Beta Review of Tower Wizard, 2nd February 2025 after playing ~6 hours and 3 prestiges

[Vanguard]

I like the game and I am having fun.

I get the same quick paced enjoyment out of it like I had gotten from an hour of Magic Archery.

Thank you for creating this application and allowing me into the Beta - I quite like the vision you have for your game(s): limited in scope and focused on the experience at hand with a good upgrade flow and progression through the run instead of hamfistedly trying to make it endless as so many of the ADHD simulators out there are trying to do (idling to rule the gods anyone? Yikes.)

However, there are some things which I consider could be improved.

I will sort them in sorted lists and give them a grade to show which items I consider important (from "wish" to "Should have" to "must have").

UI and gameplay options:
1 Should have) While I absolutely adore the style of the game, the UI needs some work. Consider that the most zoomed in resolution quickly becomes useless. If I am fully zoomed in on the academy I cannot even add spirits to the Academy, as that option is floated out of the screen, needing me to pan around for no good reason. So either the UI should scale down in most zoomed in option or it should re-pan depending on the camera and never be out of bounds.

2 Must have) Include a button to buy "max" amount of spirits to any building. Considering I have to click hundreds of times just for spirits alone (and twice that amount for buying and assigning separately). Consider allowing adding and assigning max amount of spirits on any given building without having to pan to the top of the wizard tower. It could be an upgrade in the prestige path down the line, so players can pick if they prefer comfort over efficiency.

3 Wish) If the above is a no then at least consider letting the "y" key not only work as clicking on buildings, but also allow it to depress buttons to lessen the strain on clicking the mouse. I don't need carpal tunnel. :)

Visual variety:
1 Wish / Must have (I consider this a very fancy upgrade that would increase the longevity of the game as players get to click something for fun instead of just efficiency clicking)) I would love to have some upgrades that change the visual appearance of the surrounding area, or even just some spells the wizard could cast "for fun" which do not have a bonus attached to them that change how the area looks - like differently colored forest, a beam of sun streaking across the mountain range in the background. Maybe summon a few skeleton laborers, which give a temporary boost to a building and time out quickly. A prestidigitation spell to change the colors of the robes (and maybe the hat and beard separately :) ) of the wizard, so he stands out more when he teleports around the tower. All of these would be "fun" ideas to have and probably take less importance over more upgrades and expanding the core game play, but I still would love to see them - Casting spells at the tower I consider more wizardly than whipping the ghosts into shape ;)

2 Should have) If a building serves a crucial upgrade path, like the building where you construct the embassy from, it should represent if there are upgrades left with a visual indicator - such as a whiteboard that has less and less written on it as you finish those upgrades or maybe a closed door with a red cross on it once all upgrades are bought.

3 Wish) A wardrobe for the wizard attainable via milestones, such as new garnments from different countries once you have opened enough embassies, or a new staff for reaching 50/100 workers in a building in a given play through (Staff of Midas for the Alchemy lab, The staff of Knowledge from the Study, etc.) - maybe even have titles being a thing that confer a minor bonus per play through, depending on which title you pick.

4 Should have) Individual NPC characters that confer minor bonuses, such as a druid you can find in some breakthroughs stalking through your woods and who you can best in a small mini game who then becomes part of the wizard's retinue and increases wood production by a small margin, etc. - giving opportunity to have minor NPCs with a different color scheme to run around the map. :)

Relics:
1 Must have) Upon hovering over a relic, the ingredients for the relic should highlight. The icons are not distinct enough for me, so once in a while I buy the wrong ingredients for the relic I want to make.

2 Should have) The amount of relics owned should NOT be listed in the back. Instead the "owned" column, should be in front of the item - such that it reads "X cognite - Buy more -> Buy button". This way you can omit the Icons and list at the back as it is just double the visual information, forcing me to match the inventory on the right to the relics I want to make on the left. If the highlight is not something you would consider, then I would bump this issue up to a "must have".

3 Wish) I feel the "creation progress tracker" could be migrated into the main Window just below the alchemists and combined into a tracker for how many ingots you have. This way you would resolve the "three windows" into one if following all the outline changes listed above. To me this would be the ultimate visual clarity on the Alchemy lab.

Embassy:
1 Must have) An ongoing audio and ongoing visual queue (besides the floating ghosts or rather its absence) that the current diplomatic process has completed.

2 Should have) In lieu of the above suggestion, a queue of countries to diplomance - even at the cost of not being able to switch the country you was going for. Speedrunners will have it mapped out anyway and casuals do not care if they waste a minute of researching a different country first.

3 Wish) Every Xth ghost should carry a small cultural token from the country the come from - whine, small plants and herbs, exotic clothes, signed papers, etc.

4 Wish) The portal should be much greater (Think World of Warcraft Dark Portal kind of large) and be clear instead of swirling black. In the background of the clear portal a visual hint of the location you try to establish diplomatic relations with should be seen (storm and mountains, the sea, etc.)

5 Wish) Finished countries should be represented with a small flag of the nation hanging from the roof of the embassy.

6 Must have) Add a purpose to diplomats after all relations have established or allow reassignment. At least disallow adding more spirits to the embassy once you're done for good.

Terminology and World building:
1 Wish) Some upgrades could have more imaginative names, I feel - after all it's a game about wizard. After you establish relations with netus, the upgrade for the forest shouldn't be "bigger forest" but something such as "Eldritch Expansion" or "Groves of Growth" - you get the point. :)

2 Wish) Herbology feels like a take-over from Magic Archery. It should be "Forestry" (or whichever term is more appropriate, not a native speaker. :) ), since you're harvesting logs and not herbs.

Final Thoughts:

Since the game isn't finished, I am holding off on any thoughts regarding prestige, additional buildings (there is still a lot of space on the right and left side for the wizard tower to grow into more crazy stuff and I am really looking forward for more of the fun pixel art to be seen there. :) and additional challenges or funny things like random events to deal with. While I do not want the game to become an endless slog like Cookie Clicker, I would still want for a few more Prestiges than the three it took me to finish the game for the first time. I am looking forward to your ideas and development of this title and I will probably buy it once it has released.

I hope this Feedback is useful and some of it makes it into the game.

Appreciate your time for reading this. Cheers!

[Vanguard]

Edit: As I just now have found the "Theme" and "UI Scale" Options, some of my Feedback has been somewhat invalidated or should be modified in hindsight. I still think casting spells on the forest to change color would be more fun and more in theme with the game than just switching the Theme, but hey - at least it's there. :)

[Vanguard]

Edit: After unlocking the Sage Totem via Prestige, the Construction Menu for Totems should show the sage totem without the Scroll Bar. I missed the scroll bar for the first few totems and almost forgot about the sage totem subsequently.

[barribobdevelopment]

Appreciate you going into detail - a lot of these are very valid, and I will look into them. I have one question however. Most buttons you should be able to hold down and buy multiple rapidly. Were you aware of this/was this not enough? This feature is not stated anywhere right now in the game yet.

[Vanguard]

Originally posted by barribobdevelopment:

Appreciate you going into detail - a lot of these are very valid, and I will look into them. I have one question however. Most buttons you should be able to hold down and buy multiple rapidly. Were you aware of this/was this not enough? This feature is not stated anywhere right now in the game yet.

I was not - this does work and is much appreciated. I guess I am too impatient to wait for the second delay to kick in, but that is my personal problem. If there was a slider to increase the repeat rate / lower the delay before the repeat kicks in that would please me greatly, but it is also be a minor Wish-thing.

Appreciate the answer.

[Vanguard]

I found some weird behavior with the Embassy.

Once you reach 50 Spirits working in the embassy, each spirit returns 2 units of diplomacy progress. You can keep this going if you do not switch away from the Embassy, accelerating it or not does not make a difference, it still returns 2 units.

If you then switch away from the embassy and back, the progress returned per spirit returns to 1 again.

Edit: I managed to get it once again - I selected the embassy, added some spirits to the embassy until I had 40 and then selected a country to diplomance - I managed to get the double-return bonus somehow.

[barribobdevelopment]

This sounds like the Blessing of Population. Did it happen that the blessing effect switched to the Embassy? It should have an icon next to the diplomat upgrade.

[Vanguard]

Originally posted by barribobdevelopment:

This sounds like the Blessing of Population. Did it happen that the blessing effect switched to the Embassy? It should have an icon next to the diplomat upgrade.

I am 90% confident that is not the case - as I managed to get the same effect with only 40 Diplomacy spirits, I doubt that was the highest population at the time, because in this run I know that I stuck with 42 Tome spirits, which I already had before I went to fill the embassy.

I'll pay more attention should I ever do another run in the current version of the game. :)

[barribobdevelopment]

Ok, good to know. I will look into it, thanks!

[Vanguard]

Hm, I tried twice now to reproduce the double progress thing with the embassy and it looks like I have deluded myself into thinking it was a bug, when it was most likely indeed "just" the bonus from the Blessing of Population. Sorry for the fuss up. :)