World of Magic - Interview @ RPS

Rock Paper Shotgun has an interview with the Worlds of Magic devs, who are currently running a Kickstarter for their game.

RPS: On the Kickstarter page, you state – “Our primary goal for Worlds of Magic is to capture the essence of what made Master of Magic the classic it is” – what do you believe are the most important features and what have other games lacked?

Wastelands: There are a number of elements that we feel made Master of Magic the incredible classic that it is. Just browsing over the feature list on our Kickstarter page will give you an insight into our thought process. I’ll take a moment to touch the highlights here: First it’s very important to maintain the true 4X feel. Procedurally generated random maps, fog of war, interesting locations to discover, long lost loot to find, it’s all in Worlds of Magic. Spells, magical artifacts, and magic in general are also an essential piece. With Worlds of Magic we’ve expanded on the concepts found in Master of Magic. We offer a wider range of magical schools (we call them circles) to choose from. Your spell circle choices have an effect on what spells you can research and cast. It also effects what kind of artifacts you can make for your heroes. Of course, heroes are yet another fundamental piece. Just as Master of Magic did, Worlds of magic offers a number of unique heroes you can persuade to join your armies. They can gain more experience and reach higher levels than normal units and you can equip them with magical weapons, armour, etc. There’s a great deal more, but I can’t touch every point here. Our Kickstarter page has a much more in-depth explanation.

As far as other games are concerned I would say that we haven’t seen a real spiritual successor to Master of Magic because developers tend to want to put their own new “spin” on things. That’s not necessarily a bad thing and if you add nothing new you just end up making a clone, not a successor. Worlds of Magic has a lot of new stuff in it. However, it’s stuff we’ve worked hard to make sure would have fit into Master of Magic in the first place.