Core Game is Pretty Good, But Developers Seriously Need to Retune the Balance

Before I start with my criticisms - Theres a fun game here that will appeal to old school tabletop players. You have dice, luck, Wizards, grids, cards, and some pretty appealing graphics for a game of its kind. I really want to like this game.

However, the developers have made some poor and alienating decisions with the game. Its a premium priced game ($10), which in and of itself I dont mind at all. iOS has plenty of deep premium experiences (see X-Com). But there are free to play mechanics all throughout the DNA of this game. At first, I thought they were superficial: hey, another Wizard for $4 - but I get can get another one anyway just by finishing the first 8 stages. But where it takes a dark turn is with the healing/warp stones system. After the first couple of tutorial missions, youll die - a lot. One or two hits from a monster with a lucky dice roll and one of your wizards will die. You use the Warpstones to heal/resurrect your wizard. At first, theyre plentiful enough to make your way through just by finding them in the plunder chests in the levels. But use up all of your Warpstones in a tough mission and have to restart - guess what - the 5 Warpstones you had the first time you attempted the level (and failed) were consumed, so now youre restarting at an even bigger disadvantage. Well, unless you pay real money for more Warpstones. It takes two Warpstones to resurrect a wizard to half health. Then the next turn, the monsters always seem to roll a 5 or 6 and wipe him out again in one hit. Two more Warpstones please.

The game is stingy with in game gold. If you fail a mission, you lose all of the gold you accrued - so again, they expect you to restart a level you failed in more of a state of disadvantage than you originally started in.

Its a real shame the developers tuned their game this way. I really hope they rethink and rebalance the game, as I think the core of it is pretty good. Its just these free to play elements are at odds with the games premium price point. Developers, if youre listening, Id love to come back soon and give you a higher rating.

WakeOfPoseidon about Warhammer: Arcane Magic