JPublic Will Play It - July 2010 - Spectromancer (plus expansion)

[jpublic]

Spectromancer(Plus League of Heroes Expansion)
Developer: Apus Software and Three Donkeys LLC
Publisher: Three Donkeys LLC
Platform: PC
Price:Steam: $10 for the base game, $15 for game plus League of Heroes expansion

Home Page

Screenshot Page at Above.

Before I continue, let me say if it wasn't for my iPod dying, I'd have avoided another Russian game on principle. These Russian games are getting to be a nasty trend.

Spectromancer is an online fantasy card game that was originally based on the game Astral Tournament created by Alexy Stankevich of Apus Software in 2002. Astral Tournament was a critical and worldwide success, and in 2006 they started working on Astral Tournament 2. Richard Garfield (MtG creator) and Skaff Elias from Three Donkeys joined with the team, and this turned into Spectromancer.

For a bit of background, the main game includes six classes, a single player campaign, and the potential for multiplayer - via the Online League, LAN play, or even Hotseat play. The expansion, League of Heroes adds a trio of new classes and another single player game mode.

After a quick download, I loaded up the game, and was pleasantly surprised to not have to deal with a DirectX or other redist install. I was also pleasantly surprised to see a dialogue on starting the game, allowing me to choose windowed mode right off.

I'll be honest, this is a fairly good start to things. I hope the shoe to drop - assuming there is one - isn't a size 1000 on my head.

So, I start a campaign, and... huh. Apparently, the copy you BUY off Steam is still a demo copy until you unlock, which only allows you to play one class and not use any of the LoH features. A bit of fiddling allowed me to fix that. Odd that for some reason Steam wouldn't let me copy-paste these keys, it normally does. I do admit to being amused that the code for the game is in hexadecimal.

Back to the campaign. I create my character, and randomly decide to choose a class of Sorcerer, on Easy. And wall-o'-text, telling me about a war that happened 1000 years ago. Bad demigod, using some nasty artifact (a Prism), tried to take over the universe. He was defeated, his Prism shattered, and the pieces distributed among a group of powerful mages that were guaranteed to never form any alliances, so the shards would never be joined. The land was ruled by these mages, each one having unparalleled control over one aspect of the Astral Spectrum.

So, my character, the mighty Sorceror Bob, is an apprentice to the Master of Chaos. He is approached by the guardian angel of the world (Celestia) and warned of a dire threat on the horizon.

Right, then.

Next, we have a game screen... and a wall-o'-text about how Bob's master has basically become corrupted by the power of the Chaos shard and is on a war of conquest. Celestia fought and weakened him, but has been temporarily banished. It is up to Bob to defeat him and claim the shard.



So, a quick explanation. Across the top, you see the Master of Chaos, weakened with his 30 life. He, like Bob and all other mages, can use Fire, Air, Water, and Earth magic. Since he's a Chaosmaster, he can use Chaos magic. Below, you see Bob with his 60 life - note that instead of Chaos magic, he uses Sorcery.

Below that you see my cards. Each turn you get a point in each of the types of magic, and each spell - a summoning, attack spell, or whatever costs some of those points. Each turn you can cast one spell.

It should be noted, that unlike other card games, you don't use up cards when you cast them. Also, your 'hand' is chosen randomly at the start of each match - you don't build decks, per se.

So, let's get into it. When you summon a creature, you drop it into one of the 6 slots on your side. Like in Magic, there's a turn of summoning sickness when they can't attack, but can block. Blocking is decided by positioning. If you (or your opponent) places a critter in the corresponding slot above (or below) a critter on the other side, they duke it out. If no one is there to block, damage is done to the mage.



Here you can see some info associated to a critter. Note cost of 3 Fire, the attack power of 3, the life points of 13, and the special ability.

It took some time for me to figure things out. Originally I tried to overwhelm him with critters, but he kept on summoning a chaos critter called an Insanian Peacekeeper, which healed him up. With the ranks all filled, he was building strength faster than I could take him down. Luckily, I had some mass effect spells - one Earth and one Water - that cleared the board, as well as some spells that did directed damage to him. Once I started using the directed damage spells, it was all over.

Once I'm done, we have another wall-o'-text, basically saying all the Shardholders (the Council) have been corrupted, and Bob must gather the shards and give them to Celestia for safekeeping.

Thus, we have our quest, and the first of the shards.

For those of you wondering: Why yes, I do think Celestia has a plan and Bob is her patsy. Either I've become so damnably jaded I'm getting paranoid, or I've seen this plot device a few thousand times. I'm thinking a little from column A, a little from column B, honestly.

And look! The world map!



Each of those mini-portraits is a duel you can have. Before you start each one, you get a little blurb on it - some back story, how hard it is, what bonuses you and your opponent get, as well as the rewards.

Hmm. Which way to go? Hey, I kept all those D&D dice for a reason, I'll use them.

Roll a d6 (1-2 = 1, 3-4 = 2 and so on) and... the Cleric Deomir it is. Apparently he was an ally of the Master of Chaos, and won't let Bob by. Bob starts with a Priest of Fire critter. Let's do it.

Interestingly, Bob's load out for this combat is Wall-heavy, with multiple critters with high life, low attack. Although the way the Wall of Lightning deals directed damage to the enemy each turn is kind of awesome. It took a bit, but Bob was victorious. For it, we get a Fire Elemental card, which is expensive, has high life, annoyingly variable attack power that required you to not use Fire magic once you summon it, and a couple nice special abilities. Eh.

Well, this is interesting. Each time you engage an opponent (and win) you move location, which means you can end up out of range of a previous combat option.

Roll a d6 and... the Dominator Fademir, who is a lackey of the Council, and means to slow you down. He starts with one of those annoying Insanian Peacekeepers, but less points in each of his magic pools to play with. However, Bob has to beat him in 10 turns. Took Bob two tries, and the only time he won the second time was abuse of the Wall of Fire - weak defense, no attack, but every time you summon one you do 5 damage to all the opponents critters. That allowed Bob to keep the enemy's side mostly clear so other summons could wear him down.

I'm sensing a trend here, one that may in fact be awesome. Moving on.

So my next combat comes up, roll a d6 and... Zippy. Zippy. Seriously? Zippy?! Wait, no, We're not going there.

So Zippy is an Illusionist, a mad mage guarding his forest. He starts with two Nettling Fairies, which has the ability to change slots randomly each turn. They were mostly an annoyance until Bob's critters and some handy fireball spells could wear them down. The big threat was his Wall of Reflection, which had the nasty ability to do 100% of all damage received, from spells or attacks, onto Bob.

So, having defeated Zippy, the only options for the next combats were previously available opponents. I'm not sure if that's because the path I ended up taking was a line across the bottom of the map, or because Bob will have to end up fighting everyone.

Next up, Chappy, a Cleric.

Okay seriously, who comes up with these names? 'Bob' isn't quite as silly as I was expecting, in comparison.

Well Chappy gets increased magic pools, Bob starts with a Master Healer, which is a fairly expensive critter that every turn heals 3 damage to Bob and his critters. Not very difficult, as Bob overwhelmed him with inexpensive critters that were effectively immortal thanks to the Master Healer. Got a Titan for his troubles, an expensive, powerful creature that does a massive strike to an opposing critter when summoned.

Here's my current map, with Bob's path in red, and his next opponent, Lorena already chosen:



This combat was remarkably tricky, since Lorena had a lot of magic to play with and powerful cards. Bob managed to survive, barely. Got a Sacrifice card, which allows you to trade a summoned critter for a bunch of magic points.

Next up, Niraon, a Mechanician. Apparently, this combat can be ended quickly by summoning a Mind Master (an expensive Water critter I gained as an award earlier), since Niraon might be sympathetic. After a couple turns, and the use of the Sacrifice card, Bob summoned a Mind Master, and the combat was over. Got a powerful Earth critter, the Hydra as a reward.

Since I'm coming up against the size limit of these columns, I'm going to skip ahead in the play by play. Many of the following combats had a gimmick of one sort or another, which necessitated a different strategy in each one.

For those keeping track, that was the awesome bit. Each combat is a little different, and the randomness of the cards you get makes each combat a different challenge.

After several combats, in which it became clear I did have to defeat everyone, I made it to the boss of the region, Flora, who held the Life Shard. Standard 'I knew you as a child and should have killed you then' speech, with Celestia showing up saying Flora was mad. Bah.

And then, we're whisked off to another region!

Image redacted due to board limitations. Bah. It was a picture of the new region map.

Carrying on, the most noteworthy thing of this region is how Bob got a pet griffin. Basically, he starts each combat with the griffin in play, and some of the battle rewards are permanent boosts for it.. Also, some of the rewards are bonuses like the ability to see the opponent's cards of a specific type, bonus magic, etc. instead of cards. Oh yes, and can't forget to mention the enemy 'Rotwang'.

No, I wasn't making that up.

Anyway, Bob defeated the next boss, who had the Mechanics Shard, and in the wall-o'-text we were notified he felt more 'complete' yet guilty. Next Bob was immediately thrown into a combat against the holder of the Control Shard, who was apparently a thoroughly evil git. After his defeat, he declared that he'd have joined Bob had he known how awesome Bob was.

Heh.

I'm not going to directly spoil the results of the third and final area, but let me just say there is a twist at the end of the game, and it's actually kind of cool.

Having completed the main quest (it only took me a few hours - I was playing on Easy), I tried the League of Heroes Arena mode. This is basically a tournament, in which you compete to get points and move up in rankings over eight rounds. Like in the main game, each combat has some special gimmick attached to make it a bit tricky. Amusing.

Spectromancer is, like many others of its type, a card game that is fairly easy to pick up, but can be quite difficult to master. The game shows quite blatantly that it was influenced by Magic: The Gathering, which makes sense considering Three Donkeys is made of MtG developers. The game graphics are decent, even fairly good considering it's a card game, easily on par with MtG's latest computer showing. The sounds are serviceable, if a bit weird at times. The computer AI seems to know what it's doing - I found Normal to be quite tricky at times, and even on Easy the game tripped me up fairly often. My only real complaint is that much like MtG, you sometimes just don't get the cards you need, and end up doomed from the start.

All in all, very fun game, and I highly recommend it. I'm sure if a CoG League was set up, there'd be good times. The multiplayer is where I really think it will shine.

For each game, I list three ratings:
1) The JPublic Fun Rating: A rating of how much fun I had. Consider it equivalent to your standard game score. 4 out of 5

2) The JPublic Irritation Rating: A measure of how much I wanted to throw the game out the window at my most frustrated. Not really an issue until you get to the above 4.0 rating, but a warning. 1.5 out of 5

3) The JPublic Value Point: A level at which I'd say it's a must buy, because at that price it's a great investment. $10.00, but only with the expansion. $7.50 for the base game.

[jpublic]

I did this one early because, well, I was done. Next issue will be Numen: Contest of Heroes.

[mightbe]

Keep it up, killer. I'd suggest centering your images though and perhaps adding italicized captions below the for easily tying comments to specific shots. I've had no time to do any design work lately but your best bet is to find me on cog IRC and force me to do it on the spot.

[jpublic]

I had captions, but I had to cut them due to length. They have a high 'cost' associated to them.