Comments on: Spectromancer!

By: stankevich

stankevich — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:45:57 +0000

[...] 4000 Jews were slaughtered in a mass execution. … Mail (will not be published) (required) …Spectromancer! | Rock, Paper, ShotgunAt long last. A game about arcane manipulations of the creator of Deus Ex. It's what we've all been [...]

By: Rock, Paper, Shotgun: I was very chalant, despite my efforts to appear gruntled and consolate » The RPS Bargain Bucket: Cheap Games Dance

Sat, 08 Aug 2009 13:11:19 +0000

[...] Garfield. Lots of numbers in this one, so the maths-phobic among you best look away now. Kieron had this to say about it: “What’s fun about the campaign is that each challenge is exactly that – [...]

By: Magic Card Tricks: Spectromancer Demo | Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Magic Card Tricks: Spectromancer Demo | Rock, Paper, Shotgun — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:33:52 +0000

[...] mentioned Spectromancer before, in its various Betas. However, it’s out now, and it’s got a demo for anyone [...]

By: acidburner

acidburner — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 02:24:59 +0000

I have to agree with alco75 on this one. It seems like a solid game, but the randomness of the deck when you’re playing just takes away from the experience to such an irritating degree. Once in a while, that whole idea of a random deck is great, but basing the entire fight system around it, and getting stuck with seemingly bad cards you never play, isn’t fun.

By: Spectromancer Multiplayer Beta | Rock, Paper, Shotgun: Pagans repent! The Endless Bear is your true God

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 10:55:49 +0000

[...] who remember the ancient days of February will recall me blogging about Spectromancer, the card-game-esque wizard-wargame, from the makers of Magic: The Gathering [...]

By: Mr Pink

Mr Pink — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 12:15:06 +0000

OK, I’ve given this a go. It’s certainly good fun, although perhaps a tad simplistic when compared to Magic the Gathering (on which it is clearly based- no surprise considering the creators!). I like the mechanics, but I have to agree with alco75 that I miss the ability to make decks. I’ve always found deck constructing to be the most enjoyable part of these games.

Incidentally, the campaign reminds me of the campaign mode in the ancient Magic the Gathering game by Microprose. In that you started with a collection of very average cards, and gradually built up a more versatile collection of powerful cards through winning duels and defeating dungeons. For me, that mode was the best approximation to a CCG I’ve ever seen in a computer game, as you were forced to build decks using the cards that you “owned”. I just don’t feel that the deck construction in this game supports the mode as well as it could.

By: alco75

alco75 — Sun, 10 Feb 2008 10:20:13 +0000

Potentially great …

This is what I posted on their forums:

“I tried the beta for some 3 hours yesterday. Overall, I quite liked it, but I uninstalled it and decided to forget about it, primarily due to the deck randomization. However, realized I was still thinking about the game afterwards, and I feel strongly enough to bother registering and posting. I think you’re in danger of missing the boat and wasting an opportunity here.

Deck randomness. Surely at least half of the fun of a game like this is in putting a deck together and figuring out clever combos? I can’t fathom the decision to randomize the cards for a given fight. Perhaps, as someone else suggested, it’s being done for balance. That’s very much the wrong way to go about balancing a game, which leads me to ask why the game creators are posting threads like “bad cards”. The game is online! Couldn’t you collect statistics about how many times cards are being used, and balance them based on that? (For example, if statistics show that card X is being deployed less often than one standard deviation less than the mean average number of times per day/week/month for all cards of the same (or very similar) cost, then card X becomes a candidate for being buffed. And visa versa, of course.) It’s not like a deck building module would be a large development task. A simple UI is all that’s needed to drag and drop 4 cards of each element.

Spelling mistakes and typos. Obviously not nearly as important as the above, but c’mon, you can put the game’s content through a spellchecker, right? To me, it seems really unprofessional to have a commerical product littered with these.

Anyway, I wish you the best with your game, but I really hope you’ll eventually reconsider the deck randomization decision. I’m sure I can’t be the only person who’ll give this game a miss if you don’t.”

By: Rock, Paper, Shotgun: Still Hoping For That Post-Apocalyptic Robot Versus Monkey Immersive Sim » Blog Archive » RPS Omnibus: Feb 3rd-8th

Sat, 09 Feb 2008 15:18:15 +0000

[...] Spectromancer demo – CCG fare, in the vein of the utterly splendid Armageddon Empires [...]

By: brog

brog — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 21:04:36 +0000

Nice, like it. A few bugs and typos for them to iron out though.

By: Briosafreak

Briosafreak — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 18:21:41 +0000

This is awesome, I totally lost any notion of time last passing last night! This is getting more addictive than Peggle! woot!

By: Volrath

Volrath — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:12:39 +0000

Turn Based strategy card games for the win.

By: elias

elias — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 17:05:55 +0000

I played a bit last night, and I think it’s really fun. You do have a max of 2 decisions each turn (the first being whether to play a spell, play a creature, or pass and the second being the decision of where to put the creature if you play one), which I agree really streamlines the gameplay. But then there’s a whole lot of strategy hidden in those small decisions… do you play a weenie creature to defend a space for a while and let you save up power in another category, or do you play a spell to try to eliminate one or more of their creatures?

There are definitely some cards that are better than others, which can make it disappointing when you start a match and don’t get to use one of the more powerful cards (Wrath of God…), but I think that part actually adds another fun challenge that has been mentioned earlier, which is to try to win with what you have.

There are some combinations that work nicely, which are fun to discover. I like Ice Golem (Guard?) + Stone Rain (+ Jade Idol when I was in the match that let me have it).

Anyway, I’m a fan. Really looking forward to playing more tonight after work. And I’ll be telling some work buddies about it today…