Spellcaster University

This is a cute little game that is fairly relaxing. Recommend for sure!

It's nice to have a magic focused game without it being connected to harry potter and hogwarts for once. Game is very chill and the campaign in easy to pick up and put down. Overall a good game.

Ur a wizard harry!!!

Its a shame, but I just couldn't like this.

Its probably that it isnt my type of game, didnt get the appeal, the game seems shallow, build variety feels non existant, raids are fun but the mainn game just isnt any good for me.

The animations and room concepts are charming, but overall I dont like how the school looks, nor the managment, nor how little there is to do the majority of time aside from "wait, pick a card", the events arent that interesting either.

Told my students to sleep in a coffin.
They woke up as vampires.
Then the inquisition got upset that I was teaching vampires.

9/10

One major complaint:
You cannot delete any rooms or move any already placed rooms.
You have to be very careful when building.
This seems like a major oversight for a game like this.

Otherwise the game is fine.

Way better then mind over magic

Game has a steep learning curve, not much of a tutorial, super random, important choices cannot be changed. Lots of ways to get screwed over by RNG or a past mistake while trying to figure out the basics.

Get it on sale if you must.

Relaxing and super fun, I've logged over 500 hours in this game and it still holds my attention without fail

This game delivers on the promise a cozy game where you draw cards to create a Spellcaster University. The characters are just developed enough that I care, and not so developed that it interrupts gameplay. I enjoyed the mixture of skill and luck for this sort of game.

Fun & relaxing

Very fun management game with great graphics and enough variety to keep you playing.

There's fun to be had here but it's weighed down by a build system that is almost entirely RNG-based.

You collect gold, plus mana in each of several categories (obtained by your students studying that subject). When you get enough of a category you can draw a card for an item or new room of that category - you're presented with three options and pick one. These options are entirely RNG-based.

What that means is that you may go into a map thinking you want to try an Arcane and Nature school and then just never draw the requisite cards to get it going. Or, you may know you need more dormitories for your students but the game just never gives you the card. You can't really plan the school out because you really have no idea what the game is going to let you build with the bizarre luck-of-the-draw system.

On the plus side, there's a lot of charm in the graphics and the game does a great job with the "feel" of magic. The classrooms are cool and your kids can get items like devil's horns, staves, regalia, etc. It really does feel like a magic school.

It's just such an odd choice from the developers to make the build system completely based on dice rolls.

I love this game, the main campaign is perfect, there is some replay ability, if you like experimenting, I do. Definitely recommend, my only gripe is that I selfishly want more.

At a certain point i started playing endless, but I wish there was more story, unless I'm missing something, I wish there was a secret to uncover or the dungeons just available or for quests to keep coming. In endless mode it hits a lull, I'd like for there to be more action, maybe the factions go to war or something, see what happens if you and the certain groups are friends. See students join different factions and maybe that gives you influence during encounters because your student runs a specific department for that faction. I think fleshing out a little more story based details would make endless actually go on for a lot longer before hitting a lull.

Great theme and art style. Rules become very clear after playing one level and it really fun gameplay loop.

I thought this game might be for children or casuals, so my expectations weren't especially high, but it's actually right up my alley. It's got card draw, resource management, and building. I like it.

Fun, quirky and original.
...Gets a little "ehhh" as it adds handicaps, but hey= git gud homie

Charming game that you'll play for a campaign or two.

I like being surprised by games that dare to do something different. Spellcaster University does exactly that. Gameplay isn't like anything you have played before - draw cards to build a magic university with bricks, buffs only to see it destroyed a few times before you can destroy evil - and that makes this a very refreshing game to play. While gameplay is -wide- it is not very -deep-. What I mean with this is that most of the gameplay mechanics are somewhat shallow, but there are enough different ones to have some fun for 20-40 hours.

Nicely done devs, keep them coming. Oh! And the game is screaming for modding options.

A lot of fun strategy, conserving resources, laughing at what students become, and exploring the unique areas. The game was really easy to get into and learn, and once I got the hang of it I was totally hooked. I was pleasantly surprised to find out there was an end to the campaign mode, my only real complaint is that I wish there was more of a post story/sandbox mode that just let you explore and play with what works and what doesn't for the type of school you're building. Overall a solid 4.5/5 stars, I would really recommend it as a chill game with a lot of fun content to play around with. Hoping to see a sequel or a DLC in the future for more!

Fun game. The game world feels very alive and immersive, and the game loop is very satisfying. Replayable as well. If you want to unlock every possible profession it will take a few playthroughs.

I made it through one full campaign with no crashes, but I have had a couple since the. Nothing game breaking though, as the game autosave seems pretty solid and you can just start back up with minimal lost time.

I'm looking forward to this team's next project.

Great game.
Play it in french if you can.

Love the game. Kinda idle-y as it can take a while to build up enough mana to do anything but the fun part really is planning out the school and trying to build for specific outcomes for your students.

Remember to make friends with the King!

meep

This game can be relaxing, and has a lot of replay value. With the different classes and random students it makes you think of different strategies for future levels.

♥

dynamic!

I absolutely love this little magical school game that is a mix between a doll house and dungeon keeper. i just wish i could see things in first person view as a student or a teacher my beloved university! ;) Best time waster around. I also wish the music was more diverse and upbeat. Great game overall, never had a crash. Very good.

Clunky. Often feels like busy work. Needs automated way to sort students (like auto-graduating them) and better system for selling surplus potion ingredients. Also struggles to run on my machine which handles other games just fine. But there is no reason for this to be the case as far as I can tell. There is no complex mechanism to take up memory or insane graphics (or at least any I want for a simple simulator).

Sadly not really rewarding. It can be really repetitive.
I really like the aesthetic of it and the dungeon element it sadly cant grab me elsewhere. I surely will try for some hours more but for now this is my review.

I can't recommend this game enough. It's a lot of fun and there is always something new to try differently in each campaign.
It would be really great to see even more content, I would even take a paid for DLC.
Best of luck in your Magic University!

An excellent idea for a game, one with a fair bit of visual appeal that is held back by the fact that it explains absolutely nothing to you while somehow simultaneously having a tutorial that consists of two dozen text boxes that dump information onto the player without any context or interactivity.

This game spends several minutes pointing out its own features without teaching the player how to interact with them, how they interact with each other, and how they affect your play-through as a whole. I know factions and reputation exist, and that I can visit these factions, but I don't know how they affect my school. I know that my students and teachers have different traits, but no idea what those traits exactly do. I know there are different schools and sub-schools of magic and skills, but I don't know what training my students in them will do or even how to focus on training them, etc etc.

This is made worse by the deck system. In a management sim like this, a system that takes away control over what rooms are built and relegating it to needing to spend resources to draw cards at random and hope you get the room you wanted to build is really frustrating and further aggravates the problem of player confusion when you are drawing rooms whose functions are a mystery. While I'm in the middle of trying to get a couple dormitories and classrooms set up, I'm drawing prison cells, undead crypts and observatories, all while getting bombarded by random events from the left side of the screen and before I know what's happening orcs are attacking my students even though 5 minutes ago I chose an action in an event that said it was supposed to improve my relationship with them.

This concept has so much potential, but rarely have I had a less smooth on boarding experience as a player. The tutorial needs to be slowed down and lengthened into something that not only goes into detail on each system it explains, but also allows the player to interact with that system while learning about it so that information is retained. Blocks of text flashed up on screen pointing at UI elements don't help a player retain information. Furthermore, introduce ideas and systems one at a time. Introduce the building system first, then take some time to explain how approving student applications and student traits works, then move on to explaining the magic schools and skills, etc. I can tell there's a lot of complexity and nuance on display here, but its all far too inscrutable to recommend right now.

I love making stupid and arbitrary houses to sort students into (rich vs poor, evil vs good (misc for the neutrals), or my favourite which was ugly vs god's favourites (if I liked you best)).

So much fun.

I finished the campaign in 8.6 hours. While I enjoyed my time, it's not exactly deep nor rewarding and I'll probably never touch it again. I'd rather have spent my money elsewhere.

The UI looks and feels like an old flash game, and the only 'good' graphics are for the buildings/students in the background, which you have no control over nor time to really look at given the strict timeline you're on.

If the price was more reasonable, I'd recommend, but it's not worth it, in my opinion. Not without a lot more polish.

Specifics on what to improve:
1. The new student screen constantly popped up and took over my screen while I was in the middle of an action.
2. There isn't enough time before the forced of evil come to do everything I'd like.
3. Provide the specialization quest before I start building my school. If I've already build 3-4 classes, and my only option is to specialize into room I don't already have, then I need to have 6 different classes, and there is almost no way to draw my students into the 2 that matter. Not without a lot of luck. I settled for 2 stars at the end of most maps.
4. The adventure UI is a mess and I basically only did well if I was lucky.
5. Allow me to reorder cards in my hand.

Fun and funny

I'm 26 hours into Spellcaster University and absolutely love it! I'm playing on a Mac Studio M1 and have had no bugs or crashes yet. Game is running smooth. The tutorial is basic, and you do have to figure out a lot of mechanics on your own, but I like that. Long tutorials are a bit of a pet-peeve for me. I'd rather dive in and learn as I go, and pretty quickly I felt like I had a good handle on the game. I love the sense of humor, and the delightful animations. The game ropes you in with fun and easy building mechanics, but the longer you play the more you start to find the deeper layers of strategy. Mixing magic disciplines to meet challenges, and put together the best adventuring team, laying out all your rooms to make them the most efficient, figuring out what teacher and student qualities work best, and much more has kept me deeply entertained. All of that, and there's still plenty of room just to build what's fun and cool! Hope you enjoy this game as much as I have.

Funsies, nice and chill with lots of options

very gud wow wow

Its fun

This game is so much fun! I wish there was the option to move around rooms and be a little more hands on in the day to day stuff, but still a blast.

Good game

Hogwarts simulator. very fun!

Game is broken, refund

I love this game! The dynamic, graphics and story of this game is quite creativ and special. It a lot of fun. :)
For the once playing on linux : works out of the box for me (Arch Linux, proton ) and I am no linux expert.

Its better than I thought it was going to be. The game surprised me and with how engageing it is.

Playing on Windows PC with a controller or just keyboard I get stuck zoomed in and cannot zoom out. There does not seem to be any key or control that allows zooming out. I keep wanting to play this game because it is fun until you can't see anything because you are so zoomed in. Very annoying and this seems to be an issue that has been happening to people since 2020 and has never been fixed.

Very nice and enjoyable and addictive game! Highly recommended

fuck yeah

Super fun and replayable! Never have the same game twice.

The good:
It's a fun little tinker/management game.
The music is pleasant, and the general game has a very good vibe and is over all fun.
The story, which I first thought was a simple framing device actually drew me in.
The length of a single scenario is no longer than its easy to commit to, but still so long that you don't feel it gets yanked away from you prematurely.
After understanding the mechanics I grew to really like the dungeon crawl element.
The nature of the game makes for high replay value.

Could use improvement/Im on the fence:
The randomness of card drawing can be really fickle and hamper one for a long time.
Not all mechanics are well explained, and im sure i will fare much better on a second playthough, now that i have a better understanding of what is going on.
I could use a bit more control in the dungeon crawls. There are no possibilies of changing tactics or mid combat healing, so sometimes you can see stuff start going wrong, and you can do nothing except pressing fast forward and watch your whole team perish.

Still, its definetly worth checking out if you like a lite building/management game with some rpg elements.
I really like it

A 2d, side view city builder where you build up a Hogwarts styled magic school. You build rooms in the school that teach students or meet their needs in some fashion (bedrooms, etc). As the student’s train, which you can guide through custom schools (i.e. Hufflepuff)), they generate mana of their specialties which is the way you get new cards which get more expensive (per category) as you buy them. These cards are mainly new buildings, special items you place in rooms, and artifacts but can also be things like new students. These cards are a random choice of three card, so you will never be able to build exactly what you want, when you want which will make each school unique. The students have a graduation date (from 3 to 7 years) and will get a random profession based on their skills which can give you certain boons such as an increased chance of getting certain good traits, getting more mana and many other things (there’s probably 100 or so professions). Besides this there are factions to interact with, dungeons to explore and some goals you try to complete (sort of random) to get better end game bonuses. Each mission ends when the Lord of Evil arrives with his armies, which cannot be stopped but can be slowed down (or sped up) by some rare actions. There is also a campaign that has you building schools in different areas which have some special bonuses and challenges to deal with.
I found the game to be very fun, at least for a period of time. Guiding your school to certain goals was cool, with easy building and mostly understandable actions. It’s fun seeing your school and students grow and change over time and seeing your actions having effects. There is a good variety of buildings, factions, items, artifacts, etc so there is a lot of room to try different strategies or to try and get different graduation professions.
The main negatives are that the formula can start getting a bit stale after you learn the mechanics. The game will start feeling kind of samey with you largely focusing on 2-3 domains and just largely recruiting students over and over. That is actually the biggest downside of this game. You will end up spending most of your time assigning students to schools. They come pretty often and there aren’t that many other things that happen often, so you end up doing this over and over. It gets old. Especially as you get experienced and you crank the speed up, this can start happening in quick succession. Other than assigning students you are just purchasing cards, placing your cards and dealing with an occasional event which are usually just a quick dialog choice. The dungeons are a nice change of pace, but average just one per mission so are pretty rare. Making this a bigger part of the game would have been nice, especially if they were actually given some goal to accomplish. Faction mechanics could have also been a bit more pronounced. You mainly just get some items, mana or faction affinity when dealing with and it’s usually quite easy to be friendly with everyone. They could have had them attack you (the orcs can do this, but only them really) or somehow interact with you more.
Overall, a fun builder game that just maybe wears out it’s welcome a bit sooner than you might like. This game would mainly be for people who are fine just playing the campaign once, and who are into either builders in general or just building a magic school. Would mostly recommend getting this on sale.

I fed the orcs some waffles. now we are besties.