Mage Elite (WIP) (Scifi/Fantasy)

[Zaldath]

Year 2031, Earth. After 20 years of war with the Zenos, a ruthless alien species, humanity has barely survived. Will the discovery of magic finally turn the tables? As the mage with the greatest potential in all of humanity, it’s up to you!

• Cast magic based on a realistic personality system (shaped by Big Five + dark tetrad personality traits); your magic & personality & choice options are all deeply connected!
• Your choices will ultimately decide the fate of the whole world…
• More importantly (?), much will also revolve around your relationships with your four classmates in the Elite Class of the military magic academy in New Washington!

Demo link (around 10k words at the moment!): Demo

I currently have two published Hosted Games (Dawn of the Sol Empire and Grand Casino of Fortune), and I’ve been working on several new games as candidates for my third published game. However, I’m 99% sure that this will be the next game I publish, even though I already sort of promised that Avatar of Darkness (another project idea) would be next… But at this point, I don’t think anything else will become a bigger priority for me than this game!

The prologue and the first chapter of the game are now pretty much finished. I’m not yet 100% sure how long the game will be, but it’s probably close to correct if I say that the game is around 10-15% finished at the moment.

I’m not quite sure what kind of update schedule I will have for this game, but I do intend to finish it likely during the summer, and possibly just update the demo somewhat regularly as I write. We’ll see!

Right now these are probably the topics I’d be most eager to hear feedback about…

Should there be clear notifications of which stats your choices are changing in real time? Or does it break immersion and it’s enough if you can see your stats in the stat menu whenever you want?

• No notifications (current approach)
• Show notifications (possible new approach)

This is the first time I’m not 100% confident about the game name itself… although otherwise I’m quite confident in the game idea / content. Here are some possible names I was thinking about. It could be helpful if everyone can pick 3 of their favorite options! (based on which ones would interest you more to check out the game, I guess?)

• Mage Elite
• Earth Shattered
• The Floating Cities
• The Flying Cities
• Subject Zero
• Zenos Invasion
• Zenos Onslaught
• Mages of the Future
• Zenos Magic

Should the main genre of the game be science fiction or high fantasy? I’m a little torn on the issue, since the basic setting of the game is definitely more like science fiction, but on the other hand, the game includes a lot of magic which doesn’t follow any real scientific logic (although you could compare it to the Force in Star Wars?)

• Science fiction
• High fantasy

In addition, open feedback about anything is very welcome as well. It’d also be interesting if you can post a screenshot of your stat distribution at the end of chapter 1… Just to get some perspective about how the situation might realistically look like at that point (if you don’t know how to “game the system” by min-maxing choices or something weird like that ). After all, the stats will have more and more effects as the game continues. However, the stat changes currently happening in chapter 1 are absolutely certainly not yet properly balanced!

(By the way, I’m quite undecided about certain details of the game, such as if there will be romance - and if there is, to what extent. In any case, it’s not a major focus of the game and certainly not forced. It’s supposed to be more about camaraderie/friendship/trust. If there is love, then likely it’s in a pretty limited fashion and closer to the end of the game?)

[augustus27]

So, I’ll just throw this out there, not sure how I feel about having “psychopathy vs compassion” and “narcissism vs empathy” as stat pairs, since those are sort of related to actual mental health issues that require a diagnosis. I get that it’s based on the dark triad model, but it does still feel a little bit iffy to me. If it was me I’d maybe change it to something like “ruthlessness vs compassion” and “self-centeredness vs empathy”. That’s just my two cents, though.

[WA2000]

I’m not sure about the polls here, it’s been 2 hours and the first and third are suddenly incredibly skewed.

[Zaldath]

Hmmmmm… as far as I’ve understood, both (psychopathy&narcissism) are very genetic personality traits and not illnesses? However, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not super knowledgeable about mental health. I’ll certainly consider any changes if/when needed!

[Zaldath]

I kind of wonder about that too However, let’s see how they continue to be voted on. I wouldn’t be that surprised if those were just heavily preferred in one direction.

[Hazard_Genius]

Very interesting concept. I will definitely watch out for more👍

[Empress_Nightmare]

This is mildly interesting… Aliens and Magic.

[Zenobrighter]

To answer the question, science fiction or high fantasy, I chose sci-fi but I think sci-fantasy would work.

Enjoyed what I have read so far.

[Clara_Wolfenstein]

Hope this information helps: Both pertain to mental illness. While they’re not the name of mental illness they pertain to actually being diagnosed with a mental illness. While someone can have a bit of selfish tendencies at one point or another, narcissism & psychopathy are apart of their respective mental illnesses. A person who hasn’t been diagnosed as a narcissist may be selfish but narcissism is more than being selfish/self-centered. It’s a sense of entitlement, having a lack of empathy, & believing you can do no wrong. The same is with psychopathy. It’s a lack of empathy among other things. Without a professional diagnosis saying what someone is doing is narcissism or psychopathy is unintentionally furthering the stereotype around mental illness & lessening the importance of helping those with mental illness
Other than maybe changing those two stats I enjoyed the demo & look forward to playing more

[Zaldath]

Alright. I was planning to use the “real names” for the dark triad/tetrad traits, but I guess it isn’t terribly important in the end. It should convey the same idea if I use a synonym of some sort…?

So far, it looks like people like the name “Mage Elite” the most, which was within my expectations. I think I’ll just keep it like it is.

However, I’m a bit surprised at the heavy preference for showing stat notifications / setting the genre as high fantasy. I’m not really opposed to either idea, but I’d like to hear some reasoning for these changes if possible. Basically I think the setting of the game is in many ways sci-fi, but the combat is pretty much just fantasy So it could really work either way, I guess. I also wonder about the stat notifications. Doesn’t it somewhat break immersion if you can see the game mechanics so obviously? However, I guess it does make it clearer/easier to understand how your actions matter.

[Zaldath]

Oh yeah, I’d also prefer a hybrid if possible, but it only seems possible to select one (science fiction / high fantasy).

[Christopher_Bull]

It’s a good start but I want to know more about the characters. How can I decide if I like them or not with no information. Also I’m not sure I like the power being based on the mcs feelings and emotions. That could restrict how much freedom I have since powers need a certain emotion.

[Zaldath]

Let’s just say that the player character has much more flexibility in spell options than the average mage. It’s not like you can’t use certain spells even if your personality traits don’t match (unlike how it usually goes with mages). However, later it will become possible to basically use super-powerful spells that could require special traits depending on the circumstances. Even then, I don’t intend for there to be any situations that make you simply lose the game if you lack certain stats. It’s more like what happens to your party / the whole world in the last chapters and epilogue depends on your personality and social bonds. At least that’s the plan right now…

As for the characters, I’ll try to flesh them out as the story progresses. I didn’t actually want to reveal everything in the first chapter. However, you should be able to see their general personalities/attitudes already (especially in the aptitude test / social events in the roaming phase of chapter 1), even if there are some limits to what you can know at this stage.

[Zaldath]

Update: made some changes to the first chapter. Specifically, changed some stat names for now, and also added notifications for stat changes etc.

[fl0rhuls]

to me, the premise and summary is very interesting. however, the sudden onslaught of specific terms for the aliens and magic with little explanation was a little startling.
i can tell your writing style is more direct, which is completely fine, but i found it difficult to understand what was going on because there was no real description of people, setting, alien related things, or the magic system. even a little page in stats with some terminology or a glossary/index would’ve been personally appreciated.
also, i understand you wanting to reveal more about characters in later chapters or via interaction, but the social events right now don’t reveal as much about the characters than they do the world. personally i prefer to have character events/ social interactions focus on learning about the other characters, and have more world building info in the beginning/prologue portion.
though i found it a little difficult to follow, i honestly think it’s a very interesting story idea, and i’m excited to see how you develop it!

[Zaldath]

I’ll certainly have to think about that issue. It’s always easy to lose perspective when you’re writing and already very familiar with all the terms/details of the world…

[Jule]

Your games description’s very interesting, but it’s intended length makes me hesitant to give it a shot. I find it hard to get immersed & enjoy games that end too quickly. Real talk… I only consider buying games that have at least 200k words.

[Zaldath]

Thanks for the feedback!

If it ends up being relatively short to play through, it may well ultimately be free to play. At least for my previous two games, being free to play worked decently enough. That eliminates the problem of “is it worth it at this size” and you can basically just try it out without “risk”.

I’m pretty sure a single playthrough will be something like 25-50k words though, so not all that short. For comparison, Dawn of the Sol Empire was around 10k words per playthrough, which could really be considered short.

[Onu]

Looks interesting. Since the flying zenos was first seen in 2030 did they evolve?

[Zaldath]

You could say that it’s something along the lines of evolution, although the Zenos don’t exactly function like species on Earth.