Amazing book! Been loving it so far.
I’ll excitedly wait for book 2, Good luck!
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Congratulation on releasing!!! Take some time to celebrate and rest :))
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Good to see someone who know what is Cerpen is… and it is indeed short with only 155,000 words only. So i think its appropriate to call it first half of the book ig
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So its not possible to get two perfect results in one playthrough. Damn, I restarted the game so many times to get perfect in both missions.
Actually, it is possible. Choose enchantment as your specialty and Thaum as your weakness, use visions of the Damned and fist of the darkLord against the monster, use spirit gates to get back to town, use spirit gate to save all the kids, read from the enchantment book once during your free time at the town, choose to help the plague victims with enchantment later on, and choose to try and help all of them. You can also layer on increasing alchemy with that exact same build so if you make the right choices, you should save all the kids, most of the villagers, and end with over 80 enchantment, 78 spiritism, and 69 alchemy
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Indeed! It’s a lot of trial and error, but by the time you are brought back, you can level up 3 stats to 70+ and save both the kids and the village suffering from the plague.
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I probably could’ve gotten the alchemy to 70 but I wanted spiritism above 75 and I’m pretty sure I’ll have opportunities to increase that in the future anyway
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I don’t know if this is the right place to write this, but I wanted to jot down my thoughts on this game as a person who has NEVER looked at any kind of material on this game before its release. Nothing whatsoever—not the Tumblr, not even the official summary, which was an extremely hard endeavor because of all the raving reviews from my friends.
I’d write this on Steam, but unfortunately, I don’t own the game on it. The Google Play Store, in comparison, seems too unformatted and meant for quick summaries, which I’ll do later, but this will be a lot more verbose.
The Good - The Writing
Immediately, I noticed how impressive the writing is. It astounds me, then, after reading through a little bit of the original post (of this thread) and the slightest, tiniest bit from the Tumblr, that English is the author’s third language—which is great! English is my second language speaker, and I can imagine how different an experience it would be to pick it up as the third. I’ve been learning Spanish, and I’m nowhere close to fluency despite years of study and receiving accreditation for it.
My attention span is that of a goldfish. I am a person who knows what they want, and everything else is bonus at best, an obstacle at worst. I’ve read backs I’d go back to reread, and I’d realize that there have been entire pages torn out of my mind, even scenes that are pivotal to the plot, that I’ve missed because of my seeming inability to focus. These could even be entire chapters.
With AMR, however, this happens considerably less often. Do I still find my mind wandering, or stepping out of a blank daze realizing I’ve been tapping away mindlessly, an egregious sign of my waning skill to dedicate even more than 5 seconds of thought to something undivided? Well, yes—that will never not happen. Even then, I found myself captivated by the story, truly invested in it in ways that I have rarely found myself to be, even in stories touted as extraordinary by everyone else in the community. I felt truly torn on so many choices, and yet luckily, I never found that I beat myself up thoroughly that I had to restart (that is, until the end—more on that later). I was glad that the story seemed to acknowledge my failures and even accept it, and I didn’t feel ashamed even when I had my shortcomings. I was not expected to be the shining, perfect protagonist I so often felt compelled to be in these stories, and I was more attached to my flawed character for it.
Having been lucid for at least 60-75% of the story, I think that’s a solid and astounding win for me.
The Good - The Characters
I’m a person who gets attached to characters easily, but rarely rather deeply. There are characters I latch onto, but with a distant fondness for them rather than any sense of connection to them. I found this to be extremely the case when I played through the Wayhaven Chronicles, probably the most popular IF on the CoG/HG platform to date. I had soaring expectations of amazing characters, and yet I never felt like I truly bonded with any of the characters there (except maybe Bobby). I expected the same for this story… until the White Fang.
I’ve been burned so many times from playing IFs. It seemed that characters and even romances were quick to turn on you when you toed out of the line, disagreed with them, or didn’t meet their expectations. I can still feel the seething fury of every character from the Lost Heir at the slightest disagreement, the berating I received from Heroes of Myth when I acted out of character. Yes, CoG/HG games allowed me to have my own opinion, but when every other character flies off the handle and deems you as unforgivable with a single interaction, it’s hard not to feel like you could have one.
That’s why it was extremely refreshing to me in AMR that this was just not the case. Times when I might have not been of the same mind as any of the White Fang were met, of course, with proper resistance–because they’re still characters with their own agency and thoughts. And yet, the story conveyed well, and I truly felt, that we respected each other and knew each other well enough that even if we had different ideas for how to go about things, we were ultimately working together towards the same goal. And for that, we still were friends.
When we failed to save all the children after having rejected Leon’s wishes, I obtained the opportunity to speak to him about this instead of him forever cursing me for having ever been born. It genuinely stupefied and delighted me that this was an option, that this is the genuine connection I sought for in characters in regards to the MC, which is so hard to achieve when the MC is variable. AMR does impressively on this aspect.
The Good - Worldbuilding
I’ve come to be a thorough and hardcore fan of all things worldbuilding, and I am especially a nerd when it comes to religion in worldbuilding. At first I was disappointed not to have a tab in the Stats section to review the lore of the world, but this quickly changed when I reached a certain point of the story where I became privy to the politics and religions of the world. I especially enjoyed the architecture section, which so vividly painted an image of what kind of places these autonomies were so effectively. My goldfish brain had been left outside the door, and I read through all the information on the faiths and the autonomies. I am now hankering for a map.
Even setting up and having the lore is impressive enough, but seeing it bleed through and actively influence so many events in the story was beyond wondrous. Maybe it isn’t overly unique, but the way that information is conveyed in the story was executed well. There were still times that I was confused, possibly because I missed some things through my drunken-like stupor at 3AM in the morning, with certain names. Still, the fact that I wasn’t completely lost is nothing short of a miracle. Really, that is an amazing feat, I mean that wholeheartedly.
The Bad - Length
This might be revised as I might take on even more playthroughs of the game.
Currently, people I’ve talked with are of the consensus that this story is a little linear. Of course, this is expected – it’s not easy to ensure everyone is caught up to a similar point by the end of the book when it is a series. I’ve played this game a couple of times but with very similar options, so I am simply throwing in what my circle of friends believe, too. To my knowledge, everyone ended the story the exact same way.
Again, understandable, but this is a symptom of another seeming flaw of the story – and that’s the length. It didn’t feel short, necessarily, but it felt… missing. It felt like it was paced well and lasted well enough, but even having NEVER read anything of the WIP, I knew that there had to be more until it just… cut off.
It feels very wrong to be critical about this. As a computer science student and writing hobbyist, writing an interactive-fiction game is probably three times the work of making a traditional novel, maybe even more. I am aware that novels very rarely exceed even 80k words, and the length of the game probably surpasses that. This is not meant to uphold a certain standard of word count for any IF, because word count is secondary to telling a complete story. 160k is indeed a very large number in and of itself.
And yet, this book verily comes across as a prologue, and that’s because it is. It’s fine, in some part, but it didn’t sit well with me. It made a good setup for the rest of the story, and yet when it felt like the story was about to hit its stride, when things were finally going to come to a head and then the story would happen… the game finishes.
Hearing from the feedback of other people who played AMR from those I know, I know many will remember that the demo at least extended beyond that and into the resurrection stage for a little. If that were the case, I completely understand why the feeling of incompleteness lingers. Even as someone who has never read AMR, this comes across to me blindingly clear. The biggest, biggest part of the story – the part where you are reborn – doesn’t even happen in the first book. I can see someone who is COMPLETELY blind to the book being confused that it stops right before you’re even resurrected. I only had the privilege of knowing the book was about the MC getting resurrected later because I had the slightest idea of what it was before I read it, the title, and the description. Yet it lends to the big question – where is the part where a mage is reborn?
Which leads to my next criticism.
The Bad - The Ending
It wildly confused me.
Again, I had no expectations of how it was going to end. Maybe I knew it would be premature in some way, but I thought it would at least end on the mage being reborn.
This not happening has led me to replaying the game identically twice over and nearly going on a third before being told by my lovely friends that, no, this happened to everyone. This was where the story truly ended. That wasn’t a bad ending – that was just the ending for everyone.
I had believed that I had made the wrong choice up until the end – that no, I should have tried harder to not admit my guilt to Leon. That no, I should have let Ilya help me. I thought there was more I could do. I thought this way because I thought the mage should have been reborn!
But all paths lead to Rome, or at least one ending in this case. Roll the credits.
Do take this as perspective of someone who has never, ever seen anything from the author, their blog, or their post: my first playthrough left me on a bit of a hopeless note. If it did mean to feel that way in some sense, it didn’t do its intended effect. Did I feel that my choices mattered? Yes – to some extent. Whether I felt that it would at all impact the next book – no, not really. Maybe there are many endings I haven’t seen, but I have to mentally prepare to play more to see it for myself.
As someone with no idea of plans for the story in the future, I was a little hopeless that any of the tough choices I made here will make any difference. The only hint I have now of how choices will be handled is the fact that most playthroughs end at the exact same place, with few variation to it. Could I receive achievements? Yeah, maybe, but they don’t make a tangible blot on the page, to my knowledge. Even if my choices mattered, indeed, in the short-term of saving all seven children instead of five, if I saw that result reflected later in the story past the mission meaningfully, I was blind.
Maybe not everything had to come back to bite you in the ass, but to my extremely dim memory, I’m not really sure there was a choice I made that was so pivotal that it would ripple throughout the rest of the story. Hearken to Keeper of the Sun and Moon, where in quick character selection of the second book, you can easily see there are a number of ways the first book could have ended that made real repercussions to the second book – and you could feel that these choices mattered, knew that it would come back even if you haven’t seen it yet. Letting a villain live another day, whether or not one of your suitemates could be saved or not – these were all things that you could reverse or change that had big repercussions for the future, and you knew that fully subconsciously. Even if every player ended off at a similar point, priming for the second year at the academy, there were so many ways you could have done your first year differently. Hell, you can even obtain an ending that didn’t lead you to the second book, but it still felt like a full-fledged, proper bad ending that was a true result of everything that you’ve become and have done.
Update: I replayed more, saved the children, did the plague a little differently. I could see there were substantial changes to the story, but it remains to be seen if these are beyond from being short-term. At the very least, I appreciate that they were tackled on sufficiently, even if this book could stand to have more lasting consequences.
It’s unfair to judge a prologue to a full-fledged first book like KotSaM, as it’s unfair to think the prologue will have such a deep effect on the rest of the series. The thing is, this has been published as the first book, and thus it will be compared as such to other series, especially to someone as fresh to this story as I am. As everyone pointed it out, it feels like half of the first book than it is a first book.
Conclusion
All in all, this has been a wonderful experience, aside from the couple of things I took issue with. I’m preparing myself mentally to take more playthroughs as different MCs to see how much the game varies and make a comment on the replayability. At the moment, I’m demoralized from doing so, but I want to give this game a proper review now that I’ve come this far.
My overall opinion on this game is very positive, and I would recommend it to friends who have not read, provided that they get caught up a couple of fair warnings. I hope the criticism isn’t taken in bad faith.
MEGA congratulations on publishing!!! 
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Omg thank you for this. I have been so confused as someone that did play the extended demo! I didn’t realize book 1 would only end at the execution since I haven’t really followed the authors tumblr. I’m a little disappointed but still love the story.
As you said the characters are great and there are a lot of tiny moments that feel very human. I found that replaying I loved Leon, Saine, and Illya as much as when I originaly played the demo.
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This game is fantastic! I’m excited to read more aboit the characters in Book 2!
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Totally basic thing to rave about but I’m loving the chapter intro graphics or whatever you wanna call them
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Thanks it worked. I had previously went for alchemy and against the monster used thaum, but still couldn’t save all the kids. Never would have thought to use spiritsm as I always chose it as my weakness.
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So does the MC always die at the end? I got a peaceful death, and was awarded Hero of Sienan So I guess that counts as a good ending for book 1 I suppose… I’m just curious if there are any slightly different or other varied endings.
MC always dies 
It’s “A Mage Reborn”
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Nope, you always end the game getting barbecued for entertainment. I’m a little surprised how much some people are confused by this, the prologue literally ends with the fire getting lit
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Damn, I was kind of hoping for a better outcome. Despite the title lol Also, being “Reborn” doesn’t always mean death 
Its not necessarily confusion, on my part. Rebirth or Reborn can mean a number of things that doesn’t always mean dying. I was just thinking that it was a fate that possibly wasn’t set in stone. Or that your actions could possibly change the outcome. I see that I was quite mistaken on my part. I don’t really know how I feel about being railroaded into unavoidable death… Still its certainly a interesting premise to have your MC die and be reborn in the next book. I’m definitely curious how things turn out going forward.
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I guess a lot of us have been on this thread for a long time so the scene is fairly established and isn’t new to us. Don’t worry though the demo for book II will be up again soon
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That is very true, I didn’t really pay much attention to the lead up to this book. I recently purchased this because I enjoy fantasy games and books. And I liked the charters and story quite a bit after playing the demo. The whole unavoidable death thing flew over my head at the time, I guess lol. I just visited the authors tumblr, and it became much more clear to me that the death of the MC is very much an integral part of the story.
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Always dies. The beginning of the book isn’t a premonition, it’s also the end lol. Think of Book One as kind of building the foundation of the story. Book One’s events had to happen the way they did so that Book Two could/can happen. If MC doesn’t die, the whole thing would be moot.
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Yes, it all makes sense now. Thank you guys for the clarification. I was thinking that the MC dying at the end was a bad ending 
lol I’m glad to see that’s not the case tho.
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