Roleplaying games

Magic Stones is a game based on Celtic mythology, and is a mix between a role-playing game and a card game. It is situated in the land of Aravorn, where you can find many hidden treasures in the darkest, most menacing places, where druids are challenged to duel every year in the Black Tower, in a fight to the death that will declare the absolute winner.

That is the premise to Winterwolves’ latest roleplay game. Isn’t a pure rpg game, nor they claim it to be. Nevertheless, is a really good game, rather unique in its genre. But let’s see the game in detail.

The druid creation, similarly to the classic “Character Creation” present in many CRPGs, is the first step into the magic world of Aravorn. The creation is rather simple, and the initial choices at first glance doesn’t seem to influence the game very much - I later discovered that I was wrong

So what are the choices? beside male/female that has no influence, the initial magic school choice it has quite some effects: the starting avatars will reflect your choice. I personally think the best one to start is the Earth, with the Treant multiple attack will be easy to start for newbie gamers! The last choice, your druid “cultural background” influences the skills. I’ve choosen the “Wilderness” one because I could have more wisdom and so more mana points

Then after the creation phase you go wandering in the various zones of the fantasy world and explore dungeons, crypts, etc. Every place has “guardians”, that can be the usual 4 elements avatars or a sort of “neutral” type, called the “darkness avatars” that are mostly undeads or “evil beings” like goblins, witches, skeletons, etc.

Once you have raised your druid to a decent level (I suggest at least 10) you can try your luck in the Tournament (druid vs druid) or in the Quest mode. In the tournament you challenge CPU controlled druids in a sort of “world cup” of druids with direct elimination, very cool.

The Quest mode instead is much harder! basically it breaks the usual rules and puts you with predefined amounts of mana and some new starting avatars. You’ll have to manage your “resources” carefully in this mode, because if you summon a wrong avatars you could lose the battle. The quest is also cool because there’s a mini-story behind each one. Some have 2 endings, others give you new avatars from the schools of Life and Spirit, that you can’t get otherwise (they’re not in Gather Artifact mode).

After several hours spent on it, and with more updates and quest coming for free to registered users in the future, I can only recommend this game! A great first attempt from Winterwolves that so far were producing only sports simulation games. I just hope they’ll keep making RPGs in future…!

Final Rating: 9