Review: Celestial Mage
by Rocky Jalil
How many times do you get to see a developer review his own game? Yes I developed Celestial Mage under my company, Stonewall Interactive. This is my first shot at becoming a game developer in making my break in the industry. As a game journalist, I am going to give you a true review as I am always competely honest with my reviews regardless if I developed it or if I am a fan of a particular series or not. Celestial Mage is a game that I designed to bring something new to the puzzle genre. We’ve seen the same old Bejeweled gameplay puzzlers thus Celestial Mage was born. Keep in mind, this game was developed by only 3 key people and with no budget.
First of all, I wanted to put little to no limitations on how the player plays the game. This way the difficulty is determined by the player and not AI (Aritifical Intellegence). Your goal is to clear the board of all runestones in order to move on to the next level. There are five different runestones which consists of different colors, representing a Celestial diety or element. In order to clear the board, you must group at least 3 of the same color runestones. These runestones are made to create and possibly cast a spell from each diety or element. The more runes you group, the higher possibility you have to successfully cast a spell, which can be used to affect or alter other runestones.
Each level consists of a chesslike board. There are 5 different colored runestones which randomly appear and can move horizontally or verically, but with a limited number of moves. If you move a runestone over its limit, then it loses its power and becomes void,grey, and immobile, but you can resurrect or destroy it with a spell.
Are you still following me? heh heh. The title screen consists of three modes: Regular, Endurance, and Time Attack. In Regular mode, you try your best to move on to the next level. In Time Attack, you basically do the same thing, but you have a limited amount of time. Endurance is my favorite mode. Runestones will randomly appear every few seconds so clearing the board will be difficult. This mode actually makes my palms sweat.
The graphics are 3d isometric, whic is something new the the puzzle genre but they are so-so and you will see floating polygons in game. The music and sound effects are muffled and low quality. A tutorial mode is available to help you better understand how Celestial Mage functions, but it’s difficult to understand so it may not help.
All in all Celestial Mage is an innovative game, but the learning curve is far more difficult than your ordinary puzzler. If you don’t understand its open ended gameplay, then you will lose your patience very quickly. Trust me, it took me 30 minutes to complete level 1 and I developed the game. 
It will definitely challenge you, but there really isn’t much replay value after you learn to cast all the spells and listen to each prophecy. It surely does have all the right elements to add something new to the genre, but it loses it edge a few hours in. This is a game for the hardcore gamer. If you like to be challenged, then give CM a shot, but if you are a more casual gamer, then steer away. Not bad for a development team with no budget.
I give it a 5 our of 10 stars.
Well there you have it. If you are still curious, then you can always download the demo. Just google Celestial Mage. If you play it, then please pm me or leave a comment and let me know what you think. Also, if you want me to write an article about the overall experience developing it, let me know. I’ll give you the “true” story of why we released it when we did and what we went through developing it. You have no idea the hell we went through. I hope you enjoy playing it.
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