should be much easier now.
• Rerolls let you replace dropped rewards several times per run.
• All item effects have been redone.
• New order of enemy actions: attacks first, then defence, then buffs. A caster no longer buffs an enemy that then immediately hits you harder than you expected.
• All cards have new themed artwork, all buffs have new icons, and all cards have matching visual effects.
• Health now depends on difficulty: Easy 150, Normal 100, Hard 50.

Deck

• You now need exactly 12 cards to start a run.
• A deck can’t contain more than a certain number of copies of one card. The limit depends on rarity.
• Penelope is back at the tavern, and you can buy basic and rare cards from her.

Journey map

• Enemy difficulty now grows with the distance from your starting point. No more running around the map hunting for a «pawn» to start building your deck.
• Multi-tile movement: walk to any revealed tile as long as the route isn’t blocked by an event or a battle. On phones, the first tap builds the route and the second one starts it.

Battle interface

• Card descriptions are shorter thanks to «terms». To learn more about a term, hover over it or press and hold the card.
• Enemy intents have their own tooltips. A moment after you hover, the tooltip pins itself (on phones, tap the intent), so you can hover over the terms inside it.
• Hovering over an enemy’s intent highlights the target of their action.
• Some buffs can be «interrupted» by killing the enemy they’re aimed at. The caster’s intent then changes to «confusion».
• The numbers in enemy intents account for buffs and debuffs on both the target and the caster.
• Characters flinch when taking damage.

Worlds and enemies

• A new shark world: opening, cutscene, comic, its own mobs, loot and a unique mechanic.
• Fully reworked worlds: pixie, elf, dragonkin, goblin, vampire, succubus, cat, aasimar, wolf paladin.
• Enemies are now split into groups: «common» ones appear everywhere, others only in a specific world and support its mechanic.
• New animated characters: fire golem, bat, skeleton warrior, dire wolf, werewolf warrior, werewolf shieldbearer, wolf priestess, shark inquisitor, shark assassin, jellyfish, evil jellyfish, shadow cat, demonic totem, holy golem, weapon crate, slime, evil slime and mimic. There should be no static characters left in the game.
• All mob actions have matching visual effects.

Audio

• New sounds for UI actions, all minigames and many parts of Journey.
• Unique music and sounds for the Match-3 locations.
• New ambient sounds in some locations, for example the Office.
• Audio for the prologue scenes, the cave scene with Louise, the first scene with Joyce, Lillian’s first scene, the scene with Lillian after the party, the plug-testing scene with Lillian, the dragonkin attack scene and Audrey’s comics.
• Shared sounds for the Journey scenes with the rogue cat, the aasimar, the dragonkin and the ice elf.

Fixes

• Short sounds no longer «break» because of random parameters.
• Scene audio picks sounds more evenly, so they’re more varied.
• Fixed a possible cause of the map minigame breaking.
• A mob token could overwrite the player token on the map and break the adventure launch, or overwrite the boss and break the run’s objective. Both fixed.
• Letters now support text effects instead of showing plain text.
• The «memory» effect has a new colour and no longer blends into the background.
• You can no longer play a card with no available targets (it just went to the discard pile).
• You can no longer save or load during minigames, which used to break the save.

Cheat panel

• A new cheat panel opens with a code word. Each version has its own code word, and subscribers will find it in the post with the build.
• The panel can grant resources, restore health and unlock all scenes in the Gallery.
• Need other functions? Tell us.

A big part of the work is done. Next we want to give each world more of its own look with more surface hex variants, and revisit map events with tooltips and hints, so you can tell in advance what’s waiting on a tile.

We can’t wait to hear your first impressions and ideas on making the game more comfortable and more interesting. Share them on Discord.