Mind Over Magic Reviews

I like to support Klei, mainly because i have so many hours in ONI. This is a cute game but theres nothing to keep me coming back right now - more than anything I find it slow, repetitive and annoying.

Barely fun for one playthrough, they rushed 1.0 because they know it's not that good.. It's not that good only get it if its a dollar or free, flash games used to have about the same value if not more. Cons: - no depth in battles, most abilities of the elemental mages have a clear and boring best in slot - annoying job queue system which requires a lot of manual targeting - the dungeon underground is too bland, there's little variation and story elements - the game has the basics of a turn based rpg and the ONI base building without any of the grand and deeper gameplay systems, which makes it just tedious, it doesn't even feel like a game to me. Pros: - it's one of the few wizard school games of this type - making your wizard team is fun for a few hours as you dream of being dumbledore - the fog was a creative game element to direct the player - its artstyle is decent

I love magic games, and I love colony games. But I can't recommend this magic colony game. The tutorial is a massive info dump, even wiki guides make the information needed easier to follow. Even after understanding everything it's simply not fun to play, with so many gameplay elements each one isn't fleshed out enough to feel satisfying - it's feels more like a bunch of rushed mini games crammed into what used to be a colony sim idea. I'd prefer fewer ideas better executed, sometimes less is more.

Mind Over Magic is a textbook example of a game that follows all the right formulas without understanding why they work. It borrows mechanics from successful games, yet they never come together in a meaningful way. The result is a game that, despite having all the right ingredients, feels soulless. Let me elaborate with the most prominent examples that brought me to this conclusion. I did enjoy the first 10 hours of figuring out how the game works and I especially liked the puzzle of optimizing my school layout. Arranging rooms efficiently with their different requirements was engaging. However, as I gained a deeper understanding of the game the negatives started to outweigh the positives. One of the biggest issues is resource gathering which revolves around battling in the Underschool and is therefore an essential part of the game. Unfortunately, combat is a tedious grind due to a lack of strategy, variation, and balance. It’s frustrating that there’s no option to auto-resolve battles as they quickly become a mindless obstacle to progression. Then there’s the theme. On paper, running a magic school sounds intriguing, but in execution it feels like an afterthought. While everything fits the theme aesthetically it doesn’t actually contribute to the gameplay experience. You could swap out the setting for a restaurant, a grocery store, or a fire station, and little would change beyond the visuals. Because of this the magic school setting feels like a coat of paint rather than a core part of the game’s identity. The game also suffers from a lack of proper guidance. There’s no tutorial, just an in-game wiki that the developers seemingly expected to serve as one. A reference guide is not the same as a tutorial. On top of that, tooltips are poorly implemented or outright missing. The game might tell you that your room needs to be "skewed", but to find out what that means you’ll have to dig through another menu. It’s tedious and inefficient, and a simple tooltip could have solved the problem. All of this makes me wonder: did the developers ever ask themselves what would make players want to engage with the game? I play games because they are engaging, entertaining, and rewarding. Mind Over Magic expects you to create your own sense of enjoyment from its disjointed mechanics and that’s why it ultimately fails. I do think there is potential and that various issues could be fixed. I would give this a mixed review if the system weren’t binary. My verdict is negative as I doubt the developers will address the raised issues now that the game has just gone into full release.

It's a game about running a magic school where none of the gameplay has anything to do with running a magic school. Most of your staff will never teach a single class in their entire careers. None of the systems interact. Your students learn way too fast, so you have to churn them to prevent them getting unhappy. It makes it hard to hold on to any of your favourites - but it's also hard to have favourites because they're too interchangeable. Graduating students produces resources, but almost nothing you actually need. Instead it generates relics, which need to be used in equipment slots to generate experience in them, which can then be ground up into gnosis shards, which can then be used to turn maybe 1/10 of your students into an apprentice or staff member who'll last longer than 3 days, but you have more staff than resources to gather, and they level cap trivially. This system is then bolted onto an XCom-like dungeon explorer and Rimworld style base builder, even going so far as to use most of Rimworld's UI. So to recap; The magic school system requires churn, produces resources you don't need or can't use most of the time, but this churn causes you to be unable to form a sentimental attachment to most of your cast. This is then grafted into a Rimworld and XCom gameplay loop hybrid, both of which hugely benefit from sentimental attachments to your cast. This needed to pick a lane between RimCom and Theme Hospital, it's torn in half going down the middle.

It's a very good colonizer with survival and magic elements. You make a school and try to teach students how to become better at their attuned elemental choice of magic and then either Hire them to be a staff at the school, or Graduate them. You can also expel any students that are not learning and wasting a student slot. The fog comes in and it has a timer to let you know how many days you have to do the Ritual to push the fog back. I just bought this game 9.5 hours ago and played it without stopping. It's a really good management game too, you can set priority tasks for certain staff/students and try to make sure that your rooms and etc are all to everyone's liking so they can be in a good mood. If their mood drops too low then they will risk breaking down which will then give them a "Scar" which is a negative trait to hinder their performances and etc. There is an "Underschool" as well and it lets you take your mages into combat, which a lot of the initiates have goals that require beating a mission for say "Lvl 4 mage party recommended" and when they accomplish these goals they get extra xp. The harder the Goal the bigger the xp. I try to get all their goals done first before Hiring them to staff because then they get a nice boost, they don't have goals after they grow up. (lol) I really like the magic theme also, ya got the elemental magica and then you also have beast taming as well. When I signed off I just finished researching Quilt familiars that help haul and mine things for my school so my staff can have more time to do other things. Oh and also the chores are all handled better by certain elements, I.E. Nature is good at Harvesting, Fire is good for Hunting and Cooking, Lightning is good for Researching and charging mana lanterns, Earth is good at construction.. etc. etc. The graphics are very neat. It's not too demanding, but it's also not that basic either. The models are 3D and even the room layouts at first look 2D and linear, but you can actually add Furniture and etc to make it 3D after awhile. All the animations are fun to watch and I like watching the initiates transform into adults after their Ceremonies. If you're not happy with their appearance you can research the Magic Mirror and alter their appearance however you like. I like making them match up with their elemental magic they are attuned to. So if you're wondering if it's worth playing, I'd say it is. I have yet to really run into any problems or anything that tells me it's "Half baked" or anything. Again, I'm almost 10 hours in one sitting, so when I get time to get back on and play some more, I might update when I'm further in and know if there is a wall or anything.

I was playing this from the earliest versions, enjoying the game and hoping for it to become more with each regular update. The game went through a lot of changes until 1.0 (current version at the time of review), the devs listened to feedback and it turned out good, actually really fun. Its similar to ONI but less polished and with lesser freedom to how to solve problems, which are centerpiece of the game - you need x and for that you need y, z and c, but c requires a and d, or you could do just f and g, up to you. An ultimate indie magic base building fantasy is what I would call this game, a fair warning, a huge part of the game is base building (which is hugely predetermined at the start of the game by the seed), lesser part is focused on actual school management, and fights still need polish not to be repetitive. Also, on higher difficulties you will need excel tables to do well. I would recommend trying it if youre into this kind of games and/or watch a good deal of gameplay.

Build your own school for young mages! This is a 2D simulation with many twists over other simulations. It has exploration, lots of building (with arbitrary rooms and sizes), mage sims who work on the schedules you enter, smart groups for scheduling or tasks where you can create criteria and even new students will be automatically selected, RPG stats and skills, and turn-based old-school tactical magic combat. Although it's 2D, it has much of the creativity of a 3D building game. It will feel familiar to anyone who plays the genre of sims, but has some very unique gameplay elements. You start at the site of an ancient school of magic destroyed by a curse, and your three starting professors (with the help of the founder's ghost) must recruit and train young mages to eventually become professors, to help lift the curse. The more students you train and graduate, the bigger your school can be, and the more potent the school becomes. Because you're expected to eventually graduate students and retire staff (which increases power of school by creating artifacts), combined with random events, this has many hallmarks of a roguelike. There are tons of secrets to find, unusual plants and materials to harvest, powerful relics to find and create, wands to upgrade, and deadly traps and events to handle. Losing a mage may take a little time to replace, but everyone is replaceable. I found this game quite entertaining, and am a fan of other Klei games such as Oxygen Not Included. This is not as complex as ONI and may not have the replayability, but has much of the charm and excitement of discovery through exploration.

Oxygen Not Included (ONI) proved to me that I am not a very smart person. I enjoyed ONI, wanted to play it, wanted to be good at it - but I just couldn't really pull the complexity together to understand all the systems and advance very far in it. This game gives a form of that gameplay loop (though very different) that is a lot more accessible for me and very enjoyable. I am glad that I've played ONI and Rimworld, because without those experiences the learning curve for this game is going to be tough (specifically the systems around schedules and meetings needs). The tutorial for the game is bare bones and isn't doing much for you. However, the nested tool tips are well done and the descriptions are pretty clear. With all that being said, I am loving this game and enjoying the process of playing it. Clear objectives, lots of flexibility, great community management, good visuals, and consequently a great game. If you like games like ONI, definitely recommend it. If you are a player who finds ONI comprehensible and "simple" than this game is going to probably be boring for you. It doesn't have that same kind of complexity that ONI offers and this is definitely more accessible to a wider audience as a result.

This is a really solid game and it really fills the light management niche quite nicely. It's fun to play around in if you like designing and the requirements for all the different types of rooms and spaces in the school vary enough to keep things interesting. It manages to offer a little challenge for those who like adapting on the fly while still being engaging enough for those that like to tear everything down and rebuild in a more organized, modular fashion. As opposed to Oxygen Not Included, the game doesn't require you to delve into the management of pipes and material transport systems (which was my least favorite part of ONI). There's basic farming and production limits and storage but that's about the extent of it. You can quickly craft little zombie bots to do a lot of your hauling for you which frees up your teachers and students to teach and learn and dance in a circle around an enchantophone. Staff and student scheduling is simple, though the grouping system is still a bit wonky. I also get the feeling that the devs intend that the 'best' way to play is to churn through your students and staff. Graduating and Retiring your staff is incentivised through the reward of relics which are used to upgrade subsequent students/staff, so if you are one of those players that gets attached to your characters you're going to be making the game more difficult for yourself. Overall I think this is an easy recommend. The developers have done a great job on the skeleton of the game, so depending on your options chosen it can play as a challenging, resource-scarce, base survival game, a light magic-themed school/base designer game, or anywhere in between.