Elements of Arkandia

I think you forgot to mention that this is pretty much a poor man's puzzle quest with only a few differences and the shop afterthought thing.

I haven't even started playing yet, and I already have 2 things to say

1) i like the music
2) the "Return to Town" button is in a different spot on each window. this is NOT good design, and is really annoying too.

I happened to catch this when it was released and enjoyed it. A couple comments; a) Play with the debt on (the author allows people to choose one or the other, but the debt on gives great rewards when complete). b) If you find a level too hard, just repeat some of the previous ones. A good (quick IMO) way to grind is to choose a level w/ 3 enemies and get 100 treasure with each one. c) Death or loss is irrelevant, you'll still get treasure to sell. You can also surrender and you'll go back with all the treasure you've gained. The last screen of a level does not show all the treasure you've found, just the ones from the "boss" of that level (at least thats how it appeared in my usage) d) Strategically using your spells from the spellbook can make or break a level e) Always check for things you can consume, thats good HP right there. e) Remember to put decorations in your shop for more sales.

An amusing game to pass the time. Hopefully that was helpful to someone :-)

Seems, well, kinda buggy. A lot of the enemy abilities don't seem to work correctly, and during the puzzle game I'm seeing an *awful* lot of memory being allocated in firefox. (probably a memory leak?)

Even with these flaws, it's still pretty playable, but, this feels like a game that got next to no testing / polish, and could probably have stood just a bit more balancing. A real shame.

Hard to believe that this was made by the same guy who made all those spiffy "protector" games.

I thought this game was very good, much better than its current 3.4/5 rating. The spells and enemies broke up the monotony of playing match-3 (hardly the most intellectually stimulating puzzle, sorry match-3 fans!).

Some things that I didn't like so much:

Boy, there isn't much of a reward for playing through this one. Collected all the treasures, beat all the adventures, and nothing. No ending screen, no fade to black, no father coming home, nothing. They really could have done a bit more here.

Also, the balance and bugginess just gets worse as you near the end of the game. The last four spells are laughably overpowered, and about three quarters of the way though, it starts giving out "dirty coal" instead of random armors and treasure.

This game needs some more love from its creator.

Explanation of how treasure works (at least my understanding):

There's two types of treasure, the loot you win from each enemy, and the up to 4 pieces of treasure you win at the end of a level.

For loot, each enemy has a predetermined score, that is the chance of winning loot from them at the end of the level. So if an enemy starts with 40, you've got a 40% chance of winning loot after beating him. The more treasure pieces you match, the better chance you have of getting loot.

For the end of level treasure, it's based on how many TOTAL treasure pieces you match, across ALL enemies. So, if your on a level with five enemies, you could match 20 pieces on each enemy, bringing you to 100 total, meaning you'll get all four pieces of treasure at the end.

This shouldn't work nearly as well as it does. Match-3 is fine for what it is, but not much more, and there's a bunch of not-real-well-explained stuff, and yet I'm drawn back.

Despite the flaws already pointed out above, and the fact that there seems to be no way to cancel casting a spell - which, come to think of it, isn't actually all that strange, imagine some mage standing on the battlefield halfway through the first words of a fireball spell when realizing the entire cavalry is blocking a clear shot at the enemy troops: "Alakazzzzoooooooh bother..." - but I digress.

Despite this the game's a nice break, not too difficult, not too easy. Plus I'm a sucker for upgrades. Keep em coming!

On Wednesday's I go shopping, and have buttered scones for tea.

Yeah, definitely a memory leak somewhere.

Found an interesting strategy... Once you get ice storm and fire storm, load up your active spells with things that get rid of a bunch of tiles (like eternal rage, wealth, fool's gold, etc.), and spend your time doing those and finding four/five-ers. You keep damaging with the storms/rage, constantly have full mana, and usually get about five-to-six turns per turn of the opponent.

I really like undefined's games in general. But, as a developer, they're incredibly frustrating.

They seem to have a real knack for putting together games that are really fun to play and have real longevity. But... each and every game they make lately seems to get abandoned after a few days, generally still in need of bugfixes and major polishing.

They then proceed to make a brand new game, and let *it* wither on the vine, too.

Aargh.

I really wish they'd focus a bit more on one or two games that reach their full potential, rather than spreading themselves this thin.

I like this game, and am constantly drawn back to it. Yet I'm finding that a debt of 30,000 is just too much time for me to invest in the game to finish it. 15,000 or 20,000 would be much better.

Once you get:
Fire Storm
Ice Storm
Poison Storm
Energy Storm

and

Midas Touch
Eternal Rage

the game is trivial. You just keep alternating between the storms and casting midas touch/eternal rage every once in a while. You don't even need to attack if you don't want.

And yeah, overall, good game, but buggy.