the concept is nice but the whole game is way too clunky and bland.
Building is not fun and needs more work.

I've played *Mind Over Magic* for about 20 hours so far, and even though it's still in Early Access, I can already say it's amazing. The game has a lot of depth, and I can easily see myself sinking hundreds of hours into it.

If you're a fan of games like *Oxygen Not Included*, you'll likely enjoy this too. It's a bit less complicated, which makes it more accessible while still offering a rewarding challenge. The management mechanics are engaging, and the magical theme adds a unique twist that keeps things fresh and exciting.

Highly recommended for fans of simulation and management games!

Very good game! Bought it last year and fell into it, and they really kept refining it in meaningful ways since. Great work!

I'm over 20 hours in and I'm just getting to mid game, I think.
It's much more complex and deep than the first few hours would suggest, and I've been loving it.
It's a bit like oxygen not included but with instanced turn based combat.
Overall, I'm very happy with this game and I'm excited for the full release, which should happen maybe mid 2025.

Awesome game overall.

All the building elements are really good. I feel like the game really needs an overall story and some type of short term goals. In early access it is a little too much sandbox gameplay for my liking. I am looking forward to the future updates when all of this gets added. It is on the roadmap so hopefully they deliver.

Similar vibes and gameplay as Oxygen Not Included (ONI), but not as much complexity or emphasis on process optimization. The mages you manage are also more difficult to maintain than ONI duplicants, but not as fragile or as needy as Rimworld colonists. Also effectively incorporates turn-based RPG gameplay making a fun gameplay loop of expand the school, fight more dangerous threats, treat the mages, repeat.

Base building mechanics are... unique. Certain rooms require certain workstations and have a list of disallowed furniture/equipment to provide their buffs, nothing new there, but they also have requirements of room shape and even adjacent rooms. Ex: certain rooms have to be skewed so that one side is taller than the other or they have to be taller than they are wide. The world settings can be adjusted to make these requirements inconsistent so that overall base design is different and challenging on subsequent playthroughs.

Very beginner friendly. You start with an immortal mage that can not increase their skills, but also can not die... so you are safe to make mistakes without risking having to completely start over. Enemy difficulty scales with progress, but resource expenditure for "on-boarding" new mages scales with the number you currently have, so bouncing back from failure is relatively easy and inexpensive. This is, in my opinion, an ingenious solution to the "losing is fun" hard restart pitfall most other management sim/combat mechanic hybrid games fall into.

Game is fun, approachable, and has an optional tutorial you can peruse at your own pace as you master more mechanics. 10/10 would recommend.

Life before death.
Strength before weakness.
Gameplay before graphics.

RSI, the game.

Boring, tedious. Everything is either slow or locked behind some resource/upgrades and getting them take AGES.

Basic entertainment? lock behind an upgrade
Cooking a meal that only slightly reduce the negative effect of basic food? locked behind an upgrade plus you need a teacher(high tier goon) to operate it and you can't get many of them

Even worse with the room system because you are limited to your room shape with requires lots of deleting/changing your structures which is extremely tedious. that plus your goons take ages to carry out your order. You will be lucky if you make an extra floor in a day.

This is a gacha game without the gacha element.

Great game. Very polished for early access though it does seem they are almost done with it. developers constantly updating it too which is great.

Deffo gives you that "just one more thing" feeling. In general very stable and playable