I am really enjoying it. The resource management is pretty gentle by default, so I’m probably going to start a new run on harder settings, but the basic mechanics are very enjoyable. The system for rooms in your magic school is actually quite interesting- whenever you make a room, it gets some tags based on how it’s shaped and where it’s located. For example, rooms can have the “Skewed” tag if one wall of the room is higher than the other, or a room can have the “Silent” tag if there are no adjacent work-rooms or class-rooms. Different room designations require different tags on the room and room designations are useful and carry significant bonuses. Currently, I’m grappling with the fact that it’s hard for me to find a good spot to put certain things I need now, so I may have to build an wizard tower that’s disconnected from my central school simply to have the control to make a set of rooms with the correct qualities.

Which I find very exciting, interesting and fun! The little meeple also pick up personality quirks and traits over time that cause them to have a higher Conviction (the equivalent of Mood or Morale in most colony sims) when they’re met, or a lower Conviction when they aren’t. For example, several of my wizards have relationships where they prefer to sleep in the same room as a specific other wizard, while another one may want to eat in the same dining room as another one, or a wizard may deeply dislike doing a particular task, or love being outside. I often find the “personalities” assigned to the pawns in colony sim games either overwhelming in detail or irrelevant. This strikes an interesting balance, because they pick them up over time and each of them is simply a thing that you can try to do for a small (but relevant) bonus, or strategically avoid by meeting other needs.

The basic loop for gameplay consists of taking in new students; using your staff to take care of upkeep, food and teaching; graduating or hiring the student once they are fully trained; and then getting new students. You expand your school and gain progressively more options to make better and better students, eventually upgrading their magical powers or advancing them to higher tier students called “Apprentices” who can do more useful work and have higher magical stats. The eventual goal is to cultivate a good student base and then retire staff members who are less useful and replace them with better iterations of themselves, gradually expanding the total number over time.

It feels pretty good- you get strongly rewarded for teaching students and having someone leave by graduation or retirement gives you very useful rewards that will help with long-term progression and strength.

I enjoy the architectural system for the depth that the tags and room requirements have, which will naturally create interesting structures and break up a monotonous optimal uniformity. You are encouraged to have specialized, oddly shaped, and carefully positioned rooms. The game has systems for checking structural stability, which makes upgrades that enhance that or give you additional structural options interesting and exciting.

I haven’t even gotten all the features of the game yet, despite playing for several days, so I’m excited about its long-term potential. My next run will definitely focus on the dark magic of the game, which allows you to make adorable quilted undead minions to do various manual labor tasks for you.

The combat the game has is instanced, turn-based and pleasant. There are options to prepare for fights that offer interesting strategic choices, and the tactical decisions available are distinct, useful and purposefully minimal. My most talented combat-wizards only have a handful of spells (3-4) and they each have a use-case. The game has complete information about fights before you commit to them, allowing you to prepare carefully and strongly favoring good strategy over luck.

So, yeah, highly recommend. Love it, kind of surprised no one told me about it until now, since I’ve been aching for a colony management or survival game focused on wizards for ever.