Hey Mages! It is thursday today. And this means another weekly update. Let’s go!

What’s up since last week?

This week has been a tiny bit less about the physical version of the game. We must make sure everything is going smoothly concerning the video game version as its development is much more complex to implement. However this does not mean we’re putting the paper version aside completely.

So how is the video game going?

We’ve implemented a lot of interesting stuff that were parts of the game but that got cut at the beginning. As you know it’s usually better to start simple and add features progressively.
For instance we can now see how much Mana is locked underneath each spells. “But, isn’t it the exact same as the card’s mana cost?” Well in most cases yes, you’ll have the exact Mana cost of the card underneath it when you prepare it on the board. But remember that card games have a lot of rules and exceptions. For instance a card could state that all other cards cost less. Or you could use a spell that moves Mana from a prepared spell to another.

This is why we need a pretty precise tracking of the Mana locked underneath each spells, to make sure players have the exact right information.

But that’s not all, we also have implemented the discard requirement at the end of a turn. Indeed in the official rules, if you end your turn with more than 7 cards in hand, you must discard until you have 7. This feature was not implemented before and the player could have 40 cards in hand without a single problem. This was a bit too strong, but it was very funny to see for sure.

Preparing specifications

Coding a video game is a big series of small precise tasks. But to be able to create each task with the necessary precision, we need to know exactly what we need. This is why we took the time to create specifications, stating the exact needs we have for the upcoming tasks we must do.

So this week we prepared some documents to list everything we need to make the deckbuilding interface. We still have to re-read it a little bit more and make sure we’ve not missed any important part before the document is ready to be used.

Dead tree artwork by Camille Fourcade

And concerning paper version?

This week the paper version got a bit less time dedicated to it. However we’re starting to create the rulebook of the game.

For now we do have a PDF that you can download on the front page of our website with the print and play version. But let’s be honest it is currently full of big blocks of text that aren’t easy to read. Which is why we’re making it a bit more polished, with spaces, columns, images and variations that will make it much more readable.

That’s all for today Mages!

We’re going back to our rules editing tool. We hope you’ll like the new look of the rulebook!

Until next week, have fun Mages, and take care of yourself!