In this dev diary, we’ll talk a little more about how Project Thea came to life, why it’s not Thea 3, and why we chose to go down the path of a spin-off. We’ll also explore some key differences and similarities between Project Thea and the previous Thea games.
The Inception
We began thinking about our own, new project a few years ago. As always, it all started with casual chats about where we wanted to go next. The initial idea was for a smaller game—a quick project. At the time, we knew almost immediately that it would be tied to Thea; it just felt like the right time to return to our roots. But, since we wanted a smaller scope and the opportunity to try new things that deviated from Thea, we also knew it wouldn’t be a direct continuation but rather a spin-off.
The genre, as always with our games, was the more complex part. We knew it was going to be story-rich. We knew we wanted to keep the survival tone with post-apocalyptic themes. We also had a clear idea that there would once again be a single settlement struggling to survive against the world’s difficulties. And, of course, the card battles—by now, we feel they’re our signature feature.
While this isn’t the big reveal—that’s coming next month—it’s what I’d call a soft reveal, a nod to our loyal fans who deserve the first look at what we’re building.
First, the title: Project Thea. After much debate, we settled on a name that bridges the past and future. While this game takes bold steps away from the original Thea series, it remains deeply rooted in its world’s rich history and dark lore—a fresh start that honors its legacy.
In this first dev blog, I’ll give an overview of the game, so those outside our awesome Discord community (join us by clicking the icon on top of the page!) can catch up on what we’ve been working on.
The Genre
As always with Thea, this is a problematic topic to pin down! But here it goes, our short description – A dark strategy-survival RPG blending retro-futuristic urban fantasy with Slavic folklore. Rebuild your colony, explore the wastelands and engage in strategic card-based combat in this story-rich, roguelite adventure. Featuring branching narratives, character progression, single player or co-op for 2 players.
The Story
You awaken from magi-cryo sleep to a world in ruins. They call you one of the Alloy Twins, but your memories are shattered. Who is this twin of yours, and why do you not remember them? How did you end up in the cryo-pod? One thing is clear—the colony’s generator is failing, and you’re one of the few capable of retrieving the energy shards to keep it alive. Failure is not an option.
As you journey through this retro-futuristic urban-fantasy world, your choices will shape the story. From reimagined Slavic folklore creatures like Baba Yaga—now an entrepreneur running an ice cream van—to the Tooth Fairy pivoting to dentistry, and Woj-Tec 001, the cybernetic bear founder of UBear courier services, Project Thea is a world brimming with danger, humor, and mystery.
Your story is just beginning. Are you ready to uncover the secrets of Thea?
This post will be short and sweet, but our page was looking sad and empty and some folks could think we’re gone or something!
After the great work on MoM, we had no time to rest, as well, you know how it goes, no rest for the wicked! We are very much alive and well and working hard on a secret, secret project that we hope to reveal this year.
We can spill a few beans here to keep your appetites going. Our new game is going to be set in the universe of Thea, but with a twist. This new adventure is set centuries in the world’s future, an urban, post-apocalyptic world that will once more throw you into the many mysteries of the Slavic inspired myth and folklore.
An urban version of a czort, they’ve of course become lawyers now…A fan favourite also returns, the Rusalka, looking all modern and ready to kick some butts when drowning fails…
To stay up to date with MuHa news, check out our Discord channel, we’re always there and happy to chat!
Rat Tales and More… is free DLC update, featuring:
New events: Including a rat-centred tale, a Thea dating game, and an invasion of foreign wizards and their flock.
New Human class: The Berserker, is a wild warrior whose power is gained from Destiny.
New Rat classes: Just when you thought there’s enough rattyness in Thea, we give you the Tsarat, the Warrant, the Healrat, the Mystrat, and a cute little baby rat!
New Dwarven class: Ever wondered what dwarven women do in the depths of their underground kingdoms? The Matrioshka answer that question and show just how powerful they are.
New characters that can join your group: Gnolls, Polar Bears, old magicians…
New pets to discover: eight new additions to our Thea menagerie.
The Graveyard: Finally, the many deaths of Thea’s heroes are now recorded for posterity.
Also included in the update is an important fix to the multiplayer mode, so now you can enjoy Thea 2 with friends again!
Now that the date is settled, we are hard at work to complete the Gold version of the game, which means that we are feature and content complete (admittedly, some of the features seem to be cursed and need fixing!) and trying to finalise the game’s stability. This in turn signifies that in the weeks to come, we’ll be bug fixing like crazy, polishing till our elbows hurt and putting in those finishing touches on the AI.
What does it mean for the Beta?
We will have the Beta up and running for a few more weeks, but then we do plan to close it for a bit before release, so that even our faithful Beta testers can perhaps enjoy one or two new things on release.
Our improved battle maps are now less flat and have the location models in for more flavour.
So, we’re at the end of July now, and I am sure you’re all wondering how things are progressing, right? Well, things are going well. We are producing regular patches/updates (8 big ones so far) to catch bugs as well as modify features due to feedback and/or add new ones.
Our biggest hurdle remains firmly in the AI behaviours. While the AI at the moment is learning more and more complex tasks and combinations, and in the weeks to come, we will hopefully have it become more and more aggressive and proactive towards the player.
But for now, we come across such odd diplomatic conversations:
I mean, I did not declare war on him, and I certainly did not refuse any offers, maybe I accidentally said no to a date, or something, and he’s upset now? Don’t know, but he is angry…
Last month we officially entered into closed beta and now, together with the first wave of testers, we are working hard at bug hunting and monitoring player feedback. As such, this month I am only going to quickly say that we are alive, we are working hard to make that announced early Autumn deadline!
Here is a link to the Home of Wargames video, where you can finally see some gameplay and myself…
And here are a few screenshots of things we improved via feedback (we did a lot more, but those are a few visual bits I can share.
Locations no longer have the additional red markers under them, to allow for better immersion. And units also have a less obtrusive bottom marker.And as part of a larger design progress of monster lairs, we now also show the more difficult lairs with the red light.Continue reading
We’ve had a pleasantly surprising response to the beta announcement, and also just to us working on the remake. As such, we have seen a lot of new ‘faces’ on our community sites. With that in mind, I decided that this month’s dev diary will take a look at the team and try to give you an insight on how we’ve been doing thus far.
So, for those of you who are new here, our team is made up of six people:
Khash – ‘The Programmer’ aka grandmaster of all MuHa code!, CEO
SirPi – Lead Game Designer
Yuuki – Writer/Quest designer/Community manager
Obi – Programmer
Shell – Lead QA and everything else we might need of him…
In addition to the fantastic six, we work with freelance artists and composers and the wonderful Andy, a programmer who worked with us on the UI code.
Team Q&A
We will start with a few questions I actually asked the team myself:
What is so far, your favourite part of working on Master of Magic?
Khash: Modability is by far the most interesting part for me, as this opens the possibility for players to make the game truly their own, something that a team of any size won’t be able to achieve.
A’vee: I had a lot of fun creating those tiny animations for the 2d town map – things like little characters debating in front of the university building or a tiny wizard atop the Wizards’ Guild. I feel these have really added life into that map, I wish I could spend some more time on this task.
SirPi: For me, the joy and tribulations come together in the complexity of the original game’s rules. There are just so many little exceptions and quirks. And then you try to capture them, and recreate them, but also keeping in mind we want new players to discover this magic too. If we had more than six people and our resources, I think there could easily be a whole team with me working on how to approach this. So yes, I love doing it, but it is also tough.
Obi: It’s probably been said before by someone, but the spells and working on them. The key role spells play in the game and their versatility are the true selling point and the thing that makes Master of Magic stand out. And so working on recreating and implementing those spells, so that they continue to give the player that sense of magic and power has been really interesting and inspiring.
Shell: Working on an existing and classic IP, or more specifically, attempting to recreate the old magic while bringing it into the current game market. I spent a lot of time playing and researching classic MoM in preparation for this, so seeing our version and how the two work together is what I enjoy.
Me (Yuuki): Delving into a wonderful, magical world that has meant so much for the history of gaming. Interacting with the awesome fanbase, even when they are critical, I just like the fact that we’re talking and resolving stuff. I also really liked adding some background story/lore to wizards and heroes and races, although I will say that also goes into the ‘stressful category’. I loved doing it, but I didn’t always get it right, and I hate it when my recreation causes disappointment for the core fans. Still, MoM is such a rich game, it is a blast to work with its many, magical possibilities.
Before we move on to the actual dev diary, we would like to make an announcement that might be very interesting for quite a few players: the start of the beta isn’t far now, and we’re looking for willing beta testers!
If you would like to give us a hand and give honest feedback on the current version of the game, look no further and click here.
Show and tell
So this month the dev diary will be brief, or rather it will certainly show more than tell, as we are gearing up towards a proper Beta build now. Our friends and family have been hard at work being our personal guinea pigs and precursors of the process. But, soon (can’t tell you a precise date, but it is coming up fast now) we will want to extend this to all of you, our lovely fans. So, for this month, I will share once again, some of the feedback led changes we have made, especially to the visuals of Master of Magic
This month we decided to go back to the beginning as it were and talk about what exactly makes Master of Magic magical? And the answer of course is spellcasting.
Over 200 Spells
Firstly, there are so many different types of spells. There are resistance spells, buffing spells, battle spells and global spells that can affect the whole world, terrain changing spells, curses, damage dealing blasts, crowd control, transforming spells, creating objects, summoning creatures and/or heroes, buffing the Wizards themselves, making your towns more efficient/or making your enemies towns suffer – the list goes on. And even within these types of spells, there are unique characteristics and effects. For example, while some spells share a simple and common mechanic, like summoning spells – they pretty much do what they say on the can, they summon things, but even they can sometimes surprise you.
Summoning spells call upon a creature of magic to serve your will. Those creatures are governed by their own set of rules, and are typically split into two types: battle only summons and world summons: that become part of your army both overland and in combat. But then, even here, you get Torin, the extra special champion that can only be recruited via a Life summoning spell. He is an exception to the summoned units and to heroes because his ‘tags’ are both “fantastic units” and “hero”. For the purpose of game mechanics then, Torin is classified as fantastic (mostly… ), so that all spells and skills that affect fantastic units can also affect him – although he has kick ass immunities, so you are not likely to affect him at all!. But, as a hero he becomes a more complex and unique case. He is presented in-game as a hero – so he is listed as one in our army, and so gets the hero equipment screen where he can be equipped with items. His presence in a town will stop it from rebelling and so on. But, he cannot be resurrected, only summoned again, and none of the spells that work on normal units (therefore also on other heroes) will work on Torin.
