Aethermancer

Spiritual Sequel to Richard Garfield's Spectromancer

Aethermancer: The card game that never was.

If you're like me, you've been frustrated by the direction the games industry has taken nowadays. Battle Passes, overmonetization, lootboxes, you know the gist.

The games industry has taken the trend it has today, because people vote with their wallet, and a whale's vote is worth a thousand times more. Common sentiment has been a wish to return to the old days.

However, we look at the past with rose-tinted glasses, and my preferred genre, the card game has never been free of predatory practices. Lootboxes have been a part of card games even since MTG was made in 1993. YGO followed up by making power creep normal, and PKMN turned scalping into a big thing.

I think it doesn't have to be this way. Card games, in my opinion, have the greatest potential of all game genres, because the core rules can be simple, with the additional rules printed on the cards themselves. I may be 28 years late to party, but I'm here to change that.

Truly Free to Play

Every card in aethermancer is free. There is no paywall. There is no grindwall. It's there for you at the start.

I've gotten feedback that this is overwhelming. That it may be easier to ease things in with an unlock system. 

"Awesome things don’t hold anything back. Awesome things are rich and generous. The treasure is right there." - Brian Moriarty, the secret of psalm 46

Accessibility

That said, I have heard your feedback and have been trying to make the game easier for new players. You can download the game, and your deck will be preloaded with "Fundamentals: Wild Magic", specifically designed to help new players learn the basic cards. The controls are simple, quick and drag, and a helpful AI will suggest moves to you if you would like some guidance.

Start, Play, Fight, Repeat

The core rules of aethermancer are very simple. During a turn:

1. Start of turn effects happen. You get 1 of each mana.

2. Play a card.

3. Each creature you control attacks its blocker. If there is no blocker, it will attack your opponent's life total directly.

Players alternate turns. On average, you'll only take 12 in a game. Use them wisely.

Replayability

The randomized starting mana and basic mana means the game is replayable. When both players are using the starter "Fundamentals: Wild Magic Deck", you have a nice, self-contained experience, good enough for 50 games of replayability.

The 1 card deck: If that's not enough, there's multiple "Fundamentals" cores in the game. Each fundamentals core playing against each other is like a new matchup in street fighter for you to learn. There's hundreds of games of replayability.

The 4 card deck: You're done with those? Time to introduce you to the true aethermancer. An aether core, plus 3 aether cards. Real deckbuilding! Every single card is balanced to be playable. There's millions of games of replayability.

The 8 card deck: It goes even deeper. Runecrafting was added to the game in v1.5.0. It's not recommended for you to jump into this area of the game when you're new, but nobody will stop you. Aethermancer is truly free to play.

The Ladder

The game features a ladder, supporting both PVP and PVE (very strong bots). Start at the lowest rank, Iron, and try to get to Grandmaster!

You don't need to go deep into deckbuilding to thrive. I've personally tested the ladder and was able to climb to over 3000 rating with just the starting "Fundamentals: Wild Magic".

Web Client

Icely made an html client for my game! Better tutorialization, and mobile-playable. No download required. Cross-play available between web client and python client. If you're a new player, you might want to start there: https://icely.itch.io/sudokumancer

How to Play? (Very old and probably outdated, but has UI images.)

https://masn3.itch.io/aethermancer/devlog/909941/aethermancer-quickstart-guide

System Requirements

About 22 MB memory, and 70 MB disk space.