Author: Yuuki

The inhabitants of Arcanus and Myrror

While the contest for the elusive Master of Magic is fought with great spells and ultimate wizard power, it is still all built on the sweat of the little folk down below, or so they tell you. You may be an ever powerful mage, but you need your cannon fodder… great men, women and creatures who will be manipulated into working and fighting for you, many that will die in blazing glory.  

In our previous diaries we mentioned that all fourteen races are returning to Master of Magic, and here we describe and show some more of them, especially for players who may not know the original so well.

Your Wizard will choose a race they will lead at the start of the game, but as you grow in power and reach, you may conquer or otherwise gain new cities and thus rule over a diverse cast of people by the end of your playthrough. 

Every race in Master of Magic is different. Not only visually, but also in terms of game mechanics. Some may have access to different sets of buildings, different numbers and types of units, or have special racial abilities, such as troll regeneration or draconian flying ability. Choosing the right people to rule over may dictate your tactics, especially at the start of the game.

Lizardmen

Lizardmen are bipedal, aquatic reptilians. Physically, the lizardmen are small, resilient, and agile and can move on water with ease. What they may lack in stature, they make up in numbers. There are some theories that suggest common ancestry with the draconians, but neither race finds them convincing. Lizardmen form mostly tribal societies, and they tend to build settlements using simple technologies. They also prefer wetlands as their settling grounds and so, they tend not to be expansive, unless convinced otherwise by a strong Wizard.

Lizardmen are one of the Arcanus races and as such, they can be chosen as the starting race by any Wizard that does not start on Myrror.

Mercenaries

In this month’s spotlight, we’ll talk about the brave mercenaries who may decide to join our cause, the heroes and champions of Master of Magic. So first things first, all 35 are coming back and as with everything else, we are attempting to recreate all their skills and special abilities faithfully.

Types of mercenaries:

There are two types of mercenaries in Master of Magic, Heroes and Champions. Heroes are the more common hired hands, while Champions are the more unique characters. Every mercenary in Master of Magic has their own, short backstory and fun flavour to explore. In terms of mechanics then, the Champions tend to have more abilities and higher stats than heroes, as well as higher prerequisites needed for them to be interested in serving you.  

Some of the extra, non-canon events we’ve added may have specific mercenaries join the wizard as a reward, or some events may have a special path unlocked when a particular type of mercenary is present. 

Events

There are several different types of events in Master of Magic, and they will all make a comeback in the remake:

1. Map locations
   

The map of Master of Magic is filled with various locations that can be explored by the player.  These include things like fallen temples, ruins or mysterious caves where both treasure and challenge may await. There are also three power nodes, Sorcery, Nature and Chaos, and the magic towers that serve as portals between Arcanus and Myrror. All of those locations have an event attached to them, so that the appropriate path will trigger – combat if there are defenders, or loot if it is abandoned. Those events are fairly straight forward and apart from some extra fluff here or there, they will remain unchanged.

Welcome to the first of our Dev Diaries for Master of Magic. Seeing as this one is the first in the ‘series’ we will offer a quick recap of the development info so far, but perhaps offering a few more details.

Who is MuHa Games?

We’re an indie studio based in Poland. Our previous two games are called Thea: The Awakening, and Thea 2: The Shattering, and they are best described as a: gritty, dark fantasy, survival games set within a post apocalyptic world, inhabited by a combination of classical fantasy critters and an abundance of mythical and folkloric influences. So, while MoM is a very different game in its core, we certainly have experience with the 4x/strategy genre. As such, when we were approached by Slitherine about remaking such a beloved classic of the genre, we were very excited to say yes. Our design ideology is simple, we try to make games that we’d want to play ourselves and we do our best to communicate with our fans and thus make the best product we can. 

The old and the new.

Our design philosophy is to attempt to recreate the mechanics and gameplay of MoM as faithfully as we can, while also making an awesome game for new fans. So, with that in mind, here are a few things we already have that you may recognise from the original. Now, these things may return with some changes, all the features that are visual will of course have new graphics, and some mechanics may be altered if we were unable to recreate them.