Academy of Arcana [WIP, Demo, Updated 22/04/2019] H*I*A*T*U*S (because: reasons)

Hosted Games Works In Progress
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Academy of Arcana [to be retitled: The Five Princes of Destruction]

An opportunity to learn your magic craft is presented as a scholarship at the Academy of Arcana. Focus on your studies, play sports, interact with students, explore places or get involved in mysterious happenings. Do as you please, mostly.

In This Demo

You can’t really do much of anything at all. It’s fairly large though, albeit short. It serves mostly as a promise of what is to come while introducing you to the world. Replay ability is currently nought, but if you’re the lionhearted type, why not give it another go and see if there’s something you have missed.

Things to Expect from Updates
  • Actual Stats You have some stats now, but expect more Actual Stats!
  • Actual Magic
  • More People Up to 100 people currently exist. Yay!
  • More Areas I’ve unlocked all the areas. There’s not much to do, though.
  • Free Exploration
  • Multiple Storylines to follow or ignore as you please.
  • Morality, because, yay!
  • Propar Grammer. Mostly taken care of now. Nevermind.
  • Poetry Club (I’m 100% Serious)
  • Say Something, Anything. (See concepts)
  • Morale (The spirit may be willing, but sometimes the flesh just wants to take a nap.) Now it is important to consider the value of life.
  • Day/Night Cycle.
  • Progressive Calendar. Days now flow by, so, enjoy your weekends and holidays, and also be on the lookout for your friends’ birthdays. (You don’t have one yet, though.)
  • Dynamic Weather and Seasons Weather systems are now a GO GO GO!
  • Functional Time-management (Really, should we leave me in charge of Time Management?)
  • A Notebook for your personal use. You can now note things as you please.
Plot and Concepts

  • As a new student at the Academy, you have freedom to pursue your learning as you please. You have the opportunity to interact with people, forge friendships, romances or make enemies. The world doesn’t just wait for you, though. Things are happening, and whether you involve yourself in them is completely up to you. You might want to, though, because if the Five Princes of Destruction bring their plans to fruition, and you’re not on their good side, life might be very unpleasant for you. Of course, you could always try to stop them. Do as you please, really.

  • Magic is based on Gifts (Darkness, Fire, Chaos, Time, Science, etc…). Making magic is based on Schools (Numerology, Runism, Spellweaving, Channeling, etc…). Gift + School = Craft. These interact in various ways. To further complicate things, and make it all that much more unintuitive, you work with a partner of your choosing to study ways of combining your crafts and make new kinds of magic.

  • Relationships are versatile. I’m a firm believer in romancin’ anyone, but I’ve tried to make things a little bit more difficult for myself here. Ultimately, everybody is bisexual and you can romance anybody. You would have to work at it though, as convincing A’El to dump her girlfriend for you is no easy feat. Getting into Exeter’s pants if you’re a boy isn’t going to be easy either (that’s such a lie :rofl:), he generally likes girls. Some people fear intimacy, others are desperate. While you’re not looking, people are forging new relationships and making new friends and going on dates and writing bad things about somebody else on the bathroom walls.

  • A lot of things are happening at the Academy. There are to be a lot of happening outside the Academy too. Perhaps you’d like to help Jack and Diane return tourism to the small town of Ardenia, or help Exeter track down his long-lost best friend, or help A’El ensure the safesty of the Academy, or… (Seriously, I have a billion plans. I’ll try to document them properly in the future.)

  • Say something, Anything: I’ve been thinking about the nature of relationships in choice games. As I see it, we bond with people when we interact with them during events. Though this is a fairly simple summary, I believe this to be an effective formula. But, given my natural writing style, I like to make slices of life, and the nature of The Five Princes of Destruction is free exploration. That is to say, you should be able to track down somebody you’d like to talk to, and, I guess, talk to them. So, apart from dialogue you’d expect, I’d like to include a ‘Say Something, Anything’ option that randomly mentions something you, as the PC, has experienced. Talking to A’El and want to have a casual conversation with her? Say Something, Anything, and you might mention your lunch-date with Exeter. The concept is that if you happen to mention something that a character can respond to in their own story arcs, the narrative world will change. Mentioning crows to Exeter, for example, will make Exeter collect them when he has a chance, because he really likes crows.

Other Things
  • I consider myself quite the CSS expert, and I’d like to make the style somewhat unique and interesting. I have some ideas for it, but if your brain fashions a visual style you’d like to see for it, please do share your ideas too. I will probably try them out.
  • What kinds of magic combinations would you be interested in? What would you like to see?
  • Same-Name Game - Share a name with anybody in the game? Be prepared for unique dialogues. That’s it. Somebody will just point out, much like irl, how strange and co-incidental it is that you share a name.

I’m known to have commitment issues, but I’m super proud of how long I’ve stuck with this one. I really like working on it, and I’ll bring out regular updates. So, if you like it so far, check back regularly to see what’s new. If you don’t like it, well, that’s fine too.

The community, at large, has been an invaluable help to me, so I thought I might share some of what it’s helped to craft. If you have any comments, suggestions, grievances or death-threats, feel free to leave them here for me.

Check if there's been an update:
  • A’El has stopped by the cabin and cleared up that temporal singularity. It is now a permanent plurality, which is considerably safer. We don’t recommend coming back just yet, though, as a plague of murderous crows are travelling the grounds.
  • Giovanni has adopted the crows and trained them. They are mostly safe now. We don’t recommend coming back just yet, though, as your roommate is known to be a psycho-homicidal maniac.
  • Sasha-Lee has been relocated to a the nearest mental facility. You don’t have to worry about her anymore. We don’t recommend coming back just yet, though, as there seems to be a problem with students getting stuck in looping dreams. Could there be psychic magic involved?
  • Students are finally waking up without worry or long-term damage. We don’t recommend coming back jsut yet, though, as most of the Academy seems to be closed down.
  • The Archives have been opened, but seem drastically understocked. We don’t think it’s worth a visit quite yet, though, because who want’s to spend their free time reading, of all things?
  • The Arena has opened, and there’s a lot going on there. We don’t really recommend coming back just yet, because why would you? Do you want to die at the wooden-metallic hands of a Training Dummy?
  • All the other students have arrived at the Academy. Go say hi!
  • All the other students now have actual personalities. What a relief.
  • Ardenia is now accessible by bus route. Expect more things to open soon!
140 Likes
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Is a character really named A’El?

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… Ye… eee … s?:confused::face_with_raised_eyebrow::speak_no_evil:

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Just weird name, hearing myself for the first time too :joy: dont mind @57Faults :joy:

But the whole story sounds intresting! Will check out the demo when you will have put something more than intrudaction. Have a good day and luck with this project!

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this was cool i hope you keep on going

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Like you said, it’s short but I find myself very intrigued with the demo! When we chose our aspect on what happened next after we die, is that… whats our power will be?

Summary

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image789×671 35.3 KB

Is this supposed to end here?

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@Umbreonpanda Thank you so much for pointing this out to me. No, it should end shortly after. The ‘firstclass’ variable is a boolean check that changes A’El’s response when asking her about classes. She doesn’t like to repeat herself, and ‘firstclass’ ensures that she doesn’t. I completely misspelled the temp in the text, embarrasingly enough.

*temp firstcalss true

:rofl::rofl::rofl:

Again, thank you. It’s fixed now.

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I think I found a bug, when you choose “I’d like to know about Exeter”

Screenshot_2017-11-12-08-48-13
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Ah, yes. I’ve just gone through all of this now. In my text file, I really suck at spelling things properly. The label was exstatr, but that’s fixed now. Along with a lot of the other bad labels and variables.

Thank you for telling me this, though. Much appreciated. If you ever find anything else like this, please be sure to let me know. :rose:

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Please do not take my question as an insult; this seems like an interesting game. I was just wondering whether that name was a typo. I have seen and made stranger typos myself.

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Oh, no, don’t worry. I was super scared that A’El was already a really important name in some game or book universe and I was marring it. Like, in retrospect, I found that one of the character choice names, Auriel, was some sort of god in the Elder Scrolls universe.

I’d generally try to avoid things like that, if they aren’t thought out. I try to name my characters with care. Thank you though, for trying to clarify. I’m more at ease now. :relaxed:

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I have started playing the game, and am thrilled that it allows the main character to question the existence of the soul - such a thing is rarely done in many modern stories of magic, but lack of a soul is a key teaching of Buddhism (I am a Buddhist, as my user name hints).

I look forward to playing more!

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I really like this idea, it’s cool to have some many power to choose from, I’m excited for time and chaos.

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Interestingly enough, AEI is a name for one of my college subject :face_with_monocle:

Woweee!
Join me 'da bandwagon!

Some tidbits
  • There’s a grammer error when choosing the soul type. IIRC, there’s one option written “…become my the body.”
  • I’d like to see an option #Yes, mages are weird, but their weirdness is pretty normal… something like that, if you get what I mean :sweat_smile:
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I…I don’t think science count as magic…I mean, how would that even work? They’re two opposite concept, aren’t they? With science being the manipulation of the universe with its own rules, while magic is bending the rules of the universe to your will at the expense of your mana.

Other than that, it seems like my favorite power is here, three cheers for time manipulation! Though it would bring me great joy if you would let us upgrade it into spacetime manipulation, please? Pretty please?

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Wow you’ve got some pretty ambitious plans in fleshing out the school. I’d just like to say great game but it’s kind of weird to just info dumb so much at the beginning. I find it amusing and love the fact you can be a Mage of science. I can see my character now just trying to disprove blatant witchcraft happening around him and trying to disprove magic to actual wizards.

A bit of a question but I know Gifts are locked in but what about schools? Can somebody learn Runism, Spellweaving and Channeling at the same time

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in some iterations, magic is an unknown form of science that let you go over the rules. so it will be more like 2 different flavors of ice cream.

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I’m really liking it :yum: looking forward to more.

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@Renzenar That’s fantastic! Be sure to check back in about a week, I expect to have the basic functions of the magic system ready by then. :grin:

@Szaal
Thank Arden-Sul for the IIRC. It took my about five tries to find that. My brain just magically missed it, constantly.

I get what you mean. TBH, it’s a fake choice only to break the narrative pace, and transition to a different tone. I’ll see about including an option for the innately strange player.

@Nightgazer I see where you’re coming from. Rest assured though, I’ll try to make Science interesting. In this narrative universe, Science magic is the understanding of the laws of the universe and the capability to alter them. It’s just another approach to the same effect as the other magics.

Hmm, I recommend working with a partner in your development projects to see what you can come with. Maybe an Aetherialist or a … ahem, Scientist. :joy:

@MossHeart

I wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment. You’re referring to A’El and asking her questions, right? nd Speaking to Exeter about Ardenia? Speaking to Exeter is a completely optional path and asking A’El questions is optional too. I do intend on slowly introducing the player into the mechanics of the game by the end of the week.

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:
And yes, you are free to utilise any schools or even combine them. It’ difficult to explain, but I think if you check back later you’d definitely be pleased with how the magic system works.

@Nael Thank you. That really gives me the oomph to work super hard on making this proper for you. :rose::rose::rose:

Thank you all for the feedback and comments. Sorry about, well, that singularity that swallowed you… and that murder of crows. I’ll see about exterminating them asap. :black_heart:

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I love the demo so far, and is it possible to study one type of magic as your primary magic and in another as your secondary type? And, correct me if I‘m wrong, but is’nt Death Magic (a.k.a Necromancy) not a forbidden art? IIRC the administrator of the school told you that you cant practice forbidden art. And how does practicing work, can we just choose to which building we want to go next, or can we customize what (or how) we want to practice in this type of magic?

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