You either keep the default forever or you spend way too long deciding on the perfect picture of your friend's coolest character to crop into a desktop background

Doc Furzat is still smiling at me, as seen on my second monitor

Whaaaaaaat the fuck?

Damn, that blows. Sorry you've been having a crappy week... I hope you at least get to watch a cool video or play a fun game :)

I mean, it does have a basis in reality - half a dozen Greek philosophers had their own theories about which of the four "standard elements" the world was made of - but it still feels a little too approachable.

Honestly, I feel like the standard elemental system almost makes a game feel *less* magical... Wizards are supposed to be wise men who need to spend decades in seclusion to parse the arcane and inscrutable, it feels like a cop-out to have such a basic system.

I really like the alchemic themes here... Your designs remind me a lot of like, old medeival illustrations that you'd find in a monk's manuscripts and stuff. I always thought Aqua Fortis sounded so much cooler than Nitric Acid, for example

Honestly, respect. I grew up with Sonic 06 too and somehow actually completed it, but those autorun levels were too much for me to actually enjoy my time with the game. Specifically the one where it's a castle and raining and there's a rainbow, I almost quit right there! But the music was so good...

My favorite version of this is when the things you're collecting are little characters in their own right... Plants vs Zombies zen garden was SO peak when I was playing that on X-Box!!!

Regardless, glad to see you back, good luck with the game! If Malvanean has no fans, I am dead.