Don’t forget: the forces of evil rise up to destroy life as we know it this year. …You put that in your calendar, right?

Have you ever thought about designing and directing your own wizard academy? Of course you have. The Nigon siblings and their team at Sneaky Yak Studio in Toulouse, France know this. That’s why they worked so hard for four years to bring us their debut game, Spellcaster University. This single player fantasy construction and management card game lets you customize your school’s layout, curriculum, classrooms, staff, and students to create the magical university of your dreams. Just don’t get too attached—the King of Evil is coming!

GRAPHICS 8/10

Graphic designer Cosette Nigon has a unique and cartoony art style that perfectly blends charm and simplicity.

Built like a dollhouse, each room of your castle comes with the fourth wall removed so you can monitor all the hustle and bustle (and occasional chaos) unfolding inside. Whether following a single student from room to room or overseeing the whole institution from afar, I was quite impressed by the amount of detail given to every aspect of the scenery. There are also plenty of colorful creatures, artifacts, and special effects to enjoy while your students practice spells, brew potions, or get into fisticuffs with the local orc tribe. While the last of these isn’t great for your students’ productivity, it’s still entertaining to watch!

SOUND QUALITY 7/10

Dive into a soundscape of magical effects, medieval music, and…guinea pigs?

Due to the sheer scope of managing an entire magical school, there are lots of things to continually oversee: renovations, administrative dungeon quests, patching holes in the fabric of space-time...you know, the yooj. Personally, I prefer to watch my school from a distance so I can keep an eye on every sprawling corner of it. Curious observers who want a closer look, however, are in for an audio treat: every student or staff member is accompanied by sounds that reflect their current engagement. Whether they’re eating, sleeping, crafting, or summoning demons from the underworld, each character adds his or her own layer to a continually growing wall of sound. Guinea pigs—Spellcaster University’s adorable equivalent of messenger pigeons—are especially cute as they make their way up to the catapult for launch, squeaking and grunting all the way. The audio peaks occasionally during the overly-loud voiceover for the intro and when the music is set to maximum, but other than these minor audio issues, the myriad sound effects and genre-appropriate music enrich the overall experience.

GAMEPLAY 9.5/10

Choose your map, build your school, and train your students to face off against the King of Evil!

Spellcaster University is a card game at its core, but calling it that doesn’t do it justice in the slightest. This construction and management sim is so cram-packed with features that it has its own in-game reference guide! Breaking it down to basics, there are three main facets of gameplay: building and managing your school, forging relationships with the local factions, and adventuring into dungeons for loot.

Customization is one of this game’s many highlights. Not only can you choose your school’s crest, houses, and focus of study, but you can also decorate your castle with magical artifacts and relics to add bonuses. Choosing the right teacher and/or artifacts for each room will influence how effectively the students working in that room will learn. Additionally, everyone in your school has needs, so mediating boredom, hunger, tiredness, and sanity levels is imperative. Improving necessities like dorms and cafeterias or adding creature comforts like lounges and gazebos will lessen the impact those needs have on your student body and faculty. 

Students can study five different types of magic: light, dark, nature, arcana, and potions. The rate at which your school accrues certain types of mana is based on the kinds of classrooms you have and how efficient they are. Each room starts at level zero, but playing identical room cards on top of one another allows you to level up, which increases the room’s effectiveness. Naturally, students working in a high-level classroom generate mana faster than they would in a bare-bones one. Spending mana in a certain school of magic allows you to draw more cards in that same area of study; for example, you can spend nature mana to attain more nature-based cards. The downside to this is that you can easily get pigeonholed into producing only one or two types of mana. This is where your sixth asset, gold, becomes very valuable. By visiting the merchants’ camp, you can buy random classroom cards to incorporate other fields of study into your curriculum. 

There are many other factors at play that I simply don’t have time to get into, but suffice it to say that the in-game guide has all the info you need for a successful school year. If you don’t want to spend time reading up on the rules, the tutorial offers a comprehensive run-through, and hovering over icons in-game generates footnotes, which are perfect for learning on the fly. Despite the complex nature of its RPG-inspired gameplay, Spellcaster University is surprisingly easy to learn, and that speaks volumes about Sneaky Yak Studio’s insight into what gamers want.

CHARACTERS 9/10

A quirky cast provides plenty of levity while you wait for the proverbial hammer to fall.

Diplomacy plays a significant role in this game. Every time your school is invaded by the King of Evil, you have no choice but to relocate. The kingdom’s inhabitants—the local villagers, the inquisitors, the adventurers’ guild, etc.—can be found wherever you set up shop. Each area also plays host to a unique tribe or clan, such as pirates, monks, djinns, dwarves, and more. Branching conversations with ambassadors from these different factions offer plenty of amusing dialogue. Sneaky Yak Studio’s clever use of deadpan humor and meta references make these encounters a particularly enjoyable aspect of the game.

Other characters include the droves of eager young minds who long to attend your budding university. Your school is populated by students of varying race, temperament, intelligence, and wealth, but you can choose whose application to accept or deny. If you only want your school filled with wealthy, overachieving werewolves or poor, miserable half-orcs, you can play it that way (although I wouldn’t recommend being so selective—the more students you have, the more mana and prestige you’ll generate in the long run). Every student or staff member comes with their own unique traits that directly affect everyone around them, so choose wisely!

STORY 7.5/10

War comes in cycles in this world. The King of Evil and his armies return to conquer the world every two and three-quarter centuries. With conflict coming like clockwork, you’d think the world’s defenses would always be ready...but not this year. A calendar error brought the invasion two years early, catching the forces of good completely off-guard. The magic university you were attending was destroyed, its students and faculty scattered. Luckily, you and a handful of your fellow pupils managed to escape with the remains of the headmaster. Aided by the reanimated skull of Archmage Posthumus, you must take on the role of director for a new university, the last bastion of magical knowledge in the realm. From forests and volcanoes to the clouds and even the back of a giant tortoise, your institution will have to pick up and start over every decade or so as the armies of evil spread across the land. But there are only so many places to run. In the end you must gather your allies and put your skills to the test in a face-off against the King of Evil (which happens as a cut scene). This kind of story is straightforward and perhaps a little overused, but it remains a compelling formula, epic in its scope and made approachable by a healthy dose of irreverent humor. Just ’cause the fate of the world is at stake doesn’t mean we have to be so serious all the time, right?

OVERALL 8.2/10

Challenging, fun, and full of satire, Spellcaster University is absolutely worth a play-through. Or twenty.

The Nigon siblings, the heart and soul of Sneaky Yak Studio, aim to infuse passion, humor, and innovation into their games to create unique, RPG-inspired experiences—and Spellcaster University does just that. This game has engaging gameplay, heaps of humor, and a replay value nearly on par with Age of Empires II. You can also turn off the time limit if you need a never-ending, no-stress management adventure. This French-made masterpiece has earned its place on my ever-growing list of indies that demand to be periodically revisited. Color me excited to see what Sneaky Yak Studio does next! 

Spellcaster University was funded on Kickstarter on April 27, 2019 and released for early access for PC and Mac on September 24, 2019. It was released for Steam on June 15, 2021. Version 1.02 was used for this review. The reviewer received this game for free.