A reign of terror never feels so satisfying as when you leave a literal pile of rubble in your wake. Giving wizards a much-needed makeover, Fictorum is an action role-playing game that features fully-destructible structures, a randomized node-based world map, and a satisfying magic system with on-the-fly spell shaping and customization.
In Fictorum, your mage wields real, legendary power right from the start—unlike those found in most magic-centric games. Our magic system uses a dynamic and intuitive spellcasting and shaping system that grants the player an unrivaled level of customization and reconfiguration. Up to three runes can be applied to a spell, each affecting a different spell characteristic. The runes are easily swapped to suit the player’s current need, interest, or whim. You might amplify ice blasts to freeze enemies in place, expand the radius of a fireball explosion to crumble a bridge and hinder pursuers, or chain a lightning attack together to strike several targets in a cluster. Shaping makes spellcasting much more tactical and satisfying.
Rather than starting out as a hapless farm boy who stumbles into his powers and avoids enemies or entire areas until leveling up, players take on the role of an established wizarding badass, hell-bent on his mission for revenge. Yet challenge is abundant—the wizard must bring down a sprawling empire by himself, besting scores of bandits, cadres of Inquisitors, and hordes of corrupted abominations on his quest for vengeance. The protagonist has access to unlimited magical powers, making the game less about spamming that one spell that works passably well until it becomes upgradable. The experience is more about tailoring your magical arsenal, giving the player a wide range of freedom and the ability to effectively, efficiently, and enthusiastically destroy every obstacle. The randomly-generated world map features locations where every structure (from large buildings to bookshelves to tables to even a lone fork) can be demolished.
in a way i reminds me Son of Nor which was quite rough around edges but i really enjoyed it
Wow, Steam's trailer made it look like a lot of fun, but also, as you said, like an invitation to Bugfest 2018.
Is it worth it? I'm curious now
I'd say it's worth to be checked out, the production values are extremely low and the presentation/voice acting/animations are as bare bones as you can get, but deep inside it has that charm of a linear (but not hand-holding-based) 90s third person title which I like.
It's safer to go for the isoride though (the Gold Edition should be the latest version), since it is very rough indeed, there are serious (unexplainable ) performance issues and nasty bugs can still pop up when you least expect it.
Seems like the game just got huge patch supposedly to fix the performance
Quote:
Major Change: Performance Improvements
We've made massive performance boosts throughout Fictorum! The areas that you'll see the biggest changes are:
Initial load time significantly reduced
Projectile targeting is now much more responsive, especially with faster projectiles
Lag removed from death and looting
Lag removed after selecting a new mountain or starting a new event
Lag significantly reduced when switching difficulty/title in character screen
Lag significantly reduced when changing equipment
The camera will switch to an over-the-shoulder view while inside buildings for a more consistent experience. Additionally, you can now play over the left or right shoulder (available in the settings menu or press the interact hotkey while casting a spell to switch in-game).
We've ditched the joystick mouse cursor plugin we previously used and reworked all of our UI to work beautifully and seamlessly with a gamepad. Additionally, we've added an auto-sort feature to make managing the inventory with the gamepad even easier.
We've been working with Nathan Fierro—the author of The Demon of Cliffside—to improve our existing events and add new ones. Every single event has been either edited, rewritten, or removed and he has done an amazing job crafting the confident, brutal, and vengeance-fueled voice of our game.
New Starting Text:
It was impossible, of course. But Acanthio was a Fictorum, the last one, and by stretching the very limits of his power and of creation itself he survived his own execution. Such power comes with a price, however, and his body was warped with corruption, his mind scarred with the brief, blazing glimpse of the world that moment gave him, of the horrors within the Miasma. And of the Inquisition, its endless armies already stirring, a hound scenting the magical trace of his miracle. The Firebrand could not run away, not forever, but he could run toward. He cast his vision onto his map, marking the way to the Grand Inquisitor. Marked with red, marked with blood. It was the Grand Inquisitor who had decreed The Firebrand would die, and it was death he would receive.
Major Change: AI Improvements
One of the main complaints of our game was the AI. Upon spotting the player, enemies would run as fast as they could towards the player in the absolute, most direct line. With this version, we've significantly improved their formerly bad behavior—they'll now search for alternate routes to overwhelm the player in small groups of mixed forces, working together to bring the player down. This has also laid the framework allowing us to do even more for our enemies later on...
Another common comment that we saw when we posted to Imgur or reddit was that our destructible meshes lack weight and move too much like foam once shattered. After adjusting the physical materials of our meshes, they now move much more realistically.
We made a big mistake when we were first setting up our enemy spellcasters in that they all had their own individual spells that were specific to the caster, even if it was essentially the same spell. They worked differently, had inconsistent damage and physics, caused loads of bugs and balancing issues, and were an overall pain to maintain. Eventually, we realized that we should rework all spellcasters and archers to use the same spells available for the player and then add any additional output (damage tweaks, multi-shot, chain reaction, etc.) that we'd like for them. As a result, casters are more varied, putting to use spells that you can also find in-game. We even have more we'd like to do with these capabilities, but that's for another patch..
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) performance issues and nasty bugs can still pop up when you least expect it.
