I actually managed to win. Got an ending where I was dubbed the best headmaster, got the school to become really fat, and got to continue playing because of how much I bribed the Theologians. Here are some tips to anyone struggling still:
*Get rid of the no visitors and no shops traditions ASAP. The opinion loss is worth it.
*Start out by improving all three areas just a bit, with a slight focus on vegetables, because inevitably that will become really popular with your students.
*As soon as you see the students’ weight steadily increasing, remove the night curfew tradition. Your profits will improve a lot.
*Improve the gym in preparation for the Theologians starting to meddle in your affairs.
*When your students get fat enough and the Theologians start taking a hands on approach, halve the gym fee twice and keep installing snack bars. This will end up making you profits in the thousands, enough to fend off the comission.
*Don’t bother with aesthetic magical lessons, they ain’t worth it.
*Not sure if they matter, but add a vending machine or two just in case.
Yeah, this is indeed a good mechanism. It drives fat students to workout, which generate a high revenue for a short amount of time – until they are sufficiently thin that the income and cost balance
Thanks for asking, in the current version, both good and cosmetic magics don’t do much, they are weakly related to some nonessential variables at this moment. In the future versions, they should play a very important role
By the way, you managed to do much better than I did – You are such a genious capitalist!
I suggest that you take a look at the strategy suggested by Claude_Speed, it should work. After all, when does an economic crisis occur? When you cannot sustain the spiral!
Thanks for the suggestion. Avoiding the spreadsheet game is definitely what I try to achieve. Currently, the hints of what is happening are given here and there verbally. I will try to give more hints and more explicitly, perhaps.
I am glad that you like the game! In terms of the balance sheet, let me think about it. I want to keep the explicit information minimal – let me think how I can include more information without making it a balance sheet. One thing I do plan to do is to give more hints about the how the balance works through random events in the game
Actually, there are already three different weight parameters and two diffferent standards of beauty. One is the “scripture” standard of beauty, which I decided to keep unchanged, to give this value some “respect.” The other is what I call the “de facto” standard of beauty, which is what people in college consider to be beautiful – this value does change as the game evolves. This value is hinted at in one of the random events
I agree that the interaction with the Priestess should be more enjoyable and there should be more chance to fight back. At this moment there are two chances of fighting back, one is through the “defend student” event, and the other appears in the best ending
I’d say more Candra content should probably be a priority, as she is the only named character in the game? I’ve noticed the “arms” fetish stat changes some lines concerning her at the restaurant, perhaps the other body part stats could have a similar effect on her (not necessarily in the restaurant btw). Or perhaps there could be a screen that allows you to look at her? Idk
Thanks for the compliment
And maybe you could try giving a more explicit hint in the bad finals so that if you fail at least you know how to maybe do better
Honestly just the option to open a spreadsheet on each of the monthly reports so you can see what was costing and what was earning would be nice. Same thing for influences that change the Institute’s opinion.
a few tradition break ideas: varied diet (grains, sweets, meat, greasy) - improves the school’s magical strength (for the dragon event) and weight, but makes the theologians very angry.
“traditional wizard meals consist almost entirely of vegetables, with few grains.
but recent studies show that a more balanced diet helps keep a caster’s mind focused. perhaps its time to introduce (more grains/sweets/meat/greasy food) into the college environment, and encourage students to try them out.”
four tiers of the tradition, broken in the order stated. off campus freedom - reduces the effect that theologians have on your students.
“in the past it was completely forbidden to leave campus grounds, but you think some time in nature would do the students good. helps them keep a clear mind and stay away from… negative influences” MTA - Minimum Theologist Activity - reduces how much theologist opinion changes for the negative and how much impact the theologists have on the students, but has a heavy initial reputation impact when broken.
“since the founding of the college close contact has always been had with theologists to make sure it remained a prestigious beacon of what wizardry SHOULD look like… but with the state of the college this might be a flawed practice, so someone’s got to go.” campus wide snack allowance - increases monthly income and student weight
“it is currently forbidden to take food outside of areas designated for eating, meaning your students are going hungry in class and in the dorms at night. its time for change” electronics - allows an overlap in the time spent on student eating and studying. also reduces monthly maintenance but the theologians dont like it.
“as per campus rules - no sufficiently advanced mundane technology is allowed on the school grounds, the halls are lined with candles and students are stuck with pen and paper. but the outside world shows that this outdated tradition is limiting student growth in more ways than one” maximum comfort rating - tier 2 break of electronics, encourages a further overlap in studying and eating. also reduces exercising and slightly increases theologian
“to encourage students to not sit around all day, the theologians of the past imposed a comfort limit on the campus’s furniture. it will cost a bit to improve the college’s arrangements, but better seating will encourage students to sit down with their notes, wands, spells and snacks to get some serious work done.”
The Minimum Theologist Activity thing sounds great in theory, but I’d argue it’s still broken despite the dip in reputation. I would also add a price to it like 2000 or 3000 gold
I really enjoyed this game. It was quite enjoyable to play through. It was actually challenging to figure out how best to run the school, which I liked. A couple of areas for improvement:
Interactions with the theologists feel virtually nonexistent (only bribing them every time I get enough money). Given they play an important role in the game, it would definitely help to flesh this out and provide more options for the user in interacting with them.
Once you figure everything out and get the constant ~$1000 flowing in, the game gets very repetitive. It would help a lot to have more variety here in the later game.
Adding a few more options in terms of variety (instead of just quantity) of food choices can definitely help. It isn’t quite clear what the point of raising the quality of vegetables to 10 is or adding a 20th snackbar. It just gets repetitive.
true, perhaps instead split it into four traditions
idea being that you can mess with the theology at the cost of a lot of opinion. TAM - Theologist Activity Mandate - reduces how much theologist opinion changes in general, but has a heavy reputation impact. required for the other theologist traditions
“since the founding of the college close contact has always been had with theologists to make sure it remained a prestigious beacon of what wizardry SHOULD look like… but with the state of the college this might be a flawed practice, so someone’s got to go.” weekends - greatly reduces how much the theologists influence your students, but has a heavy reputation impact.
“the theologists work all seven days a week, meaning they are breathing down the necks of your students when they have weekend time to themselves. you are in control of their scheduling, but the chief priestess will throw a fit if you give them the weekends off…” exclusive break building - increases positive theologian opinion changes to pre-TAM, but has a heavy initial opinion impact.
“you can give the theologians a building for themselves on campus instead of having to share faculty with campus staff, they’ll be skeptical at first but lavish conditions will make them warm up to you quickly.” vacation time - reduces how much the theologians will impact your students and their negative reputation change, but costs 3k instead of 1k
“since the beginning the theology has worked year round to ensure the campus remains in prime condition, they deserve a break. it’ll cost quite the sum of money but they’ll be a little more willing to overlook your exploits.”
Thanks for the encouragement! In the next version, there will be a character system that is randomly generated every game, and so you will actually have a roster of students!
I am still gathering ideas about how to do the IQ mechanic. Any suggestion?
Thanks for the extended suggestions! They are very very helpful! I hope there are more suggestions like this one!!!
I really like the off-campus freedom idea. Along with it, I will implement a system where you can influence the aesthetics of the outsiders.
The electronics / comfort raing / snack allowance are also good ideas, I will include them once I have the time.
For the part on the theologians, I would treat this part with utmost care since the money balance crucially depends on the Theologians. I would need to do some serious mathematics to decide how to update it! That being said, what you have suggested are story-wise very good suggestions!
For IQ, I imagine it might depend on the amount of professional classes the students have. This could help fix the issue of the classes feeling superflous after you do enough to get the students to reliably beat the dragon, particularly because they don’t seem to pay as much as food and the gym does.
Less IQ would help you fatten them up easier because students aren’t fully aware of the effects of food, but the downside is that the school’s reputation suffers because for a prestitious academy, having low IQ students might make it more difficult for external students to join, and the theologians might intervene if they realize that.
More IQ meanwhile, makes it less likely for the theologians to act up because even if your students are fat, they’ll begrudgingly admit that some way or another, the students are being capable, and more external students will be interested in the school due to its good reputation for capable students. But it will also make students more resistant to being fattened because they’ll know about the side effects of too much food.
I know my proposal makes high IQ more desirable than low IQ, so maybe have some sort of stress statistic that needs to be balanced out, or the students will get too stressed from the high demands and underperform, leading to the school’s reputation suffering in spite of the general high IQ of the students. Stress could be lessened with recreational activities, better services, less professional subjects on the curriculum, and of course, good food and the students getting fat enough for them to not care as much for physical appearences.
It would be interesting if it were possible to thoroughly corrupt the theologians. Something along the lines of you’ve bribed them so many times that you can actually convince them to raise the ‘ideal standard’, maybe by convincing them or maybe by doctoring or ‘finding’ another sacred text, and maybe even at some point it gets out of hand they start giving you the opposite problem; they’ve been so thoroughly corrupted that they think your students are too thin and get in your way unless you do more to fatten them up faster.
Good thoughts! The only problem is that I need to find a way to balance the game such that the weight does not go infinity! Right now, the theologians serve as the key balancer of weight, they also create a demand for exercise (and so you make money thereby). If the theologians renege, I need to find a way to prevent the college from exploding!!!