The Fool's Apprentice

So far a let down, game feels more like a beta version then a pre-release. Apprentice's need a lot more micro managing to keep from quitting or running out of motivation bar. Several game breaking bugs, try summoning a table and could not move it or access any summons. No save files, game remembers your research progress(partly) but everything else resets including tutorial. Game does not explain things well enough so time is required to figure it out, but you cant afford time to that when you're constantly micromanaging apprentice's. Very little customization and anything you could actually do, game would do much better if you started with an empty room and had to build up from scratch.

Edit : To reinforce this, the devs not only lied about what I said, but also community banned me for telling them that I was reporting their public lie because support can review the deleted posts and what the Developer is doing is in fact a targeted attack. Anyone who asks can see screenshots of my community post where the developer apologized for WRONGLY deleting my original post, but now accuses me of attacking them. I have seen at least five other reviewers who were banned for the same reason - pointing out game flaws and saying the dev needs to learn to take genuine criticism. TLDR for what's below : The Devs do not like criticism, the game does not explain itself well, and you will fail constantly unless you look for outside help. So, the devs delete valid criticism on the basis of not accepting its legitimacy or not liking the tone of how something is delivered when someone tries their best with limited instructions and gets reasonably frustrated at a failure spiral. They pro...

*Update at 34+ hours game play. Still a very fun game though the research this far into the game is getting more difficult to achieve. Ive recurited hundreds of apprentices and managed to graduate 30 or so. (Better grad rate than Ivy League?) but I have completed a third of the research. (enough to qualify for government grants? lol) Ive learned that some have a expectation that the game is not living up to. This is a perception that its a SIMs game where they are used to actually "caring" about the Sim, the apprentice in this case. This perception leads them to dislike when an apprentice quits. The style of this game is not that. Its a good thing that they quit! The Sims/apprentices are fodder for your research machine. Clears the way for sucessful ones! Chew them up, spit them out. (Bit like real life imo) I would like to see this perception fixed in the game, via tutorial or otherwise so players approach it with clear guidence and can thereby enjoy it fully right at the ...

Stay away from this game. Just stay far away. First, I'll get to the obvious stuff for anyone who's tried the demo and/or watched any videos: the UI is hilariously bad. Feels like 1990-level basic quality of life levels. The UI does not react to mouse-over, so just figuring out how to start the game or enter the options is a pixel-hunt. It does not get better in-game. The boxes of text for the tutorial and encyclopedia obscure the entire playspace, making it impossible to actually see what you're doing, even if you knew where to click things. The mouse icon and many other icons look seriously like they came from the time of 2-d sprites before anti-aliasing was even developed. The fonts use weird script that is very hard to read, the list of basic problems with being able to figure out what you're even looking at just goes on and on. Then we get into basic design principles, like using the same word or symbol to refer to the same things on the screen. Turns out the basic resource ele...

Sadly I had to refund this game. The game looks great and has a very interesting premise and style but it felt unpolished and even frustrating. Your game doesn't get saved (except research), it's very text heavy and there is no active pause. It feels very hard to manage your apprentices because you don't really get the time to do anything with them. Their motivation drains too fast and before you can try to optimise everything they have already left. It feels like the game wants you to manage everything but doesn't provide the tools to do so. If this game wasn't a full release I wouldn't have written a negative review but the game doesn't feel ready yet.

There is a ton of really neat content and features in this game, and if it were an early access, I would have happily paid and left a great review, but here we are. This is not release. And I could even excuse game breaking bugs, if there were any save feature at all. I even saw another review calling a feature a bug, because there are so many, and that system isn't described at all. Very frustrating, and I will happily change this if they work on a BUNCH of this, but for now, eww.

The game feels unfinished. There are multiple game-breaking bugs and there is not much of a tutorial. There is no way to save your progress.

This magic school game has such a fun twist – you’re not a student, you’re the mean professor! 😂 You get points for messing with your poor little apprentices, and it only gets funnier the more you play. There are all kinds of unexpected events and weird little surprises that keep things super entertaining. It’s a really fun and fresh take on the whole magic school vibe!

this is going to be my new go to cozy game, there's everything i could ask for magic, round frogs, management, round frogs, pretty object, round frogs... the froggos are just so squishable

A management game of this nature should be more intuitive than it was. I love lore, but the "tutorial" was more info-dump than useful instruction and the only way to see how an apprentice is doing is to interrupt them. I had an apprentice quit despite actively training at all available stations. Returning while I can still get my refund. I was drawn to the concept because I am trash for anything with a magical academy trope and playing as the headmaster instead of a student was appealing but this fell very flat.