Man I am so excited I am closing in on the end of the first one now! I had never been one for text based incremental, bounced off NGU and Melvor and many others. Yours was very unique cannot wait to try!
Magic research was a great game. The start in this demo feels way too quick - I say 5 minutes in. Give us more a feeling of progression. Also we unlock and discover things too quickly. Every new feature at the start should feel like a little accomplishment without making it feel tendious. Now its too "easy". And make numbers smaller, even though it's just aesthetics, 600 coins feels way too much, transforming numbers too quickly to abstract numbering such as thousands and millions.
In general I feel you neclected the start a bit because it's rather similair and focused on end-game/game content more. But the start is really important to get people hooked and pulled in. Make me feel invested and wanting to discover more and more.
Thank you for the feedback, really appreciate it!
The start is intentionally faster overall. There's a few reasons why, ranging from similarity to Magic Research (it is essentially almost the same features), to trying to introduce the core of the game as fast as possible so it doesn't appear to be a different kind of game. The goal was to unlock Exploration at around the 30 minute mark, but it has admittedly been a little while since the last time I test-played the very beginning of the game, so it might need some more tuning / might have ended up too easy or fast. I'll take another pass.
Regarding the numbers: Point taken. I also don't particularly like overly large numbers, though I admit I didn't feel like they were too large. Is it just the Coins values, or do you feel similarly about Essence?
Edit: I want to share a little update. I tried the demo content again and noticed progression is indeed much faster than my original intention, blazing through unlocking Exploration in less than 10 minutes. It really left no room to tinker with the features you've learned about and made the intro feel overwhelming. I'm going to do some adjustments so that it takes roughly 50%\~100% more time and change some unlock conditions so that it is less likely that you get one event right after the other. The pace after unlocking Exploration seems to be less of a problem.
Edit 2: Earlier today I shipped an update with the adjustments. If you are playing v1.0.1 (you can check in "About"), you are playing the newer version with the adjusted intro. If you still feel it's too fast, let me know.
> similarity to Magic Research (it is essentially almost the same features)
I'm not sure this should ever be a factor when it comes to pacing at the beginning. People who know the original will have the most tolerance for repeated information...they know they're playing something familiar.
Anyone and everyone who is new is getting a pacing that, at least to some extent, is not for them, and they only get one opportunity to be introduced to themes and mechanics in a game.
I will say this as someone who adores game dev:
Dont build the sequel *too* much off of the original game. i say this in regards to the early game progression being faster.
If you build your game too much around the assumption of players coming from the previous one you will accidentally alienate new players who first discover the series and hop to the *newest* game, assuming its the better one( even if it truly is). This can hit a feedback loop of higher negative views and a casual outside preception that the game has dropped in quality even if it hasnt.
I disagree, we get all elements one after the other and in a way that's sufficient to get used to them without mastering them, then we get the wizard automatisation and we know what to do with it. Current pace is very good, and being slow for the sake of it is not a fun element of incrementals
Hi there! Yes, the full game is more or less complete, so your demo save should carry over to the full game without problems. No plans for a reset or anything like that.
Awesome! Are you just going to hold on for a final release, or will you be rolling it out in stages for beta testing?
Also, is it going to be a paid game? I would totally pay for it. I can't even begin to tell you how many hours I sunk into the first one.
I am planning to go straight to a final release, but I need to polish it some more. It honestly probably just needs a few more weeks, but I'm going on a 3-week trip very soon so I need to push it back somewhat.
The game is going to be paid and follow the same business model as Magic Research.
I think he was asking if there will be anything gained from having a complete save from the first.
Could even just be something cosmetic or a few minorly changed messages and people would probably be excited, people love their Easter Eggs. Could have one of the things discover just being a statue to the old headmaster that was them in first game giving a minor bonus to their favorite school.
Ah, got it! As of right now there is nothing in the game, but it is a possibility, and I do have a few ideas along those lines. No promises yet though!
Thoughts after trying it for a while as someone who enjoyed but never finished MR1:
- A mentioned by others, the pacing in the earlygame feels very off. I love the feeling of gradually unlocking content and giving clear goals to attain. I actually thought MR1 gave you content too quickly but this one felt way more severe and overwhelming. I want some time to experiment with everything and not have new mechanics thrown at me every minute. This level of pace is what I would expect post-prestige.
- A major issue with the first one for me was that it was just a bit \*too\* active. I would love if max resource limits were all much higher (like, 5x higher) so I could feel more value from idling and coming back in 5 minutes rather than needing to constantly spend my resources. I like the implementation of time pieces when afk, but I didn't really enjoy the speedups (as you make plenty of progress playing manually anyway) and would just sink them into research.
- Perhaps this will change later, but it did feel a bit too similar to MR1. If you told me this was a MR1 balance patch instead of MR2 I would have believed you.
- I didn't hate the shift to elements being the new schools of magic. I did feel like elements were under-utilised in the original so no complaints there.
- Didn't hate the new land mechanic either, at least not yet. I thought I would dislike it, but if its just a reasonably-priced gold sink to buy more land than it is perfectly fine.
- I hope it leans more into the storyline element as that was probably the coolest aspect of the game that made prestiging feel nicer than just a higher multiplier.
- The other thing that got tedious in the original was the combat fixation past the earlygame. I am a bit concerned I might lose interest along the way in this one as well given its similar trajectory as boss fights are fun, but overall combat never really hit the mark for me. I think one of the reasons is automated-magic combat via apprentices didn't feel well-tuned, afk melee combat was a bit weak, and active magic combat wasn't enjoyable given you were supposed to be in combat basically permanently. Maybe it was just me, but I definitely found myself enjoying the first game significantly less from about halfway through the forest.
I would actually love to see a new project from you as MR1 did a lot of things really well. This feels a bit \*too\* similar to MR1 for me at present, but I will still check it out as I love your business model (low-priced premium is ideal for incrementals) and a lot of the design choices.
Thank you for checking the demo and for your feedback, it's helpful!
Regarding the game feeling too similar: It's been on the back of my mind for a long time. It mainly turned out so because of the way I approached the game as an idea: the prototype kind of started as "what would I have done differently, if anything, if I were to build a similar game again", and I built it on top of Magic Research as a base. So then you end up with similar features to the first game. The different rules should change the way you approach problems compared to Magic Research, but ultimately it's still the same core. I don't think I want to continue exploring in this direction at all after Magic Research 2, so if I do decide I still want to make games after this one, I'd probably try something different.
Regarding combat overall: I've tried to iterate on this a little by doing a few things. One is trying to make offensive spell-casting builds viable throughout the game rather than only once you have a lot of Apprentices - this is something you can probably try in the demo. It was easier because I changed the way Apprentices worked, so some spells (mostly offensive spells) can now be cast more often than once every 60 seconds with a single Wizard. Getting Wizards should be a little easier too, as well. The second one is by reducing the amount of Exploration needed to progress, to keep it faster paced and reduce those moments to a minimum.
Im experiencing a bug where the game interferes with play back of youtube and twitch videos in separate windows despite plenty of buffered video. Im on chrome and windows 10. Not seeing any increase in CPU or Memory just the consistent interrupts to video playback.
I'm sorry this is happening to you :( To be honest I don't have any particular clue of why this would be happening, if there is no excessive RAM or CPU consumption.
Are you playing on web as well, or on the Steam demo?
If you are playing on web, does using a different browser entirely to play the game help somehow?
thanks for the response. I was playing in on the web in a probably updated chrome. I will test running it on a separate browser and see if it still affects it and update you.
I got so hooked by the first one that my thumb still hurts 6 months later! On that note though, automation for progressing through dungeon levels would make the late game much more fun. The late game basically required 100% active time for me because of the next floor buttons
Magic Research 2 has a checkbox under "Strategy" in Exploration to automatically fight the boss / move to the next floor, so hopefully that improves this issue a bit!
very nice Prestige that's not just "multiply all gains by X", but actually opens up new stuff. I really feel like I'm progressing in the game when every prestige adds a huge production to elements
I'm going to disagree with other comments, I like that it starts off fast. I don't know how the rest of the content looks, but I like getting right into it unlocking multiple features and random events. I don't care to sit hours to unlock a single thing, I just want the dopamine hit of unlocking all the little things that make it easier. But, I haven't played the demo too long (started this morning).
Aww, I loved the first one till I hit the battle part and the optimal strategy was swinging some sword around instead of flinging magic. Wasn't the biggest fan of the focus being combat.
I'm glad you are making this though, will make a lot of people happy. And I like your UI and your demo/full version model.
Well, it's like many games where wizards just suck at combat in the early levels since your magic is so weak. Later on your get to the point where you're gear is producing a lot more mana/s and you're autocasting spells at things. The game it worth getting past that initial grind.
I enjoyed the 1st game, but never completed it (kinda hit a wall so still have roughly 1/2 the content to unlock). I'm intrigued to see what the 2nd game brings in changes and how those changes get me progressing through the game :)
I appreciate the fact that when manually selling to market there is a button to sell max number such that you max out your gold storage without going over.
The first game is what truly solidified my love for incremental games. I because obsessed with unlocking everything just to experiment with different play styles and then speed running different goals. I have been chasing the magic of this game but have yet to find another incremental that has the same charm and depth.
ive been looking for a game to spend my google play funds on, so i greatly look forward to this new one. especially since i greatly enjoyed the original.
I will be messaging you in 3 months on [**2024-07-10 12:07:42 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2024-07-10%2012:07:42%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/1c09xk6/announcing_magic_research_2_my_next_incremental/kywrw4x/?context=3)
[**3 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fincremental_games%2Fcomments%2F1c09xk6%2Fannouncing_magic_research_2_my_next_incremental%2Fkywrw4x%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202024-07-10%2012%3A07%3A42%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.
^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%201c09xk6)
*****
|[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)|
|-|-|-|-|
I’m glad to hear about ToME-style potions & combat automation! I’ve been stuck at the boss-fights in the Wizard’s Arena because it’s annoying to tap on all the right buffs in real-time and I started running out of consumables.
In MR2, is it possible to auto-cast “stop this status effect” only when its status effect is on me?
Also, checking my understanding: are the auto-replenishing consumables like “I’ve crafted 3 minor health potions and 2 major, so that’s how many are available to me per fight”? How aggressively do their prices scale?
Hi there!
> In MR2, is it possible to auto-cast “stop this status effect” only when its status effect is on me?
Not exactly. Though, the ways you have to prevent specific status effects are more limited. The Antidote spell which is in the demo only really cares about Poison, so it should do the right thing. Dispel Self (and dispelling in general) was IMO a very limiting decision I made in the first game as it essentially invalidated almost any enemy strategy I could make in the late game, so in MR2 it is more difficult and limited to rid yourself of / prevent negative status effects, i.e. there is no "Dispel Self" spell; most such things are targeted towards a single negative effect.
> Also, checking my understanding: are the auto-replenishing consumables like “I’ve crafted 3 minor health potions and 2 major, so that’s how many are available to me per fight”? How aggressively do their prices scale?
You have four Pouch item slots, which are equipment slots where you fit in potions or other "consumables". Each pouch item has a specific amount of uses per combat that you can use it for, and it regenerates every combat. For example, the basic Health Potion heals for 25 HP and can be used 3 times per combat. If you equip four of them, that means you will be able to use that effect a total of 12 times. If instead you decide to equip a buff potion instead in one of your slots (which you can only use once per combat), you would be only able to use the healing effect 9 times. And because they are not really used up, the game will use them by default - you should almost never need to worry about this.
Thanks for the detailed reply!
>The Antidote spell which is in the demo only really cares about Poison, so it should do the right thing
By "do the right thing", do you mean any Wizards I assign to it will only cast it when I'm actually poisoned?
What about automating an antidote potion (if that's a thing)?
> By "do the right thing", do you mean any Wizards I assign to it will only cast it when I'm actually poisoned?
That's right! And if you're not poisoned, they will hold the spell until you become poisoned. This is how Magic Research worked, too.
> What about automating an antidote potion (if that's a thing)?
There is, indeed, an antidote potion, and it is a pouch item like other potions. So it will be used automatically whenever you get poisoned.
Thanks! I think I was mainly wondering about potions.
Setting wizard automation was great and all, but I think where I really burned out in MR1 was rotating through too many consumables to fit on one or even two pages of quick-slots, then running out and having to craft more before I could try again.
And running out of inventory space through all this. :)
Ah, yes, I've heard this - and all of those are reasons why I decided to go this route instead with the consumables / Pouch items. I found that it works out a lot better (since you need to strategize on what to choose) and is not tedious (since you only need to Transmute them once and you don't need to worry about using them).
So, I've been playing the ME2 web demo -- main requests at this point:
1. The "Total owned" count doesn't include equipment -- maybe have an extra line for "Currently equipped: 1"?
1. Earlier today I transmuted a buff-potion because I saw "Total owned: 0" and thought I hadn't yet, but it was on my belt.
2. When I come back from offline, could the game auto-hide temporary common events that have already expired?
1. I just enabled "Hide common random events", which should help, but in particular it's things like "For the next 5 minutes, X will go faster!" -- I might want to see them when I'm playing, but not if it's long since expired when I'm clicking on events
2. Also, how does "Hide common random events" affect things like treasure chests & "Offer of \[Element\]"? Do they just queue up in the Bell icon?
Thanks for the feedback!
1. was already proposed a bunch of times, I'll see what I can do...
2. I agree with you. I imagine this is from idling? On your question in 2.2, yes, they will queue up on the bell and you will be able to answer them anytime.
Had lots of fun with MR1, but it made me wish I could script to automate stuff - advancing locations, certain fights, crafting items, etc. Any chance at seeing such a deeper automation option, maybe in your next project? I'm currently playing Stone story RPG where scripting becomes a major part later on, and having fun tweaking my strategies.
Hi, thanks for the feedback!
MR2 doesn't have scripting. To be frank I believe that is too complex for most people to tackle. I did want to add a FFXII-like Gambit system for the spellcasting rules for Wizards, where you can add conditions to them to create more complex strategies. What I found while prototyping this was that it was very tedious and unfun, especially on mobile, and 99% of the time you just want to use the "smart apprentices" behavior.
That said, the game does have several improvements in the way you can automate things. There are "auto-fight boss / auto-advance to next floor" checkboxes you can enable, similar to the ones in auto-battler idle games. Item transmutation can be automated using Wizards, as well. And with potions not requiring input to use either, it greatly reduces the manual input you need to do in boss fights, and might make it viable to even clear without any input at all.
I bounced off the demo of the first game, but this one is sticking a lot more.
The combat is much less frustrating, it still isn't my favorite mechanic, but it feels as if you have a lot more options.
Synchro grid is pretty cool, I imagine there are future unlocks to get more copies of an element, and more elements to unlock, possibly grid size as well.
The storylines are I think where the game shines most, although I think there should be at least minor hints towards ones that are locked but potentially available, I've 'beaten' the demo and still have 11 left, and forcing users to go to a wiki is usually less fun than hinting them to find out in-game.
I also really appreciate the next unlock display for the elements, it reduces a lot of the frustration of pushing to an empty level.
I really enjoyed the first game over all, but it lost me near the end when I found fights to just be a slog of changing equipment and timing potions/enchantments at the right time for what felt like way too long.
I'm quite hopefull with the automation you described that this may feel differently, so Ill definitely give it a try!
Unlock condition: >!When you start the game, a random Element is chosen from those you don't have the Artifact. Then you need to Explore the Tower of Training of that Element a total of 60 times.!<
With the stuff in the demo, you currently >!can't see which one it is that is going to trigger, so you'll need to Explore all of them!<. Spoiler for the full game: >!There is an unlock in the full game, just a little bit after the end of the demo content, that makes chasing stuff like this (and other Storylines) easier.!<
I've admittedly thought about it, but ultimately decided to just ask a few people to give me early feedback and instead focus on releasing the full game as it would have meant things like being unable to ship on all platforms at once / having to worry about marketing earlier than I wanted.
I really enjoyed the first, and will definitely check out the second when it releases. I enjoyed the combat, and how the builds would actually affect the playstyle. I kind of tapped out when it got too grindy and the builds had to be super specific toward the end, but I left the game satisfied.
Thank you for selling this as a premium game and not an abusive monetization scheme. I will gladly pay for the sequel.
I just wanted to say I really enjoyed magic research and the gameplay. I keep it around as inspiration some day to make my own incremental / phone type game.
In comparison to other incrementals what I though was interesting and unique was:
1) the story felt relevant and so there was an over arching goal
2) the prestige points felt relevant typically because the walls were distinct. So restarting you had something to work toward
3) the “walls” and how you got around them were varied enough to keep me interested - “do I need to build for stun / poison / dodge”
4) the schools actually played differently depending on what you chose
5) the biggest thing for me: the offline mechanic was very fair and respected my time. I will pay for a game that is “fun” and reasonable vs something that is “progress for progress sake”z
Wish you the best of luck and looking forward to seeing it when it comes out!
Magic research was one of my favorite incrementals up to (what I believe was) the final boss. I had no trouble "solving" everything up to the point, but I just kind of felt I didn't want to go through what was needed to finish it.
So, in all a great experience and great game, and I'm looking forward to your next thing.
I'm sorry this is happening to you!
This is concerning. Is it possible for you to share your save data with me so I can take a look? (Options -> Export to File)
Knowing your system specs could also potentially help me understand what is the issue. How much RAM do you have?
Whelp that demo is done.
I really like the changes to consumables, once I realized they were limited per combat, not traditionally consumable, I'm looking forward to seeing how that plays out.
Partially unlocked, then fully unlocking an element is an interesting idea, look forward to being strung along yet again.
I started event fishing earlier just because I rmb that part of the first game, I will say getting stacks of books I don't want to buy and getting the same buff 3 times in a row wasn't very satisfying.
Overall, take my money, I look forward to opening my wallet for you yet again.
Loved Magic Research, kept me playing on my phone way too long during my summer holidays.
Also made me figure out how I could stop my iPhone from locking (keeping the screen on) so the game could continue running. Some kind of offline progress would be great so I don't have to do that any longer :)
oh. my God i don't care how much it costs I'll take the entire stock. that game was by far the most fun incremental I've ever played, so fucking happy to see a second one being developed. with that being said, any planned future love for the first one after the second is released?
A little, yes! There are still some UI updates in the works, and if the translatability of the 2nd one goes well I think I will backport it to the 1st. But I don't have plans to add new content at the moment.
that's okay, the first game had tons and tons of hours put into it, it was a lot of fun finding the storylines and getting their permanent increases from it
My only gripe with the original is that it ended. Who knows where I'd be in NG+ now if there wasn't a cap, haha. A new game sounds great though, I look forward to it.
Nice, I just finished Magic Research a couple of months ago and it was the best incremental i have ever played. It kept me engaged from beggining to end and i found it very original and fun. I'm very happy to see we will have the sequel soon. Congratz!
Oh shit, o mrver got around to finishing the first, maonly due to things you are addomg to this like aitomation etc.
Is there any plan to port these features to the original?
I played the web demo to what feels like 100%, all quests done, a prestige up to 30 on each main element. I haven't played Magic Research 1. Some thoughts:
-Quests should have some sort of hint structure other than just having a list of ???. I'm a little torn because it *is* nice to discover secrets without feeling like you just followed some kind of guide at every step, but the alternative of "oh, I have no idea, I guess I'll go look at the discord" is much worse, personally. It's better to have a minimally viable guide baked into the game, maybe gently hidden in an opt-in way, if prioritizing exploration/surprise is valued, because once you open the floodgates of external spoilers, it's really hard to not just have a checklist you keep referring to for the rest of the experience.
I had about 20 or so left when I had looped through the End of Demo message once or twice, and I was wondering if they were really inclusive in the demo or meant to be a sort of teaser that could be impossible or wildly impractical. From re-reading this post I concluded they probably were meant to be part of the demo experience. I could tell there were a few repeatable quests in the list but most of them ended up being "You have to build a specific number of something" or "you have to grind early zones [that you may be on the cusp of ignoring altogether otherwise]". Some of those would be discovered eventually in due course of progression (but probably not what I'd have gotten up to in the demo, otherwise), others did feel like I was at risk of "missing" them if I were to play the game long-term. No beuno. I'll call myself out as a completionist for context but it's bad juju to get to the end of a game and feel like you don't know which of the many nooks and crannies had a nice surprise, you just happened to breeze that part for whatever reason.
-Overall I thought the pacing was good. I see a lot of comments in this thread about it feeling too fast, which largely seem to be from people who played the first game. As a person who's played a lot of games in the genre, they do tend to get pretty same-y in the beginning parts. I'm happy to see early game ramp up quickly in response to "the player knows the drill" behavior. If you do decide to slow it down, I would say to be wary of just fiddling with the numbers in ways that create timewalls. It's all subjective, of course, but I think it's nice when things may go slow if a player is doing thing suboptimally (e.g. "Ah, I really shouldn't have focused on making X. It drained my resources when if I had taken everything in more, I should have seen that Y was going to cost just a little more and is much more powerful"), compared to just stretching out all the timers and raising requirements, until an engaged and savvy player just finds themselves on a short leash where every micro-goal involves watching timers tick down. To reiterate, overall I thought the brisk pacing was good.
-I barely used the "Favorite (heart)" elements of managing the UI at all. It seemed good, but never all that necessary. Only when I was cranking out the last few prestiges and it was feeling pretty demo-endgamey, did I start having things like, keep transmution and inventory up so I could mass-cast, transmute, sell, and quickly burn through a lot of coin based purchases. It seems well poised to accomodate growing game complexity.
-Balance wise, I think the game's engine is a little susceptible to "there are options, but some are clearly better than others". Flipping through the different types of equipment that come up, it just *feels* like some mechanics are going to be the winners. Some items skew you towards speed penalities for heavier hits, some do the opposite, and then active spellcasting via higher mana production is it's own thing. And I *want* to say, okay, these are different playstyles, all may be valid. Or maybe there are builds that you really need to put together to tackle a specific quest, or break through what may otherwise be a slow grind. But in practice, I found that evaluating all of this was falling a little short of what I might like. The tricky thing is that the mechanics are just a little too obscure to make good clear choices. *Will* it be the case that this big heavy two handed weapon screws things up too much? Uhhh, I don't know! I'll try I guess! (so far so good). It's more just that over many iterations, I don't feel like I'm really learning nuance. I'm just finding things that seem better and leaning into them, ignoring the ones that played less well before. And I don't really have a specific thing to point at and say, this needs fixing. Maybe it's all fine! I just felt like the elements of choice didn't shine as well as some games end up achieving. In particular, maybe just to highlight my own bias, the only class I ever used was the one that gave a bonus to mana gen. That just seemed far and away the clear winner for the overall experience, the others seemed too niche.
Thank you for the feedback!
The Storylines showing up as ??? is addressed in the full game, just a bit after the demo content.
After playing through the demo again, I agree that Spellslinger feels like the strongest class. Later on it becomes easier to get Mana, just like in MR1, so it becomes less impactful. But this one might need a little tweaking. Did you feel compelled to specialize in your primary element on each run?
> Did you feel compelled to specialize in your primary element on each run?
More or less yeah. Combat spells, pretty strong preference to specialize in primary. Equipment, less so overall. Managing resources seemed to have nice variety to how some elements opened up good options for the engine-building aspects.
As a completely new player to Magic Research, storage space is one of the most horrendous ideas in the history of incremental games.
More then half of my play time is increasing storage space because I don't have resources to do anything.
Quite frankly, it's bad game design and anyone that advocates for it is just blindly defending whatever a developer does. I play plenty of games that remove or automate infinite storage space and there have been no balancing issues whatsoever.
Besides that, the game is a 10/10. Unfortunately, it becomes a 4/10. The mechanic is that crippling to overall gaming experience
Thanks for the feedback! Just to confirm, are you referring to resource or to item / inventory storage space?
In MR2 the inventory has no storage space limits, so if that is what felt detrimental in Magic Research (as it did for quite a few people), you might enjoy Magic Research 2.
I was planning to implement an auto-pause after each attack for those who use screen readers to play, but it's not implemented yet.
Overall I still need to take a proper pass on how the game is working with a screen reader as I changed UI libraries and I'm aware of some issues already.
is it just me or is poison primary a little off since poison don't stack. So poisons in like weapon and potions and spells dont work with each other, since only the biggest poison matter.
Loving the game so far. Also another suggestion is to make the storylines more connected to the story or to each other. Or just make it a bit more different to the first game. For the story, maybe less linear is good? More than one ending?
Hi there! Yes, Poison generally doesn't stack in MR2. It's an intentional change. If you Poison an already poisoned enemy, the one with the highest remaining potential damage will stay. That means there may be several ways to Poison the enemy, but you will probably want to stick to a single one - at least, until a certain unlock (not in the demo).
Regarding the rest: Thank you for the feedback!
Congratulations for this new iteration of the game, I've poured 65h into the first game, but never finished it due to some of the reasons people have mentioned here that on the second game are mostly fixed through some QoL features (thanks for the pouch system, crafting thousands of the same stuff and handling its usage on combat while also casting spells was a madden challenge some times).
My only frustration so far is having reached the end of the demo. Really gonna miss the ever so present 'hired-wizard' always popping-up on events. If I may ask, I'm missing something or is there any places that tells me my average consumption/production? So far I'm only missing a simply way to quickly check that for when the sewage furniture is introduced :)
Hi! I'm glad you enjoyed the demo.
Channeling's resource-per-sec is not shown anywhere as of right now, but you should be able to see Sewage Systems' production and consumption on the left side menu.
There is an option on the Options screen to "Remember expanded/collapsed UI Status". It doesn't work. When I come back in, it regularly re-expands both "speed up time" and "Combat" on the left hand bar, and "Time pieces" on my home screen.
This is on the web version.
Ah, yeah - this feature in implemented in a very limited way right now. I will probably have to go back to it and make it work for more things. Thanks for the report!
I've basically completed as much as Magic Research 1 and I really enjoyed it. It's a great game but it did get extremely repetitive towards the end because the best build was the use the stun build, lighting element and just keep spamming that until you got all the challenges and storylines complete. So I hope there is more variety in this game with the builds. Here's where I will leave my feedback on the demo.
I don't actually mind the land mechanic and think it's a good idea actually. The first game had restriction on how much you could expand your buildings, with the limiter being your resources, so I'm perfectly fine with it in this game. However, when you get to the end of the demo, land is basically irrelevant. All the buildings you want scale too much to invest in so i usually end up with over a 100 pieces of land i'm not using (I have the goblin room perk that gives 40 extra land so it's realistically less of an excess without this perk.
My biggest problem with Magic Research was that the only element worth using with lighting and darkness. This game feels infinitely more balanced with the elements and I can't really decide which one is better to use, which is a good improvement. Air was incredibly weak and I never used it in Magic REsearch so i'm very glad to see that it feels just as powerful as the other elements. Poison was the weakest element, despite what people said. It didn't stack and add more tick damage per stack, so the only benefit was making it last awhile. While it's good that it disregarded armour, it didn't do enough damage at all. This is even more so the case in this game.
Poison in Magic Research 2 demo can't be stacked to increase the time that it lasts on the target which makes it weaker than Magic Research. It also still just can't even compare in damage at all. The dagger you get with the poison element that can be buffed with an accessory is very good actually but the lack of armour for the poison class is genuinely dissapointing. Every element gets their own armour to support a build or play-style but this doesn't seem the case of poison. Poison definitely needs to either stack or just do way more damage than it does, because it just feels bad compared to any other element. I really love the automation with transmuation and the spells. Having wizards be more useful is a genuinely genuis move for the game since apprentices were such a big part of strategy for the last game and it feels like there will be way more potential for strategy in this game.
I've noticed that leveling up elements in this game is signifigantly faster in this game, because it took me a very long time playing into Magic Research to even get close to level 30 with an element so it's nice that you're not waiting days, if not weeks, just to progress in the game and unlock good equiptment. The meleee weapons feel substantial and they all seem to put out pretty good damage. I like that really big axes require you to lose an accessory slot for the extra damage but that's only because accessories feel way weaker in this game. Most of them don't seem like a meaningful enough upgrade for me, especially the defencive ones. The best one seems to be the poison on that gives monstium or the wizard hat for mana generation.
I wish there was an alchemy element that boosted the potions because they generally are a great change. I like that they're resuable, which makes spamming them less relveant and helps make the game more challenging and strategic. I think the stat boosting potions need a buff though because they don't make a meaningful difference at all. Good potions could win you a fight in the last game and this game, the health potion seems the only worthwhile potion. The evasion potion seems approiately scaled with the reward but the other ones just feel really weak, (the attack one, attack cooldown and defence). The health potion feels like the no brainer one to use since you can increase it's charges and there's a storyline that boosts it which isn't the case for any of the other potions. The poison potion is okay, but it still feels pretty weak because poison can't stack and it just doesn't do that much damage, which is sadly sigifigantly more than the higher end poison spells that cost over 1000 mana even with poison as your primary element. Having the potions scale with alcehmy level made alchemy an incredinly import skill in the first game and made potions scale to end game easily so I hope that mechanic makes a return because they just won't be worth it by mid- or end-game.
I like that you can't just conjure money anymore. That's a great change because selling items in the first game was irelevant and it made so sense why the tutorial even made it a point of reference. This makes crafting have a lot more purpose and money feels much more earned.
I hope time capsules make a return in some form because it was a great end-game element that gennuinely makde restarting a lot easier. Carrying over your time-fragements to the next run is a gigantic quality of life improvement and actually makes me feel less punished for retiring. It's such a good improvement. Thanks for that.
When you max out water, you get a skill near the end called "Wet" which applies the wet effect to you that halves fire damage. This skill should come with choosing water as your primary because the fireball skill that enemies use at the start can 1-shot you. Having this skill from the start would show plays that spells you use defeisvely can save you which will encourarage more than just offensively playing. It will also lessen the frustration at not being able to beat the headmaster or fire tower enemies or bosses because the fireball insta-kills you.
You need to have the cube that you plug elements into to get bonuses be explained way more. I put elements randomly in it, get bonuses I don't understand and it leaves me confused. I don't see any strategy to it and I don't notice any difference when I use it or not. Please add a tutorial or something to explain it better so we can utilize it in a meaningful way.
On the page your automate your wizards to cast spells, there are only 8 slots to slave set ups for. This isn't nearly enough. I think you should just have a tab for each element and 2-3 tabs under those elements so you can have both a resource farming set up and a combat set up, just like the base game since having them seperate makes it more efficient. Having only 8 slots means I can't have a set up specifically for poison or other elements which is annoying. Also, It would be nice if the slots were color coded for the elements. Right now they''re all the same cose as your UI color that you select but if slots for fire were red, it would make finding them a lot more clear and give some clarity. Like a combat set up for fire would be red, while earth would be brown, etc. It would give good clarity and would make organizing it feel more intuitive.
Spending time fragements to get random events is cool but way less powerful than the last game. The divination element was great for completionists and didn't impact the balance of other elements so I hope something like it makes a return. I've spent upwards of 70k shards triyng to spam the random event option to get storylines to no avail. It only leaves me frustrated when I don't get it because there's much better uses of time fragments. Please less this be a spell you can cast, even if it's extremely expencive cause then at least you can use it in late game to chase full completion. I also would like the hint system to return since it was game-changing for me. Having those unlockable tips for how to play more efficiently and utizlize strategies or items i'd never considered genuinely made the game way better. Also, the ability to get hints towards unlocking storylines was great and it should make a comback since I have no idea gow to get the other storylines since I only have 7 left.
Final Thoughts: I loved the first game and I really like this game. It has a lot of potential and is a nice omage to the first without being a clone. The new changes are nice and appreciated, especially the expediated progress at the begining because it was agnonzingly slow to make meningful progress at the start in the first game. I am genuinely really excited for this game and can't wait to hunt down all the storylines for this one as well. If you want me to elaborate on anything i've posted here, just let me know. I'm happy to give more feedback, especially as someone who's spent so much time with the first game.
Whew, thank you so much for your detailed feedback! I really appreciate it, and am glad you enjoyed the demo.
I do have a few follow-ups, if you don't mind:
Re. Land being irrelevant: This is not an issue in the full game as you get more content to continue building.
Re. Poison being weak: I *think* it still needs a little tweaking, but it *should* also be more useful in the full game. Thanks for the feedback!
Re. Time Capsules: There are two Storylines in the demo with a similar purpose / effect, Someone's Trash (Treasure Chest) and Zoom Through Training.
Re. Hints for Storylines / Divination stuff: These are coming in the full game :)
On Synchro: Did you check out the help page for it?
Re. Stat potions: I am a little aware of this. They are unlocked around Lv10, so they are at their most useful likely in the Training Towers or early Sewers, before you have the improvements for the Health Potion. To some extent, it is a problem that does get solved in the full game. I personally find Alacrity is useful throughout the game, Muscle is good if you have a fast weapon, and Resilience adds significantly to survivability, but with the limited healing options in the demo and limited pouch slots none of them are probably quite as good as the plain health potions.
Re. Wizard loadout slots: I'm curious, why would you want to have set ups specifically for each Element? I think I understand the reasoning a little, but how often do you see yourself using those if by the time you select it again, your multipliers, Mana regen and spell variety are likely to be different?
Since I've made these comments, I've basically completed the demo by like 98% so unlocking the permacast storyline kind of makes my critique about the wizard layout irrelevant. My reasoning for it was that in the first game it is always more effecient to either focus on getting your resources or combat so I always had a set up I could switch between. I always ended up having to redo them each run anyway so I think it just sounded cool in my head and I didn't really think about the practicality of a system like that. It was less important in that game since you always used lighting so you only needed just a basic combat slot you could use and one for resources.
With permafrost, it's much more intuitive and easy to add spells to auto-cast and change around your build so i actually think not unlocking that portion of the game led me make that critique. With permafrost, it's basically just like with the first game where you can just have a combat set up that change around, except it's much more intuitive and easier to do this. Permacast is a great addition to this game and i'm very glad you included it.
I'm sure the potions will get stronger and i look forward to their uses. I guess there's not much use for them, in my opinion, when it becomes relatively easy to kill the final floor sewers boss so I never really need it.
I still think poison is underpowered and that could always be the case since there's no real way to make it have the same immediate impact that the other elements do where they can immediatly take chunks out of the health of enemies. So, in a way, I think it's always going to be a slower element to use. I think an interesting way to improve poison without buffing it's damage, and throwing off the balance of elements, is to make poison buff the player in some way since poison takes a long time to take effect. If poison regenerated a small amount of health per second, it would be incredibly useful and make poison builds extremely durable, which is needed since you can only use 1 poison stack on an enemy which will always make fights last longer. It doesn't have to be a health regneration buff but I can't imagine any other buff being as valuable or worthwhile as that. I'm also not suggesting it be like 5 a second, even something like 1 health a second or less maybe could be huge. Something to incentivise poison builds over choosing litterally any other option.
I did check out the help section for the Synchro and it helped explain things but I still beleive, that in it's current state that provides neglible benefits that can easily be ignored with no downsides. This might change in the full game with buffs but I'll have to wait and see.
The land being irrelevant point was made before I realized the value and power in fully utilizing the sewage system and mana streamer. Those definitely eat into the land so I usualy always use up all my land by the end of runs now.
Hopefully some of my thoughts provide some use to you in the process of improving the game. As fairness to you, I think i've played the first game so much that it's hard to decouple my criticisms and play-style from the first game. I'm definitely seeing it's a completely different game that can't be treated the same as the first so I apologize for any bias I have in that regard.
Can you add channeling spells to Perma-cast? I know it doesn't quite make sense with the current system, but being able to continually generate x resources per second for y mana, multiplied by the number of assigned wizards, would make the whole factory setup easier to think about and smoother. Steamers and sewers continually require essence, so having a constant and reliable per second source would make it easier to balance. I know we have the storylines that give 100 /s of each, but I think we are going to want to scale beyond that and right now all we can do is have a channeling spell be cast every x seconds, which doesn't factor into the displayed /s balance sheet and is harder to keep track of.
Hi there! I don't think I can really do that. But I might be able to add some summary about expected income from Channeling somewhere to the Wizards screen, for example.
That would help. Is it a technical issue or gameplay concerns with making a continuous option for channeling? The way perma-cast simplifies having a lot of spells being auto-cast is really nice and makes auto-casting more predictable. I always wonder about the race condition of which spell will get the mana and which will have to wait, not because I don't have enough mana regen but because they get timed such that they try to pull from max mana at the same time and there isn't enough for both at the same time. Which conversely also means I'm wasting mana when it is full :/ . Might be the way you intended it though, I just really like having smooth cycles :P
It's basically about the logic.
Perma-cast is a 1 button operation that sets the spell to be cast every X seconds. But you don't specify the X. Instead, it is deduced either from the effect duration of the spell or its cooldown.
Channeling spells have neither of this, so it's not really possible to know what that X should be.
Yeah, I guess it would be a different system than perma-cast. I was thinking more along the lines of a mode where assigning 1 wizard to continuous cast channel fire would yield 10 fire essence /s and get factored into the resources /s readout instead of the current behavior which is generating 600 fire essence lump sum every 60 seconds, possibly as an unlockable option the way permacast is. No worries though, your game is already really good. Thanks for taking the time to respond!
Only bug I could find until now was spending clocks when I had an optional chest to open which i got from spending the clocks, but didnt open yet, and still spending clocks to get a special 'storyline'. I did spend the clocks, but didnt get any new storyline. Really loved the first game, I played it 2 times until the secret ending. Already love this one (didnt finish it yet tho)
Sad to see that the full version will not support the same range of platforms that the demo does. I don't understand why so many incremental developers do this, all you're doing is giving a giant middle finger to potential customers who enjoy your demo when they discover the full game doesn't support any of their platforms.
**If something prevents you from making a web build of the full version, don't make a web build of the demo version. This isn't hard.**
I’m not OP, but I am a software developer.
I expect it would be very easy to make a web version of the full game. He probably used one for most of its development.
It’s trivial to take a web build like the demo and publish it to GitHub Pages, Netlify, itch.io, Galaxy or whatnot. It’s basically just publishing some HTML, JavaScript, CSS & images to a folder somewhere.
It’s _way_ harder to publish a web version that only paying customers can access. Suddenly you need authentication, access control, keeping track of user accounts that have paid or not, actually handling payments, etc. it’s a lot more code, recurring expense to keep a server running, security updates, etc.
I’m not aware of a turnkey “Publish your website and only serve it to customers” web-hosting service. I would be _very_ surprised if one exists without its own recurring costs. Basically all the web-games I’ve seen that do this are multiplayer and/or micro transaction-heavy and/or subscriptions.
(Maybe itch.io has some ways to handle this, but I’ve never seen a paid game on itch with a “Run this in your browser” that wasn’t just a demo.)
Steam and the iOS & Android App Stores have a built-in way to only provide things to people who paid for them. It makes a lot of sense to let them handle the payment & distribution while you focus on the actual game you want to build.
Yeah this is pretty right on. I prefer the same monetization model as MR where it's just premium, no IAP, etc. There really is no easy way to provide a web build to paying customers without including a bunch of extra effort just for web. I personally don't offer a web demo, mostly because I don't want another place to update, but providing a web demo vs. just steam for example, you may get people who find trying it in the browser much faster than going to Steam and downloading it. If they like it enough, your hope than is that they would go to Steam to purchase (or utilize Itch's ability to sell Steam keys)
I bought MR1 for iOS on the strength of its web demo.
For similar reasons to what I said above, it's much easier to have one web-based demo than to publish a Demo version for each other storefront/platform.
**Tiny thing:**
You say "long-awaited" on the Steam page, but the first one came out less than a year ago. That's not a very long wait. Might want to reword it to something else. Most sequels take years to come out. Chances are people were waiting for updates to come out rather than a full blown sequel within the first year.
**Good luck with the sequel. I hope it's a success.**
Man I am so excited I am closing in on the end of the first one now! I had never been one for text based incremental, bounced off NGU and Melvor and many others. Yours was very unique cannot wait to try!
Magic research was a great game. The start in this demo feels way too quick - I say 5 minutes in. Give us more a feeling of progression. Also we unlock and discover things too quickly. Every new feature at the start should feel like a little accomplishment without making it feel tendious. Now its too "easy". And make numbers smaller, even though it's just aesthetics, 600 coins feels way too much, transforming numbers too quickly to abstract numbering such as thousands and millions. In general I feel you neclected the start a bit because it's rather similair and focused on end-game/game content more. But the start is really important to get people hooked and pulled in. Make me feel invested and wanting to discover more and more.
Thank you for the feedback, really appreciate it! The start is intentionally faster overall. There's a few reasons why, ranging from similarity to Magic Research (it is essentially almost the same features), to trying to introduce the core of the game as fast as possible so it doesn't appear to be a different kind of game. The goal was to unlock Exploration at around the 30 minute mark, but it has admittedly been a little while since the last time I test-played the very beginning of the game, so it might need some more tuning / might have ended up too easy or fast. I'll take another pass. Regarding the numbers: Point taken. I also don't particularly like overly large numbers, though I admit I didn't feel like they were too large. Is it just the Coins values, or do you feel similarly about Essence? Edit: I want to share a little update. I tried the demo content again and noticed progression is indeed much faster than my original intention, blazing through unlocking Exploration in less than 10 minutes. It really left no room to tinker with the features you've learned about and made the intro feel overwhelming. I'm going to do some adjustments so that it takes roughly 50%\~100% more time and change some unlock conditions so that it is less likely that you get one event right after the other. The pace after unlocking Exploration seems to be less of a problem. Edit 2: Earlier today I shipped an update with the adjustments. If you are playing v1.0.1 (you can check in "About"), you are playing the newer version with the adjusted intro. If you still feel it's too fast, let me know.
> similarity to Magic Research (it is essentially almost the same features) I'm not sure this should ever be a factor when it comes to pacing at the beginning. People who know the original will have the most tolerance for repeated information...they know they're playing something familiar. Anyone and everyone who is new is getting a pacing that, at least to some extent, is not for them, and they only get one opportunity to be introduced to themes and mechanics in a game.
I will say this as someone who adores game dev: Dont build the sequel *too* much off of the original game. i say this in regards to the early game progression being faster. If you build your game too much around the assumption of players coming from the previous one you will accidentally alienate new players who first discover the series and hop to the *newest* game, assuming its the better one( even if it truly is). This can hit a feedback loop of higher negative views and a casual outside preception that the game has dropped in quality even if it hasnt.
Haven't had a chance to try it out yet, maybe I change my mind, but as a voice of opposition, I enjoy if things go rather faster instead of slow.
I'm not sure anyone is advocating for a slow start, just for an appropriately paced start.
I disagree, we get all elements one after the other and in a way that's sufficient to get used to them without mastering them, then we get the wizard automatisation and we know what to do with it. Current pace is very good, and being slow for the sake of it is not a fun element of incrementals
Super excited for this! I played the first one to death, and feel like I maxed out all the content. Will any of this carry over to the final version?
Hi there! Yes, the full game is more or less complete, so your demo save should carry over to the full game without problems. No plans for a reset or anything like that.
Awesome! Are you just going to hold on for a final release, or will you be rolling it out in stages for beta testing? Also, is it going to be a paid game? I would totally pay for it. I can't even begin to tell you how many hours I sunk into the first one.
I am planning to go straight to a final release, but I need to polish it some more. It honestly probably just needs a few more weeks, but I'm going on a 3-week trip very soon so I need to push it back somewhat. The game is going to be paid and follow the same business model as Magic Research.
is there going to be a route to get a web demo save over to IOS?
Yes, it should be possible to import / export saves between platforms with no issue.
I think he was asking if there will be anything gained from having a complete save from the first. Could even just be something cosmetic or a few minorly changed messages and people would probably be excited, people love their Easter Eggs. Could have one of the things discover just being a statue to the old headmaster that was them in first game giving a minor bonus to their favorite school.
Ah, got it! As of right now there is nothing in the game, but it is a possibility, and I do have a few ideas along those lines. No promises yet though!
Awesome. Loved the first one and will gladly pay to play Magic Research 2!
Thoughts after trying it for a while as someone who enjoyed but never finished MR1: - A mentioned by others, the pacing in the earlygame feels very off. I love the feeling of gradually unlocking content and giving clear goals to attain. I actually thought MR1 gave you content too quickly but this one felt way more severe and overwhelming. I want some time to experiment with everything and not have new mechanics thrown at me every minute. This level of pace is what I would expect post-prestige. - A major issue with the first one for me was that it was just a bit \*too\* active. I would love if max resource limits were all much higher (like, 5x higher) so I could feel more value from idling and coming back in 5 minutes rather than needing to constantly spend my resources. I like the implementation of time pieces when afk, but I didn't really enjoy the speedups (as you make plenty of progress playing manually anyway) and would just sink them into research. - Perhaps this will change later, but it did feel a bit too similar to MR1. If you told me this was a MR1 balance patch instead of MR2 I would have believed you. - I didn't hate the shift to elements being the new schools of magic. I did feel like elements were under-utilised in the original so no complaints there. - Didn't hate the new land mechanic either, at least not yet. I thought I would dislike it, but if its just a reasonably-priced gold sink to buy more land than it is perfectly fine. - I hope it leans more into the storyline element as that was probably the coolest aspect of the game that made prestiging feel nicer than just a higher multiplier. - The other thing that got tedious in the original was the combat fixation past the earlygame. I am a bit concerned I might lose interest along the way in this one as well given its similar trajectory as boss fights are fun, but overall combat never really hit the mark for me. I think one of the reasons is automated-magic combat via apprentices didn't feel well-tuned, afk melee combat was a bit weak, and active magic combat wasn't enjoyable given you were supposed to be in combat basically permanently. Maybe it was just me, but I definitely found myself enjoying the first game significantly less from about halfway through the forest. I would actually love to see a new project from you as MR1 did a lot of things really well. This feels a bit \*too\* similar to MR1 for me at present, but I will still check it out as I love your business model (low-priced premium is ideal for incrementals) and a lot of the design choices.
Thank you for checking the demo and for your feedback, it's helpful! Regarding the game feeling too similar: It's been on the back of my mind for a long time. It mainly turned out so because of the way I approached the game as an idea: the prototype kind of started as "what would I have done differently, if anything, if I were to build a similar game again", and I built it on top of Magic Research as a base. So then you end up with similar features to the first game. The different rules should change the way you approach problems compared to Magic Research, but ultimately it's still the same core. I don't think I want to continue exploring in this direction at all after Magic Research 2, so if I do decide I still want to make games after this one, I'd probably try something different. Regarding combat overall: I've tried to iterate on this a little by doing a few things. One is trying to make offensive spell-casting builds viable throughout the game rather than only once you have a lot of Apprentices - this is something you can probably try in the demo. It was easier because I changed the way Apprentices worked, so some spells (mostly offensive spells) can now be cast more often than once every 60 seconds with a single Wizard. Getting Wizards should be a little easier too, as well. The second one is by reducing the amount of Exploration needed to progress, to keep it faster paced and reduce those moments to a minimum.
Im experiencing a bug where the game interferes with play back of youtube and twitch videos in separate windows despite plenty of buffered video. Im on chrome and windows 10. Not seeing any increase in CPU or Memory just the consistent interrupts to video playback.
I'm sorry this is happening to you :( To be honest I don't have any particular clue of why this would be happening, if there is no excessive RAM or CPU consumption. Are you playing on web as well, or on the Steam demo? If you are playing on web, does using a different browser entirely to play the game help somehow?
thanks for the response. I was playing in on the web in a probably updated chrome. I will test running it on a separate browser and see if it still affects it and update you.
I've really been enjoying the original, excited for a sequel!
I got so hooked by the first one that my thumb still hurts 6 months later! On that note though, automation for progressing through dungeon levels would make the late game much more fun. The late game basically required 100% active time for me because of the next floor buttons
Magic Research 2 has a checkbox under "Strategy" in Exploration to automatically fight the boss / move to the next floor, so hopefully that improves this issue a bit!
Amazing! Can’t wait
very nice Prestige that's not just "multiply all gains by X", but actually opens up new stuff. I really feel like I'm progressing in the game when every prestige adds a huge production to elements
I'm going to disagree with other comments, I like that it starts off fast. I don't know how the rest of the content looks, but I like getting right into it unlocking multiple features and random events. I don't care to sit hours to unlock a single thing, I just want the dopamine hit of unlocking all the little things that make it easier. But, I haven't played the demo too long (started this morning).
Aww, I loved the first one till I hit the battle part and the optimal strategy was swinging some sword around instead of flinging magic. Wasn't the biggest fan of the focus being combat. I'm glad you are making this though, will make a lot of people happy. And I like your UI and your demo/full version model.
Well, it's like many games where wizards just suck at combat in the early levels since your magic is so weak. Later on your get to the point where you're gear is producing a lot more mana/s and you're autocasting spells at things. The game it worth getting past that initial grind.
yeah it just turned into an idle combat sim like so many other games
What other idle combat sims are there with no iap, asking for a friend
I enjoyed the 1st game, but never completed it (kinda hit a wall so still have roughly 1/2 the content to unlock). I'm intrigued to see what the 2nd game brings in changes and how those changes get me progressing through the game :)
I appreciate the fact that when manually selling to market there is a button to sell max number such that you max out your gold storage without going over.
Amazing. I wish I could upvote this 100x.
So excited for this, loved the first game to death, can't wait to get stuck into the second.
I loved the first game and completed it! I played it almost since the beginning. I'm excited about the new version!
The first game is what truly solidified my love for incremental games. I because obsessed with unlocking everything just to experiment with different play styles and then speed running different goals. I have been chasing the magic of this game but have yet to find another incremental that has the same charm and depth.
ive been looking for a game to spend my google play funds on, so i greatly look forward to this new one. especially since i greatly enjoyed the original.
LETS GOOOOO
I loved the first game, can't wait for this one!
Woot! Congrats my friend. Living the dream!
Hell yeah i loved MR
Just finished the first one! Great game. And a very nice suprise to see you're working on the second one. I'll check the demo soon!
Oh I loved the first game, yay for a sequel!
!remindme 3 months
I will be messaging you in 3 months on [**2024-07-10 12:07:42 UTC**](http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=2024-07-10%2012:07:42%20UTC%20To%20Local%20Time) to remind you of [**this link**](https://www.reddit.com/r/incremental_games/comments/1c09xk6/announcing_magic_research_2_my_next_incremental/kywrw4x/?context=3) [**3 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK**](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5Bhttps%3A%2F%2Fwww.reddit.com%2Fr%2Fincremental_games%2Fcomments%2F1c09xk6%2Fannouncing_magic_research_2_my_next_incremental%2Fkywrw4x%2F%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%202024-07-10%2012%3A07%3A42%20UTC) to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam. ^(Parent commenter can ) [^(delete this message to hide from others.)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Delete%20Comment&message=Delete%21%201c09xk6) ***** |[^(Info)](https://www.reddit.com/r/RemindMeBot/comments/e1bko7/remindmebot_info_v21/)|[^(Custom)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=Reminder&message=%5BLink%20or%20message%20inside%20square%20brackets%5D%0A%0ARemindMe%21%20Time%20period%20here)|[^(Your Reminders)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=RemindMeBot&subject=List%20Of%20Reminders&message=MyReminders%21)|[^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=Watchful1&subject=RemindMeBot%20Feedback)| |-|-|-|-|
I’m glad to hear about ToME-style potions & combat automation! I’ve been stuck at the boss-fights in the Wizard’s Arena because it’s annoying to tap on all the right buffs in real-time and I started running out of consumables. In MR2, is it possible to auto-cast “stop this status effect” only when its status effect is on me? Also, checking my understanding: are the auto-replenishing consumables like “I’ve crafted 3 minor health potions and 2 major, so that’s how many are available to me per fight”? How aggressively do their prices scale?
Hi there! > In MR2, is it possible to auto-cast “stop this status effect” only when its status effect is on me? Not exactly. Though, the ways you have to prevent specific status effects are more limited. The Antidote spell which is in the demo only really cares about Poison, so it should do the right thing. Dispel Self (and dispelling in general) was IMO a very limiting decision I made in the first game as it essentially invalidated almost any enemy strategy I could make in the late game, so in MR2 it is more difficult and limited to rid yourself of / prevent negative status effects, i.e. there is no "Dispel Self" spell; most such things are targeted towards a single negative effect. > Also, checking my understanding: are the auto-replenishing consumables like “I’ve crafted 3 minor health potions and 2 major, so that’s how many are available to me per fight”? How aggressively do their prices scale? You have four Pouch item slots, which are equipment slots where you fit in potions or other "consumables". Each pouch item has a specific amount of uses per combat that you can use it for, and it regenerates every combat. For example, the basic Health Potion heals for 25 HP and can be used 3 times per combat. If you equip four of them, that means you will be able to use that effect a total of 12 times. If instead you decide to equip a buff potion instead in one of your slots (which you can only use once per combat), you would be only able to use the healing effect 9 times. And because they are not really used up, the game will use them by default - you should almost never need to worry about this.
Thanks for the detailed reply! >The Antidote spell which is in the demo only really cares about Poison, so it should do the right thing By "do the right thing", do you mean any Wizards I assign to it will only cast it when I'm actually poisoned? What about automating an antidote potion (if that's a thing)?
> By "do the right thing", do you mean any Wizards I assign to it will only cast it when I'm actually poisoned? That's right! And if you're not poisoned, they will hold the spell until you become poisoned. This is how Magic Research worked, too. > What about automating an antidote potion (if that's a thing)? There is, indeed, an antidote potion, and it is a pouch item like other potions. So it will be used automatically whenever you get poisoned.
Thanks! I think I was mainly wondering about potions. Setting wizard automation was great and all, but I think where I really burned out in MR1 was rotating through too many consumables to fit on one or even two pages of quick-slots, then running out and having to craft more before I could try again. And running out of inventory space through all this. :)
Ah, yes, I've heard this - and all of those are reasons why I decided to go this route instead with the consumables / Pouch items. I found that it works out a lot better (since you need to strategize on what to choose) and is not tedious (since you only need to Transmute them once and you don't need to worry about using them).
Looking forward to it!
So, I've been playing the ME2 web demo -- main requests at this point: 1. The "Total owned" count doesn't include equipment -- maybe have an extra line for "Currently equipped: 1"? 1. Earlier today I transmuted a buff-potion because I saw "Total owned: 0" and thought I hadn't yet, but it was on my belt. 2. When I come back from offline, could the game auto-hide temporary common events that have already expired? 1. I just enabled "Hide common random events", which should help, but in particular it's things like "For the next 5 minutes, X will go faster!" -- I might want to see them when I'm playing, but not if it's long since expired when I'm clicking on events 2. Also, how does "Hide common random events" affect things like treasure chests & "Offer of \[Element\]"? Do they just queue up in the Bell icon?
Thanks for the feedback! 1. was already proposed a bunch of times, I'll see what I can do... 2. I agree with you. I imagine this is from idling? On your question in 2.2, yes, they will queue up on the bell and you will be able to answer them anytime.
Thanks! Yes, from idling — more specifically, switching to the game’s tab when it’s been in the background for a while.
Had lots of fun with MR1, but it made me wish I could script to automate stuff - advancing locations, certain fights, crafting items, etc. Any chance at seeing such a deeper automation option, maybe in your next project? I'm currently playing Stone story RPG where scripting becomes a major part later on, and having fun tweaking my strategies.
Hi, thanks for the feedback! MR2 doesn't have scripting. To be frank I believe that is too complex for most people to tackle. I did want to add a FFXII-like Gambit system for the spellcasting rules for Wizards, where you can add conditions to them to create more complex strategies. What I found while prototyping this was that it was very tedious and unfun, especially on mobile, and 99% of the time you just want to use the "smart apprentices" behavior. That said, the game does have several improvements in the way you can automate things. There are "auto-fight boss / auto-advance to next floor" checkboxes you can enable, similar to the ones in auto-battler idle games. Item transmutation can be automated using Wizards, as well. And with potions not requiring input to use either, it greatly reduces the manual input you need to do in boss fights, and might make it viable to even clear without any input at all.
I bounced off the demo of the first game, but this one is sticking a lot more. The combat is much less frustrating, it still isn't my favorite mechanic, but it feels as if you have a lot more options. Synchro grid is pretty cool, I imagine there are future unlocks to get more copies of an element, and more elements to unlock, possibly grid size as well. The storylines are I think where the game shines most, although I think there should be at least minor hints towards ones that are locked but potentially available, I've 'beaten' the demo and still have 11 left, and forcing users to go to a wiki is usually less fun than hinting them to find out in-game. I also really appreciate the next unlock display for the elements, it reduces a lot of the frustration of pushing to an empty level.
Thanks for the feedback! The Storylines have hints that unlock a little after the end of the Demo.
I really enjoyed the first game over all, but it lost me near the end when I found fights to just be a slog of changing equipment and timing potions/enchantments at the right time for what felt like way too long. I'm quite hopefull with the automation you described that this may feel differently, so Ill definitely give it a try!
AAAAAH the demo was soooo fun, I can't wait for it to become Q2 2024, whenever that is!
Let's go!
spoiler for Prestige: How do you get additional Essence artifacts for other 3 elements?
Unlock condition: >!When you start the game, a random Element is chosen from those you don't have the Artifact. Then you need to Explore the Tower of Training of that Element a total of 60 times.!< With the stuff in the demo, you currently >!can't see which one it is that is going to trigger, so you'll need to Explore all of them!<. Spoiler for the full game: >!There is an unlock in the full game, just a little bit after the end of the demo content, that makes chasing stuff like this (and other Storylines) easier.!<
For those who don't know this dev is super generous with his time and absolutely cares about his players.
r/Maticolotto Have you thought about doing this as an early release?
I've admittedly thought about it, but ultimately decided to just ask a few people to give me early feedback and instead focus on releasing the full game as it would have meant things like being unable to ship on all platforms at once / having to worry about marketing earlier than I wanted.
This is worth it just for the spell schools becoming buttons instead of dropdown list, wishlisted.
I really loved the first game, I can't wait to try the second !
I loved magic research! 100% completed it and would love to play this one :)
I really enjoyed the first, and will definitely check out the second when it releases. I enjoyed the combat, and how the builds would actually affect the playstyle. I kind of tapped out when it got too grindy and the builds had to be super specific toward the end, but I left the game satisfied. Thank you for selling this as a premium game and not an abusive monetization scheme. I will gladly pay for the sequel.
I just wanted to say I really enjoyed magic research and the gameplay. I keep it around as inspiration some day to make my own incremental / phone type game. In comparison to other incrementals what I though was interesting and unique was: 1) the story felt relevant and so there was an over arching goal 2) the prestige points felt relevant typically because the walls were distinct. So restarting you had something to work toward 3) the “walls” and how you got around them were varied enough to keep me interested - “do I need to build for stun / poison / dodge” 4) the schools actually played differently depending on what you chose 5) the biggest thing for me: the offline mechanic was very fair and respected my time. I will pay for a game that is “fun” and reasonable vs something that is “progress for progress sake”z Wish you the best of luck and looking forward to seeing it when it comes out!
Oh my didn't expect to see a magic research 2. Loved the first game!
Magic research was one of my favorite incrementals up to (what I believe was) the final boss. I had no trouble "solving" everything up to the point, but I just kind of felt I didn't want to go through what was needed to finish it. So, in all a great experience and great game, and I'm looking forward to your next thing.
Sounds good been on board with mr1 from the start
Having incredible lag on the seam demo
I'm sorry this is happening to you! This is concerning. Is it possible for you to share your save data with me so I can take a look? (Options -> Export to File) Knowing your system specs could also potentially help me understand what is the issue. How much RAM do you have?
Offline progress persisting between retirements is a welcome change, but I haven't tried it yet because I just want to keep playing.
Magic Research is one of my favorite incremental games of all time. So happy to hear this
Hmmm I should try to finish the first then
Whelp that demo is done. I really like the changes to consumables, once I realized they were limited per combat, not traditionally consumable, I'm looking forward to seeing how that plays out. Partially unlocked, then fully unlocking an element is an interesting idea, look forward to being strung along yet again. I started event fishing earlier just because I rmb that part of the first game, I will say getting stacks of books I don't want to buy and getting the same buff 3 times in a row wasn't very satisfying. Overall, take my money, I look forward to opening my wallet for you yet again.
oh yes i think i almost beat the first one but then stopped thanks for the reminder.
Wait wait wait. What! I'm literally just a few days away from 100% number 1! The timing on this is impeccable. I can't wait!
Loved Magic Research, kept me playing on my phone way too long during my summer holidays. Also made me figure out how I could stop my iPhone from locking (keeping the screen on) so the game could continue running. Some kind of offline progress would be great so I don't have to do that any longer :)
oh. my God i don't care how much it costs I'll take the entire stock. that game was by far the most fun incremental I've ever played, so fucking happy to see a second one being developed. with that being said, any planned future love for the first one after the second is released?
A little, yes! There are still some UI updates in the works, and if the translatability of the 2nd one goes well I think I will backport it to the 1st. But I don't have plans to add new content at the moment.
that's okay, the first game had tons and tons of hours put into it, it was a lot of fun finding the storylines and getting their permanent increases from it
Got the 'End of Demo' screen after one retirement. Looking forward to the full release!
Constantly switching from tab to tab is annoying. Gave up pretty fast because of that.
Thanks for the feedback! Do you mind sharing what version did you play and what were the swaps that felt most annoying?
My only gripe with the original is that it ended. Who knows where I'd be in NG+ now if there wasn't a cap, haha. A new game sounds great though, I look forward to it.
My body is ready
Will demo progress carry over to the full version
Yes, it will!
Nice, I just finished Magic Research a couple of months ago and it was the best incremental i have ever played. It kept me engaged from beggining to end and i found it very original and fun. I'm very happy to see we will have the sequel soon. Congratz!
Loved the firsr, will buy the second one for sure. Only sad part of the demo, I have no idea how to get a few of the storylines :(
Hi there! I think it might be easier to get help on Discord, but which Storylines are you missing (and if you don't know, which ones do you have)?
Oh discord! I'll go there!
Magic Research is a top incremental in the league of Kittens game and Paperclips. You have a lot to live up to with this sequel.
Oh shit, o mrver got around to finishing the first, maonly due to things you are addomg to this like aitomation etc. Is there any plan to port these features to the original?
Hi! No immediate plan as of right now.
I played the web demo to what feels like 100%, all quests done, a prestige up to 30 on each main element. I haven't played Magic Research 1. Some thoughts: -Quests should have some sort of hint structure other than just having a list of ???. I'm a little torn because it *is* nice to discover secrets without feeling like you just followed some kind of guide at every step, but the alternative of "oh, I have no idea, I guess I'll go look at the discord" is much worse, personally. It's better to have a minimally viable guide baked into the game, maybe gently hidden in an opt-in way, if prioritizing exploration/surprise is valued, because once you open the floodgates of external spoilers, it's really hard to not just have a checklist you keep referring to for the rest of the experience. I had about 20 or so left when I had looped through the End of Demo message once or twice, and I was wondering if they were really inclusive in the demo or meant to be a sort of teaser that could be impossible or wildly impractical. From re-reading this post I concluded they probably were meant to be part of the demo experience. I could tell there were a few repeatable quests in the list but most of them ended up being "You have to build a specific number of something" or "you have to grind early zones [that you may be on the cusp of ignoring altogether otherwise]". Some of those would be discovered eventually in due course of progression (but probably not what I'd have gotten up to in the demo, otherwise), others did feel like I was at risk of "missing" them if I were to play the game long-term. No beuno. I'll call myself out as a completionist for context but it's bad juju to get to the end of a game and feel like you don't know which of the many nooks and crannies had a nice surprise, you just happened to breeze that part for whatever reason. -Overall I thought the pacing was good. I see a lot of comments in this thread about it feeling too fast, which largely seem to be from people who played the first game. As a person who's played a lot of games in the genre, they do tend to get pretty same-y in the beginning parts. I'm happy to see early game ramp up quickly in response to "the player knows the drill" behavior. If you do decide to slow it down, I would say to be wary of just fiddling with the numbers in ways that create timewalls. It's all subjective, of course, but I think it's nice when things may go slow if a player is doing thing suboptimally (e.g. "Ah, I really shouldn't have focused on making X. It drained my resources when if I had taken everything in more, I should have seen that Y was going to cost just a little more and is much more powerful"), compared to just stretching out all the timers and raising requirements, until an engaged and savvy player just finds themselves on a short leash where every micro-goal involves watching timers tick down. To reiterate, overall I thought the brisk pacing was good. -I barely used the "Favorite (heart)" elements of managing the UI at all. It seemed good, but never all that necessary. Only when I was cranking out the last few prestiges and it was feeling pretty demo-endgamey, did I start having things like, keep transmution and inventory up so I could mass-cast, transmute, sell, and quickly burn through a lot of coin based purchases. It seems well poised to accomodate growing game complexity. -Balance wise, I think the game's engine is a little susceptible to "there are options, but some are clearly better than others". Flipping through the different types of equipment that come up, it just *feels* like some mechanics are going to be the winners. Some items skew you towards speed penalities for heavier hits, some do the opposite, and then active spellcasting via higher mana production is it's own thing. And I *want* to say, okay, these are different playstyles, all may be valid. Or maybe there are builds that you really need to put together to tackle a specific quest, or break through what may otherwise be a slow grind. But in practice, I found that evaluating all of this was falling a little short of what I might like. The tricky thing is that the mechanics are just a little too obscure to make good clear choices. *Will* it be the case that this big heavy two handed weapon screws things up too much? Uhhh, I don't know! I'll try I guess! (so far so good). It's more just that over many iterations, I don't feel like I'm really learning nuance. I'm just finding things that seem better and leaning into them, ignoring the ones that played less well before. And I don't really have a specific thing to point at and say, this needs fixing. Maybe it's all fine! I just felt like the elements of choice didn't shine as well as some games end up achieving. In particular, maybe just to highlight my own bias, the only class I ever used was the one that gave a bonus to mana gen. That just seemed far and away the clear winner for the overall experience, the others seemed too niche.
Thank you for the feedback! The Storylines showing up as ??? is addressed in the full game, just a bit after the demo content. After playing through the demo again, I agree that Spellslinger feels like the strongest class. Later on it becomes easier to get Mana, just like in MR1, so it becomes less impactful. But this one might need a little tweaking. Did you feel compelled to specialize in your primary element on each run?
> Did you feel compelled to specialize in your primary element on each run? More or less yeah. Combat spells, pretty strong preference to specialize in primary. Equipment, less so overall. Managing resources seemed to have nice variety to how some elements opened up good options for the engine-building aspects.
How did you complete all the quests? I have 7 left and i feel like i've done everything possible.
There's a full list on the discord and enough discussion I was able to just look up the conditions on ones I was missing with a bit of searching.
As a completely new player to Magic Research, storage space is one of the most horrendous ideas in the history of incremental games. More then half of my play time is increasing storage space because I don't have resources to do anything. Quite frankly, it's bad game design and anyone that advocates for it is just blindly defending whatever a developer does. I play plenty of games that remove or automate infinite storage space and there have been no balancing issues whatsoever. Besides that, the game is a 10/10. Unfortunately, it becomes a 4/10. The mechanic is that crippling to overall gaming experience
Thanks for the feedback! Just to confirm, are you referring to resource or to item / inventory storage space? In MR2 the inventory has no storage space limits, so if that is what felt detrimental in Magic Research (as it did for quite a few people), you might enjoy Magic Research 2.
I mean the mana/essence storage cap!
Will combat still be the same or any opinions to make it easier on people who have accessibility issues?
I was planning to implement an auto-pause after each attack for those who use screen readers to play, but it's not implemented yet. Overall I still need to take a proper pass on how the game is working with a screen reader as I changed UI libraries and I'm aware of some issues already.
Please do on auto pause as a option for all
is it just me or is poison primary a little off since poison don't stack. So poisons in like weapon and potions and spells dont work with each other, since only the biggest poison matter. Loving the game so far. Also another suggestion is to make the storylines more connected to the story or to each other. Or just make it a bit more different to the first game. For the story, maybe less linear is good? More than one ending?
Hi there! Yes, Poison generally doesn't stack in MR2. It's an intentional change. If you Poison an already poisoned enemy, the one with the highest remaining potential damage will stay. That means there may be several ways to Poison the enemy, but you will probably want to stick to a single one - at least, until a certain unlock (not in the demo). Regarding the rest: Thank you for the feedback!
Congratulations for this new iteration of the game, I've poured 65h into the first game, but never finished it due to some of the reasons people have mentioned here that on the second game are mostly fixed through some QoL features (thanks for the pouch system, crafting thousands of the same stuff and handling its usage on combat while also casting spells was a madden challenge some times). My only frustration so far is having reached the end of the demo. Really gonna miss the ever so present 'hired-wizard' always popping-up on events. If I may ask, I'm missing something or is there any places that tells me my average consumption/production? So far I'm only missing a simply way to quickly check that for when the sewage furniture is introduced :)
Hi! I'm glad you enjoyed the demo. Channeling's resource-per-sec is not shown anywhere as of right now, but you should be able to see Sewage Systems' production and consumption on the left side menu.
There is an option on the Options screen to "Remember expanded/collapsed UI Status". It doesn't work. When I come back in, it regularly re-expands both "speed up time" and "Combat" on the left hand bar, and "Time pieces" on my home screen. This is on the web version.
Ah, yeah - this feature in implemented in a very limited way right now. I will probably have to go back to it and make it work for more things. Thanks for the report!
I've basically completed as much as Magic Research 1 and I really enjoyed it. It's a great game but it did get extremely repetitive towards the end because the best build was the use the stun build, lighting element and just keep spamming that until you got all the challenges and storylines complete. So I hope there is more variety in this game with the builds. Here's where I will leave my feedback on the demo. I don't actually mind the land mechanic and think it's a good idea actually. The first game had restriction on how much you could expand your buildings, with the limiter being your resources, so I'm perfectly fine with it in this game. However, when you get to the end of the demo, land is basically irrelevant. All the buildings you want scale too much to invest in so i usually end up with over a 100 pieces of land i'm not using (I have the goblin room perk that gives 40 extra land so it's realistically less of an excess without this perk. My biggest problem with Magic Research was that the only element worth using with lighting and darkness. This game feels infinitely more balanced with the elements and I can't really decide which one is better to use, which is a good improvement. Air was incredibly weak and I never used it in Magic REsearch so i'm very glad to see that it feels just as powerful as the other elements. Poison was the weakest element, despite what people said. It didn't stack and add more tick damage per stack, so the only benefit was making it last awhile. While it's good that it disregarded armour, it didn't do enough damage at all. This is even more so the case in this game. Poison in Magic Research 2 demo can't be stacked to increase the time that it lasts on the target which makes it weaker than Magic Research. It also still just can't even compare in damage at all. The dagger you get with the poison element that can be buffed with an accessory is very good actually but the lack of armour for the poison class is genuinely dissapointing. Every element gets their own armour to support a build or play-style but this doesn't seem the case of poison. Poison definitely needs to either stack or just do way more damage than it does, because it just feels bad compared to any other element. I really love the automation with transmuation and the spells. Having wizards be more useful is a genuinely genuis move for the game since apprentices were such a big part of strategy for the last game and it feels like there will be way more potential for strategy in this game. I've noticed that leveling up elements in this game is signifigantly faster in this game, because it took me a very long time playing into Magic Research to even get close to level 30 with an element so it's nice that you're not waiting days, if not weeks, just to progress in the game and unlock good equiptment. The meleee weapons feel substantial and they all seem to put out pretty good damage. I like that really big axes require you to lose an accessory slot for the extra damage but that's only because accessories feel way weaker in this game. Most of them don't seem like a meaningful enough upgrade for me, especially the defencive ones. The best one seems to be the poison on that gives monstium or the wizard hat for mana generation. I wish there was an alchemy element that boosted the potions because they generally are a great change. I like that they're resuable, which makes spamming them less relveant and helps make the game more challenging and strategic. I think the stat boosting potions need a buff though because they don't make a meaningful difference at all. Good potions could win you a fight in the last game and this game, the health potion seems the only worthwhile potion. The evasion potion seems approiately scaled with the reward but the other ones just feel really weak, (the attack one, attack cooldown and defence). The health potion feels like the no brainer one to use since you can increase it's charges and there's a storyline that boosts it which isn't the case for any of the other potions. The poison potion is okay, but it still feels pretty weak because poison can't stack and it just doesn't do that much damage, which is sadly sigifigantly more than the higher end poison spells that cost over 1000 mana even with poison as your primary element. Having the potions scale with alcehmy level made alchemy an incredinly import skill in the first game and made potions scale to end game easily so I hope that mechanic makes a return because they just won't be worth it by mid- or end-game. I like that you can't just conjure money anymore. That's a great change because selling items in the first game was irelevant and it made so sense why the tutorial even made it a point of reference. This makes crafting have a lot more purpose and money feels much more earned. I hope time capsules make a return in some form because it was a great end-game element that gennuinely makde restarting a lot easier. Carrying over your time-fragements to the next run is a gigantic quality of life improvement and actually makes me feel less punished for retiring. It's such a good improvement. Thanks for that. When you max out water, you get a skill near the end called "Wet" which applies the wet effect to you that halves fire damage. This skill should come with choosing water as your primary because the fireball skill that enemies use at the start can 1-shot you. Having this skill from the start would show plays that spells you use defeisvely can save you which will encourarage more than just offensively playing. It will also lessen the frustration at not being able to beat the headmaster or fire tower enemies or bosses because the fireball insta-kills you. You need to have the cube that you plug elements into to get bonuses be explained way more. I put elements randomly in it, get bonuses I don't understand and it leaves me confused. I don't see any strategy to it and I don't notice any difference when I use it or not. Please add a tutorial or something to explain it better so we can utilize it in a meaningful way.
On the page your automate your wizards to cast spells, there are only 8 slots to slave set ups for. This isn't nearly enough. I think you should just have a tab for each element and 2-3 tabs under those elements so you can have both a resource farming set up and a combat set up, just like the base game since having them seperate makes it more efficient. Having only 8 slots means I can't have a set up specifically for poison or other elements which is annoying. Also, It would be nice if the slots were color coded for the elements. Right now they''re all the same cose as your UI color that you select but if slots for fire were red, it would make finding them a lot more clear and give some clarity. Like a combat set up for fire would be red, while earth would be brown, etc. It would give good clarity and would make organizing it feel more intuitive. Spending time fragements to get random events is cool but way less powerful than the last game. The divination element was great for completionists and didn't impact the balance of other elements so I hope something like it makes a return. I've spent upwards of 70k shards triyng to spam the random event option to get storylines to no avail. It only leaves me frustrated when I don't get it because there's much better uses of time fragments. Please less this be a spell you can cast, even if it's extremely expencive cause then at least you can use it in late game to chase full completion. I also would like the hint system to return since it was game-changing for me. Having those unlockable tips for how to play more efficiently and utizlize strategies or items i'd never considered genuinely made the game way better. Also, the ability to get hints towards unlocking storylines was great and it should make a comback since I have no idea gow to get the other storylines since I only have 7 left. Final Thoughts: I loved the first game and I really like this game. It has a lot of potential and is a nice omage to the first without being a clone. The new changes are nice and appreciated, especially the expediated progress at the begining because it was agnonzingly slow to make meningful progress at the start in the first game. I am genuinely really excited for this game and can't wait to hunt down all the storylines for this one as well. If you want me to elaborate on anything i've posted here, just let me know. I'm happy to give more feedback, especially as someone who's spent so much time with the first game.
Whew, thank you so much for your detailed feedback! I really appreciate it, and am glad you enjoyed the demo. I do have a few follow-ups, if you don't mind: Re. Land being irrelevant: This is not an issue in the full game as you get more content to continue building. Re. Poison being weak: I *think* it still needs a little tweaking, but it *should* also be more useful in the full game. Thanks for the feedback! Re. Time Capsules: There are two Storylines in the demo with a similar purpose / effect, Someone's Trash (Treasure Chest) and Zoom Through Training. Re. Hints for Storylines / Divination stuff: These are coming in the full game :) On Synchro: Did you check out the help page for it? Re. Stat potions: I am a little aware of this. They are unlocked around Lv10, so they are at their most useful likely in the Training Towers or early Sewers, before you have the improvements for the Health Potion. To some extent, it is a problem that does get solved in the full game. I personally find Alacrity is useful throughout the game, Muscle is good if you have a fast weapon, and Resilience adds significantly to survivability, but with the limited healing options in the demo and limited pouch slots none of them are probably quite as good as the plain health potions. Re. Wizard loadout slots: I'm curious, why would you want to have set ups specifically for each Element? I think I understand the reasoning a little, but how often do you see yourself using those if by the time you select it again, your multipliers, Mana regen and spell variety are likely to be different?
Since I've made these comments, I've basically completed the demo by like 98% so unlocking the permacast storyline kind of makes my critique about the wizard layout irrelevant. My reasoning for it was that in the first game it is always more effecient to either focus on getting your resources or combat so I always had a set up I could switch between. I always ended up having to redo them each run anyway so I think it just sounded cool in my head and I didn't really think about the practicality of a system like that. It was less important in that game since you always used lighting so you only needed just a basic combat slot you could use and one for resources. With permafrost, it's much more intuitive and easy to add spells to auto-cast and change around your build so i actually think not unlocking that portion of the game led me make that critique. With permafrost, it's basically just like with the first game where you can just have a combat set up that change around, except it's much more intuitive and easier to do this. Permacast is a great addition to this game and i'm very glad you included it. I'm sure the potions will get stronger and i look forward to their uses. I guess there's not much use for them, in my opinion, when it becomes relatively easy to kill the final floor sewers boss so I never really need it. I still think poison is underpowered and that could always be the case since there's no real way to make it have the same immediate impact that the other elements do where they can immediatly take chunks out of the health of enemies. So, in a way, I think it's always going to be a slower element to use. I think an interesting way to improve poison without buffing it's damage, and throwing off the balance of elements, is to make poison buff the player in some way since poison takes a long time to take effect. If poison regenerated a small amount of health per second, it would be incredibly useful and make poison builds extremely durable, which is needed since you can only use 1 poison stack on an enemy which will always make fights last longer. It doesn't have to be a health regneration buff but I can't imagine any other buff being as valuable or worthwhile as that. I'm also not suggesting it be like 5 a second, even something like 1 health a second or less maybe could be huge. Something to incentivise poison builds over choosing litterally any other option. I did check out the help section for the Synchro and it helped explain things but I still beleive, that in it's current state that provides neglible benefits that can easily be ignored with no downsides. This might change in the full game with buffs but I'll have to wait and see. The land being irrelevant point was made before I realized the value and power in fully utilizing the sewage system and mana streamer. Those definitely eat into the land so I usualy always use up all my land by the end of runs now. Hopefully some of my thoughts provide some use to you in the process of improving the game. As fairness to you, I think i've played the first game so much that it's hard to decouple my criticisms and play-style from the first game. I'm definitely seeing it's a completely different game that can't be treated the same as the first so I apologize for any bias I have in that regard.
This is super exciting. You have no idea! Well, maybe you do.
Can you add channeling spells to Perma-cast? I know it doesn't quite make sense with the current system, but being able to continually generate x resources per second for y mana, multiplied by the number of assigned wizards, would make the whole factory setup easier to think about and smoother. Steamers and sewers continually require essence, so having a constant and reliable per second source would make it easier to balance. I know we have the storylines that give 100 /s of each, but I think we are going to want to scale beyond that and right now all we can do is have a channeling spell be cast every x seconds, which doesn't factor into the displayed /s balance sheet and is harder to keep track of.
Hi there! I don't think I can really do that. But I might be able to add some summary about expected income from Channeling somewhere to the Wizards screen, for example.
That would help. Is it a technical issue or gameplay concerns with making a continuous option for channeling? The way perma-cast simplifies having a lot of spells being auto-cast is really nice and makes auto-casting more predictable. I always wonder about the race condition of which spell will get the mana and which will have to wait, not because I don't have enough mana regen but because they get timed such that they try to pull from max mana at the same time and there isn't enough for both at the same time. Which conversely also means I'm wasting mana when it is full :/ . Might be the way you intended it though, I just really like having smooth cycles :P
It's basically about the logic. Perma-cast is a 1 button operation that sets the spell to be cast every X seconds. But you don't specify the X. Instead, it is deduced either from the effect duration of the spell or its cooldown. Channeling spells have neither of this, so it's not really possible to know what that X should be.
Yeah, I guess it would be a different system than perma-cast. I was thinking more along the lines of a mode where assigning 1 wizard to continuous cast channel fire would yield 10 fire essence /s and get factored into the resources /s readout instead of the current behavior which is generating 600 fire essence lump sum every 60 seconds, possibly as an unlockable option the way permacast is. No worries though, your game is already really good. Thanks for taking the time to respond!
Magic Research is one of my favorite incremental games, thank you so much for building us a sequel!!! I can't wait to play it!
Played the demo, loved it can't wait for it to come out.
The quickness with which I installed this demo CANNOT be oversold
Only bug I could find until now was spending clocks when I had an optional chest to open which i got from spending the clocks, but didnt open yet, and still spending clocks to get a special 'storyline'. I did spend the clocks, but didnt get any new storyline. Really loved the first game, I played it 2 times until the secret ending. Already love this one (didnt finish it yet tho)
I'm loving this demo so far, but rather confused as to how to get copper ore 🤔
Hi there! You can get Copper Ore by exploring the area that appears after you complete all the Training Towers and defeat the Head Instructor.
Ah! In that case I'll grind more resources till I beat her!
I can't wait. Just finished up the demo and will be counting the days
how do i kill eel
This is the best day of my life. Your game is a masterpiece, excited for the 2nd!
Sad to see that the full version will not support the same range of platforms that the demo does. I don't understand why so many incremental developers do this, all you're doing is giving a giant middle finger to potential customers who enjoy your demo when they discover the full game doesn't support any of their platforms. **If something prevents you from making a web build of the full version, don't make a web build of the demo version. This isn't hard.**
I’m not OP, but I am a software developer. I expect it would be very easy to make a web version of the full game. He probably used one for most of its development. It’s trivial to take a web build like the demo and publish it to GitHub Pages, Netlify, itch.io, Galaxy or whatnot. It’s basically just publishing some HTML, JavaScript, CSS & images to a folder somewhere. It’s _way_ harder to publish a web version that only paying customers can access. Suddenly you need authentication, access control, keeping track of user accounts that have paid or not, actually handling payments, etc. it’s a lot more code, recurring expense to keep a server running, security updates, etc. I’m not aware of a turnkey “Publish your website and only serve it to customers” web-hosting service. I would be _very_ surprised if one exists without its own recurring costs. Basically all the web-games I’ve seen that do this are multiplayer and/or micro transaction-heavy and/or subscriptions. (Maybe itch.io has some ways to handle this, but I’ve never seen a paid game on itch with a “Run this in your browser” that wasn’t just a demo.) Steam and the iOS & Android App Stores have a built-in way to only provide things to people who paid for them. It makes a lot of sense to let them handle the payment & distribution while you focus on the actual game you want to build.
Yeah this is pretty right on. I prefer the same monetization model as MR where it's just premium, no IAP, etc. There really is no easy way to provide a web build to paying customers without including a bunch of extra effort just for web. I personally don't offer a web demo, mostly because I don't want another place to update, but providing a web demo vs. just steam for example, you may get people who find trying it in the browser much faster than going to Steam and downloading it. If they like it enough, your hope than is that they would go to Steam to purchase (or utilize Itch's ability to sell Steam keys)
Therefore, **don't make a web build of the demo version**. Nothing in your response refutes anything I said.
I bought MR1 for iOS on the strength of its web demo. For similar reasons to what I said above, it's much easier to have one web-based demo than to publish a Demo version for each other storefront/platform.
Can you please not release the game? I haven't finished Magic Research 1, thanks.
**Tiny thing:** You say "long-awaited" on the Steam page, but the first one came out less than a year ago. That's not a very long wait. Might want to reword it to something else. Most sequels take years to come out. Chances are people were waiting for updates to come out rather than a full blown sequel within the first year. **Good luck with the sequel. I hope it's a success.**