Review: Academagia – The Making Of Mages

Academagia is a text based role playing game set in the past in a school of magic. During the game you play a student who is studying at the school, and involves you leveling up in different skills, passing all of your exams and going on many different adventures.

The game is pretty simple to navigate. You first start off by choosing various attributes about your character, from your name and appearance, to what house you will be in and what classes you wish to take (you take 6 classes in total). Not only this but you get to choose what kind of character you are and are given up to 5 points to spend in the various categories (fitness, finesse, charm, luck, strength, intelligence and insight). These will start you off on a basic level and you can increase these via various actions during gameplay. On top of all this, you get to give your character some background choosing from a wide range of options for what kind of family life you have; what sort of things you do; the education you previously had; and what sort of Familiar you have (a Familiar is a being which is linked to you – such as a dog or a cat – which has a bond to you which is stronger than just a pet, and can help in your journey as long as you treat them right and train them well).

Once you start the game, the controls are fairly simple. You have various pages of text to read through, and once read you have the option of choosing an action, and then you validate that action by clicking another button. The game starts off with you entering your room and finding a letter from the previous occupant. Although very lengthy, this letter is pretty much your guide to the game which you can access at any time through your inventory. It tells you roughly about the different areas of the game and what you basically need to do to succeed in the school.

After doing all of this, you can finally get into the actual game play.

Once all previous introductions have been completed, which can be as long or short as you want, you are then taken to a screen with a calendar for the week. You get three time slots a day to fill up with various activities that you wish to do. These are defaulted to ‘rest’, unless it is a weekday then two of the three slots are taken up with attending classes. And of course, if you get detention (like I did a few times!!!) that will be automatically scheduled in, along with your exams throughout the year.

Once your day is planned, you can ‘validate’ your actions again and your day beings. Your day can either go without any events occurring and heads to the summary screen for the day which gives you any relevant information regarding what happened to you and others around you during the day. However, if you chose an adventure during a time slot, or it is a special day, or it could be even just a random event that happens to you, you will be given a short story of what’s occurring, and often given choices to make regarding these situations. Make the right choices and you can be rewarded, make the wrong ones and you could end up in the infirmary for a day. How do you make the right choices? Well it’s relatively simple – skills you have trained in or researched will help you, from lying to sewing. The problem is you won’t know what skills you will need for choices to work in your favor, and what level will be required. However, luck can help you in those situations where you don’t seem to have much going for you – but just don’t rely on it!

That is the basics of the game, but it is difficult to explain it unless you play it. The world of Academagia is very complex and exciting, and quite challenging sometimes – being able to get the balance between work and play is difficult enough for me in real life let alone in a game! You don’t want to end up stressed as this will increase the chances of you getting ill, but you don’t want to get the lowest marks in all your classes and barely scrape a pass!

I have spent hours on the game and not got bored yet. I must admit some things get repetitive sometimes but there are plenty of different things to do and skills to improve in that you’re never stuck for a choice in the game and, as you progress, more and more things are available for you to do. This game is very unique, and really pulls off the text-based adventure in an exciting way.

There have been a few things that have been setbacks along the way. Firstly, even though the controls are relatively simple and the layout is clear, and even after the initial mini-tutorial given, it took a while to get used to the game – understanding the main objectives and what was necessary in order to progress. Also, the amount of skills and sub-skills is rather large, and you often find yourself thinking what needs to be leveled up and what doesn’t really have to.

Overall the game is very gripping. It is not a game you will ever get bored with as there is so much to do, and story is so detailed that you feel like you are part of this magical world. It does have some downsides, but somehow these seem irrelevant when you’re trying to be the best student in Academagia.

Academagia is available for download now at Impulse, Stardock, Beamdog, Gamersgate or direct from the Academagia website.

Review by Laura Cawley