Hanna, Can you post here the changes you made in the upcoming update, particularly with respect to the balancing issue other posters have previously mentioned?
Hello, Here's the full list of what's new in the upcoming update: - - - - All Premium Character Enhancement Items now able to be acquired using Crystals (NOTE: These are optional items for competitive play and *not* required for main path story progression) - Many More Crystals from: * Gold and Crystal Level Key Awards * Character Leveling * Crystal Chests in quests * Quest Journal Task Completion - Video Sharing so you can show how you vanquished a difficult monster or earned a crystal key on a quest - 3 New Quests: Bleak Flats, Black Garden, Stagnant Harbour - Garden Area/First 5 quests tuned for easier Crystal Level Key Earning - Scrollable Top 10 Leaderboards (expanded from 3 so you can see more of your friend's scores) - Conquer Friend Score Push Notification when you beat a friend's score - Quick Kill Encounter Timer Added for bonus mana rewards - UI, Graphic, and Tutorial Improvements - Bug Fixes - Game Guide - - - Thanks for all the feedback here this far - looking forward seeing more! - Magus of Many
Greetings! Wizard Quest 2.1.0 update was released today! You can find the feature list above here in my previous post. Thanks in advance to everyone updating the game or grabbing it as new, and checking what we've worked on there. Hope you enjoy playing! Looking forward to any and all feedback - we value your comments greatly. We're also working on the next update as we speak, so there's definitely more to come into world of Wizard Quest... - Magus of Many
Still not recommendable after the update. I played about three and a half hours into the game, until I gave up. An interesting concept buried under a laughable high difficulty degree forcing you into consumable iAPs, which I detest. Today I read a review on pocketgamer, which nails it: http://www.pocketgamer.co.uk/r/iPhone/Wizard+Quest/review.asp?c=57231
I put about the same amount of time into the game and came to the same conclusion as you. That review mirrors my experience to the letter.
Yikes about the previous posters' impression and the Pocket Gamer review (reviewing the 2.1.0 updated version)! Any response from Mana Giant?
Hi, Tango & abstractgamefreak, it would be interesting to hear the whereabouts in the game you stopped playing? Which Quests proved to be too difficult etc. If you'd like, we can post solution videos to any levels you are having trouble with. We want users to enjoy the game and progress. Difficulty was intended to be advanced gameplay, so if you need assistance with the harder levels, we want to help. One thing to notice is that the PG review claimed to be on version 2.1.0, but it's actually 2.0.0. Can tell it by the screenshots and the fact she's referring to Character Item IAPs with real money prices. Cheers, - Magus of Many
I bought this game when it still cost $.99 and before the update adjusting the Crystal reward rate etc. I really like the core gameplay mechanics and the difficulty is very high too, which is good. I haven't spent any money on IAPs. So far I've completed the first map section achiving crystal keys on 95% of the quests. I'm working my way through the second map section. I haven't felt like the game pushed me towards the in app purchases but I wonder if that is because of the choices that I made about how to spend the crystal rewards. I suspect that if I had made different choices the game may have become too difficult. With a game that has this high difficulty those changes can push it into the territory of being too frustrating. If you manage your Crystals well and make the right purchases I think the balance is good. I only found myself getting really frustrated with one Quest. (The deep) I beat that by changing my strategy and using different weapons, which is a sign of good design in my opinion. If on the other hand you spend your crystals on continuing after dying or on the wrong rewards I think you'll have a much more difficult or frustrating time. This is a shame, because I think this game is really excellent and obviously a lot of thought was put into the design and the gameplay is great. It's one of my favorites on the app store right now. I encourage anyone to give this game a chance, especially now that it's free, it's worth it.
Please fix this oversight. I'm not making a Facebook account. And I would like to receive actual notifications, so... Here's my impression of those useless not-notifications: "Wahhh! Play with me now! Wahhh!" Sorry about that, but my rudeness there was basically required to indicate what those notifications sound like. They are pointless and annoying. If I turn them off, real notifications turn off too (if the game even has any). Now imagine all your games doing that! Mama mia, you haven't played-a Mario in a while! You're too slow! Sonic wants to play! Hey! Listen! Hyrule needs to be saved! Snake? Snake! You haven't played this game for a day?! Snaaake!!! But seriously... Imagine every single game you own doing that... Picture the incredible annoyance... Now, every game developer who does that: You see how pointlessly annoying those notifications are now?
Here are some details on strategy for those interested, my previous post was getting long winded: First, obviously never ever use a Crystal to continue your game. There's no reason to do this and you really need every Crystal for other things. Just don't do it. The two critically important things to spend crystals on, get them as soon as they become available for your level, are: 1. the doodad that lets you stack two tiles on top of each other (stacking trinket). 2. Diagonal Mastery Orb, available at level 12 really changes the game and allows for more huge combinations as you might expect The experience bonus stone is probably worth it and you should get it as early as you can although I didn't. The only other item I bought was the residue beacon. It's a nice bonus but I think it's less important than the first two that I mentioned. It's good to upgrade your health points. I have 30 and that seems like plenty since it's so easy to get health restores by matching green tiles. I don't really use the magical items (non-weapons) very often. I have over 400,000 manna points in the bank at this point. Weapons seem more useful, especially the Long range type. I would focus on getting additional weapons slots and additional weapon conjuration slots and upgrading your weapon level to keep up with any runes that you find. Final note for the developers: if you make a combination that you think is going to unlock a door but the door is not quite completely visible on the screen it doesn't unlock the door. this feels cheap, I think you should change it. Another thing: if you're working on a nice big combination bonus chain and you accidentally (in one move) make a large combination that also makes a smaller (<5 tile) combination, that breaks the chain. I don't think it should break the chain if that smaller combination is part of a single move.
I downloaded this a couple weeks back (apparently for free, not sure if there was a sale or something?) but didn't get around to playing it until now. I'm actually really enjoying it. I have 11 levels completed with 8 levels at Crystal, and I feel like the difficulty curve has been about right so far. My biggest complaints (already mentioned by others, but worth repeating) are: 1) Facebook integration quests (please, just NO). 2) Not keeping anything when you die on a level. As others have said, it is clearly a bad idea to spend any crystals to revive in a level. I'm sure that the devs purposely don't let you keep anything to try and push you to use crystals, but it sounds like people are just more annoyed than anything. I think that some EXP should at least be kept when you die so I don't feel like I'm banging my head against a wall when trying a level over and over. 3) It's probably way too late at this point, but I feel like the character progression could have been handled much better. I think a system that would allow you upgrade your tile types (i.e. spend 500xp to "level up" your fire tiles so they do more damage, or so they spawn 2x/3x tiles more often) would have been a better way to go. That way I could go back to earlier levels that I had trouble getting a crystal key on with and actually see the progress my character has made. I don't really see upgrading my magic/item slots as "progressing" my character. I can upgrade my HP, sure, but that's only one element of many. The only real "progress" items are the purchasable ones, which can be significant buffs but are locked behind crystals that take a long time to get. 4) As TheOmen2 mentioned above, when you create a 5+ match but inadvertently make a <5 match in the same move, I feel like this should not break your chain. I've had SO many chains broken this way and it's extremely frustrating. All in all, the IAP doesn't bother me too much but like I said, apparently I downloaded this one for free. If I had paid $0.99 for this, I would be pretty pissed.
Any chance you guys are going to start up development again? This was a remarkable game. Just tried again and it won't connect to Facebook so I can't clear the "quest" that requires Facebook Maybe you could at least fix that?
This is such a cool game that seems like it didn't have a good monetization integration. I think it's worth five dollars as a standalone game. I'm still hoping for the promised expansion levels, but it dosent look good At this pont. Of all the iOS games I've played this one is one that I keep thinking about. It's just so unique and fun but hard to put my finger on exactly why. Great job to the Devs I wish they had more success with this.
