Such was the case with Black Chicken Studios' Academagia: The Making of Mages, an impossibly deep life sim set in the first year of a magic academy. An interview with the developers of. 1 vote and 1 comment so far on Reddit.
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Hogwarts-simulator-in-all-but-name now has! And dear lord, this game is every bit as in-depth as Kieron described in his.
I was laughing out loud at the endlessness of character creation, not to mention some of the skills. How important is greengrocery to a young wizard? Just how bad is the dining hall food?
Should I put the points in gossip instead? Or a familiar? A bat?It’s utterly bewildering. Spellbinding, even. Everything about Academagia screams labour of love, and you should almost certainly check it out for that reason alone. Lets you play for half an hour, which is probably only enough time for your face to begin to unscrunch itself from the balled up paper-bag expression this game will reduce it to in moments. And if you look at the official site, you’ll see the developers are adding even more adventures, items, locations, skills, abilities and actions every single month.I think a few of you are going to fall head over heels in love with this one.
Kieron actually ended his impressions by saying that it’s far too much of a specialist product to not have a demo, but now there’s a demo! And here’s a four part video tutorial to ease you gently into the game’s muggy waters. You could definitely go fumbling through the game yourself (as I had some success doing (by “some” I mean I got mauled by a lion on my first day at school and caught fire the following Wednesday)), but if you’re after something more organised, these are what you want.
Part 15: Raising the Crops Pramidi 22-28You may notice something different about todays update images. This is because the footage I took for this week and part of the next got corrupted. Fortunately, between the daily logs and the mod tools I can reconstruct most of what happened, but I will not be able to reproduce all the random events simply from their results. In addition, I will not be able to show what color the different choices were, though I should still know which ones were picked. At least there werent too many random events during this week.Your patience will be appreciated during this outage.At lunch between classes, you find yourself eating in the midst of a pack of Hedi students. Youve had your eye on Tacito Viadana for some time now, although youve resolved to wait until after Emilias tasks are over to try and recruit him into the Five-Handed Tree.Still, Tacito wasnt the one who invited you today, although he was the reason you accepted. Instead, it was your good friend from rhetoric, Eduard Solovev.
As such, youve been stuck on the wrong side of the table to get a good conversation going with Tacito.Why would you want to spend time with that loser, anyhow? Just ask me; I already know everything about everyone.Really? Then how aboutNuh uh.
Information like that doesnt come for free. Now, if we were clique mates, on the other handShut up, Reitz. Nobody likes you; why would they tell you anything important?I have my ways.Ill bet. You know, if youve got a reputation problem, you should hook up with Eduard here. Hes a pretty likeable guy.O-oh, thanksAs if I would. The only guys who like this idiot are other idiots like him.Well, I like him too, and Im no idiot. Now if youll excuse me, Ive got to get to rhetoric class.Yknow, Ive got rhetoric too if you wanted to, yknow, walk with me.Shes already gone, you loser.Although still searching through the manuals on infiltration techniques, you find yourself having a rather odd amount of trouble concentrating.
Your thoughts keep slipping back to the Stone Bench yesterday, and you wind up wondering what Carmine is doing right now.But wait, why should you care what Carmine is doing? Hes not even in your Clique; he hangs out with that stupid Montague kid. And hes welcome to him, so far as you care.This gets you a few pages farther into the manual. Then you start thinking about the Stone Bench again, and how things might have played out differently if youd said different things
you wonder what Carmine is doing right nowReturning to the Aranaz campus, you find to your surprise that Carmine himself has been waiting for you in the common room.Hey, Iliana.
Good to see you again. I was hoping we could hang outNo.
Stop right there. Im sorry, I
I really am, but, Ive got this big project Im working on right now, and II cant get distracted.What, so Im distracting you?Blast it, why did he have to smile? Wait, why should that even matter?!NO! Sorry, I meanI cant spend time with you because I should be spending time on my project instead. I probably shouldnt have even gone up to the Stone Bench with you yesterday.Really?Well, I mean Im glad I did, but Iand Id probably do it again if you asked, but please dont ask, because I have this thing I have to do first and I cant concentrate on it when youre around!What is this big project, anyway?I cant tell you, although youll probably understand once it happens. So justnot right now, okay?What about after its done?After
I dont know.You dont know?I havent thought that far ahead!
I mean, if you
maybe. But not right now!As you hurry off, you hear Carmine wonder to himself:The heck was that all about?Figuring that part of your problem was focusing too much on your training and thus getting burned out, you decide to alternate your visits to Longshade with trips to the Venalicium, at least for the time being.While you came to study Revision on your own, its not long before you wind up in an impromptu study group with Marc Sury and Raoul Leconte.And let me say, Im really glad to see a friendly face in Aranaz these days. One of the older students caught me hanging out near Morvidus a couple times, and its like they cant stop teasing me and pranking me about it.Mm hmm.Bedbugs in the sheets, dog droppings in the book bag, theyve been really mean-spirited. I mean, I only didnt join Morvidus so I could avoid that kind of thing!Mm hmm.Im sorry, I suppose youre having some troubles, too. I mean, Im kind of an outcast right now, but even I heard that weird rumor about you breaking up with Carmine right in front of everybody. Were you two really dating before? BecauseCan we get back to the Revision project, please?
Id kind of like to get back to that instead of recite our life stories.Yes, lets do that. Right now.Though its painful to admit, the Carmine debacle caught you completely off-guard. Although you have some skill with manipulating the emotions of others, youve never had your own betray you as thoroughly as they did on Monday. As such, youve resolved to never again let your feelings get away from you (although you fear your resolution may already be doomed).And where better to learn about the issue than the Library of Longshade? In between your continuing hunt for stealth manuals, you find a few scrolls with advice on how to deal with the opposite gender. Its not really enough for you to plan out a strategy, but at least its proof that youre not alone.
One of them even mentions a nice restaurant in town, named The Roses of Coventia.Studying for rhetoric this time, you wind up paired with Sima Venesico. While she seems annoyed at having to study (something you can certainly relate to), the real surprise is that shes here alone. Although you dont know too much about her, every time you had seen her before she was surrounded by a crowd of admirers. It struck you as being a bit like Neta Xemutre, although the latter seems to prefer to only attract boys.Then again, perhaps Sima dismissed her entourage on purpose. Every five minutes or so, she falls into ranting as loudly as she dares about how useless it is to study, and you frankly cannot tell what everyone sees in her. At least you have the sense not to say that to her face, and you part on good terms.Youve spent so much time reading manuals on stealth that theyre honestly becoming hard to find at this point.
And with the weekend in sight, you know that the time to make your move is coming soon.After spending a few extra hours practicing some stealthy techniques, you let Emilia Strolin and Rui de Casga know that the time has come to enter the next phase.The three of you meet in one of the multi-house dining areas. When you come in, you see Rui de Casga and Emilia going over a jumble of notes.
You sit down and commence to conspiring. You learn from Emilia that shes used her time productively: not only has she spent the last few days scouting the Durand dorm, but shes also been meeting with Rui de Casga to come up with the most diabolical prank youve ever seen.Weve got two main problems. One is that, even though I can get into the Durand dorms during the day with Sheary Warrington, Im not allowed in past nine. So were going to have to find a way to get inside after hours without making a huge fuss. And then, of course, theres the matter of getting all the things we need; were going to have to buy them or steal them from the school stores. Blindweed, Grecian Fire, about seventy feet of wire, Ichor of Primeval Jelly-Beast
among other things.You just leave getting the ingredients to me.Well, I cant risk making Sheary suspicious, so I guess itll be up to you to find a way in.This has really gone far enough.Infiltration. You can find a way in, no problem.Materials Knowledge.
Find a way in? Youll MAKE a way in!Betcha cant guess which one Ill pick.What do you think Ive been working on the past few days? Ill find a way in, no problem.You set out for the long haul, and spend the rest of the day and a good portion of the next one watching the various ways into the Durand common area. Youre pretty sure no one suspects anything since youve been disguising your snooping by sitting in various pieces of shade, pretending to read a book. At the end of the second day, youve only got one candidate. Its a back entrance that one of the faculty members uses every night. It has the same locking enchantment as all the other doors, but from what youve seen, that particular door leads into a hallway that two or three peopleat the mostuse.The simplest solutions are usually the sweetest.
As an experiment, you leave a rock jamming the door open at around mid-day. Just as you expected, none of the three people leaving and entering through that door bother to remove the door prop. They probably just assumed that some poor janitor needed the door open for one reason or another. But locking spells don't do any good if a door stays open, now do they?You spend the evening on your own in Sabinus Grotto, reflecting on the ancient witchs story. She greatly expanded the field of Revision by practicing on human subjects, and since her victims were taken from the frequent raiders and pirates who plagued the region, she was hailed as a hero instead of a villain.You resolve to take Sabinus lesson on spin control to heart: its not what you do but what others think about it that counts.With all the preliminary steps complete, theres nothing left to do aside from waiting on Rui de Casgas contacts to deliver and practice, practice, practice. The three of you spend Sunday morning in the Library of Longshade, where you direct the other two through the maze of shelves from a convenient bookcase.After lunch, you all spend the rest of the day in the Great Hall. You turn the practice into a sort of game where each of you runs a different course through the building, meeting at certain checkpoints and then again at the end.
The goal is not to run the course as fast as possible, but to coordinate your movements so that each of you spends as little time as possible waiting at the checkpoints.
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