Artifice

About this game

Elia Sanberg lives in the cozy hamlet of Benello, a small town on the Mishil continent of the magically-infused world of Allea. Elia’s recent interest has been in the development of an invention she calls a “magical brain.” Her idea is to create the world’s first machine capable of calculating the sums of numbers.

On the eve of her breakthrough, however, she is summoned by Benello’s mayor to deal with a local bandit problem. She and her militia compatriot Donovan are successful in routing the bandits, but instead of returning home, Elia and Donovan find themselves transported to a strange, future version of their world where computers have not only been invented, but have become massively powerful.

Humanity on this Allea is caught in the middle of a conflict between two sentient artificial intelligences, and one of them wants Elia’s help.

• Turn-based combat.
  
• Two worlds with over thirty dungeons to explore.
  
• Hunt down spell tomes and learn eighty magic spells.
  
• Upgrade your magical abilities with a unique system called “inscriptions.”
  
• Over 200 unique enemies.
  
• Enemy mastery unlocks, which include bestiary entry reveals, battle effects, and even special equipment.
  
• Collect items from the environment and sell them to a disenchanted god to gain access to more special items and equipment.
  
• “Overcharge” a dungeon, increasing the stats of all its monsters, but their experience and item drop rates, too!
  
• Gorgeous custom pixel art for characters, enemies, and battle backgrounds.
  
• Phenomenal soundtrack with orchestral tracks in one world and synth versions in the other.

Latest news

• Patch Notes·1 Sept 2023Official

  Demo Patch Update 0.4

  General Fullscreen mode now displays pixels crisply, without blur or smoothing. Hit rate, critical rate, evasion, magic evasion, and critical evasion now display to the first decimal place on the status screen and in the shop equipment comparison window. Added an affinity opposition tutorial to the Mishil training grounds. Desert Nomad Outpost NPCs now have a distinct design consistent with the quest givers. Added a subplot to the story to enhance the thematic resonance of the main story. The first scene of this subplot has been added to the demo. Added copyright info to the title screen. Added a version number to the title screen. Feedback Reduced the encounter rate. It will now take roughly 25% more steps to spawn an encounter. Adjusted early game encounters so that the player will never run into more enemies than the number of characters in the party plus one. Inscription information now displays on the second line of the help window for the selected magic spell in both the main menu and in battle. In the battle HUD, the current HP value for a character will now display in yellow text if the character is less than 25% HP, and red text if the character is less than 16.6% HP.
  Read full article on Community Announcements (matthew.buscemi)

• Patch Notes·27 Aug 2023Official

  Demo Patch Update 0.3

  Bugs Fixed a bug in the code that handles that Turbofish boss, which was inadvertently causing a crash in the opening scene of the demo.
  Read full article on Community Announcements (matthew.buscemi)

• Patch Notes·25 Aug 2023Official

  Demo Patch Update 0.2

  Balance “Ensnare,” “Mind Break,” and “Grass Bomb” now each apply a single rather than a double debuff. Adjusted enemies’ evasion rate massively down. Most were 5% before the change. Now, early game enemies are in the 0-2% range, with most in the 0-1% range. Adjusted enemies’ hit rates up. Most early game enemies were around 95% before. Now the average is around 98%. Adjusted Elia’s hit rate down 2%, but her evasion and critical rates up 1% each. Adjusted Donovan’s hit rate 4% up. Reduced Verren’s hit rate 1% up. Weapons now increase hit rate. Hit rate from weapons increases as the player obtains more advanced weapons. Footwear armor now increases evasion. Evasion from footwear increases as the player obtains more advanced armor. Feedback The bestiary will now remember your last selection within the context of a play session. Bugs Fixed a tile passability bug involving tree bases in Benello and the Mishil Capital. Fixed a broken tree image in Benello. Fixed a bug where the ability for the “Malformed Subroutine” emblem didn’t work. Gave the emblem a brand new ability.
  Read full article on Community Announcements (matthew.buscemi)

• Patch Notes·19 Aug 2023Official

  Demo Patch Update 0.1

  Feedback Updated the controls menu to indicate that Q/left trigger is used to open dungeon maps as well as the world map. Updated the map menu command to also activate and work for dungeons as well as the world map. Reorganized the Benello map. Moved the Benello Allea statue up next to Elia’s house. Added a sparkle effect to all Allea statues. Added small question marks to the unknown affinity icons in the enemy affinity bar. Bugs Fixed a textual issue where a trainer in Mishil said that mastery increases item drop rate (it doesn’t do that anymore). Fixed a map bug that allowed access to late-game Maklenya Wastes treasure chests in the early game. Fixed incorrectly passable wall tiles in the Mishil Gorge interval cave. Fixed a bug whereby the target axlem tier level for Mishil Gorge for the “Hero Worship” quest had diverged from the actual level required to get the quest item. Fixed a bug where certain turn-zero emblem abilities weren’t occurring during Apollo-initiated battles. Fixed a bug where talking to General Percy before picking up the Benello Mayor’s quest would cause a crash.
  Read full article on Community Announcements (matthew.buscemi)