Master of Magic - IP aquired by Slitherine

PC Gamer reports that the Master of Magic IP has been aquired by the strategy publisher Slitherine:

Master of Magic acquired by strategy publisher Slitherine

Rescued from Atari's IP dungeon.

After 25 years, Master of Magic has finally been summoned again. After a stint languishing at Atari, the rights to the formative fantasy 4X game have been acquired by Slitherine, the publisher also responsible for bringing back the similarly ancient Fantasy General.

Despite having a rocky start, Master of Magic carved out a comfortable spot for itself in the history of the strategy genre, inspiring plenty of 4X games and consistently appearing on nostalgic 'best of' lists. While it doesn't feature on our own best strategy games on PC list, its influence is still there in games like Endless Legend.


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Thanks heriquejr!

More information.

Oh nice, this is probably best possible publisher to get it, all their strategy games are more old school then the rest. I trust them to make MoM 2 that will be worthy of its name.

Wow!!! MoM2!!
I still play MoM with the casters of magic mod... It is still a good game that I regularly replay!
Hopefully they will do it justice. So many remakes and spiritual successors that just don't quite make it. I must admit though that AoW3 was the best / closest so far... although not a true spiritual successor.

I would rank Endless Legends as the best successor, it had the same wondrous feel for many hours before starting to feel familiar. I like AoW too though, and had pretty fun with Fallen Enchantress as well, especially with mods that made the different races much more interesting.

?? The link isn't working. You can still see the article in PC Gamer's search results but clicking on it gives a 404.

At least it didn't fall victim to Electronic Arts, so I take that as a huge positive. I really pray that the second volume turns out to be as great as the first !

Happy Days

Can not wait for a new MoM game! I think this studio is working on a Fantasy General remake as well. Two favorites from long ago.

Atari must have the world's biggest stash of languishing games.

rjshae said:

Atari must have the world's biggest stash of languishing games.

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I would seriously fund a kickstarter to free some of the IP from these companies. Personally I would give it to CD Projekt for safe keeping.

This is great news. I hear they're doing well with other franchises they are necroing.
Maybe eventually someone will even resurrect my fav tbs series, Warlords?

i heart Slitherine
if anybody that will possibly do it right, it's them

Archangel said:

Oh nice, this is probably best possible publisher to get it, all their strategy games are more old school then the rest. I trust them to make MoM 2 that will be worthy of its name.

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I take the opposite view of this... I've played a number of their games and they tend to release pretty average games, with some real stinkers and only rarely the occasionally decent game. I'm not holding my breath on this.

You look at their last fantasy-themed strategy game (Sovereignty: Crown of Kings) and it's a broken, bug-riddled mess of a game. Like a lot of their games, it looked good on paper but execution is often subpar.

Even one of their "best" recent games (Gladius) is only ok imo (though some people really like it).

Maybe I just need more to more impressed by the graphics but nothing in their listings looks particularly engaging. Kind of stale, rudimentary, and boring AF.

I believe Slitherine is mostly a publisher, although they develop some games, like Paradox, so I wouldn't look for uniform quality across all games. I've played a WWI game that seemed quite deep, though I didn't play it long enough to speak much further. It was also sufficiently dry in presentation.

I haven't played it a ton, but I've gotten a nice first blush from Field of Glory II: Empires. This is a standalone expansion that adds an overland strategic layer to the game Field of Glory II, which I have played. I can tell you, SSIGuy, that the tactical battles in the base game are good fun and not shallow. If you own both games, you can play each battle tactically and import the results into the strategy game. The transition is sufficiently indy-clunky (TM), but it's a quality game.

Arkayne said:

Can not wait for a new MoM game! I think this studio is working on a Fantasy General remake as well. Two favorites from long ago.

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Are they the ones doing Fantasy General? Awesome, such a great game. I'm embarrassed to say I never played MoM. It came out at a busy time in my life and never got around to it. Always just played the civilization games. I would love to try a new MoM and see what I was missing.

Capt. Huggy Face said:

I believe Slitherine is mostly a publisher, although they develop some games, like Paradox, so I wouldn't look for uniform quality across all games.

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Well, that's exactly the thing that I worry about. They've used some studios who've produced pretty bad work (and have gone back to such studios again)... and I think I've even read some interviews in the past about Slitherine's take on publishing and it wasn't too confidence inducing (something along the lines of produce a lot of games and hope some work out ok)... kind of a laissez-faire scattershot approach.

Personally, I think there are a lot of better fits out there for the MoM IP so I'm disappointed they got it and my expectations aren't that high. I agree FoG2 is pretty decent but when you look at their whole catalogue, there are far more bad games than good ones.

Anyway, I'd love for them to prove me wrong on this one.

Master of Magic is the best ever in its genre. They'll never be able to duplicate the fun.

mercy said:

Master of Magic is the best ever in its genre. They'll never be able to duplicate the fun.

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I played the shit out of that game in the far past. When I am not using Archangel on forums and other places I tend to use name Torin

About the original MoM games these are things I would improve as these things have been improved with newer strategy games like the ones from Paradox.

1. Many times I've seen where the AI opponent will just sit there and spam units non-stop for dozens of hours you cannot do anything in many games except sit there and produce units and just defend a city or two because that's all the AI will do.
It will not be able to gain ground or anything it will just keep doing the same thing so if you're not already way ahead you’re stuck doing that because it doesn't have any other tactics at all.
The AI needs better tactics than the original game that is a relic of the time it was developed , this was not really an issue as much with Master of Orion also developed by the same company.

2. Diplomacy, Master of magic had basically almost no diplomacy, it’s worse than civilization 1! Master of Orion had way better diplomacy compared to it.
At the very least it should use Master of Orion’s diplomacy system and the galactic Council type, but fantasy Council system for diplomatic possible victories, it had no possibility for diplomatic victories like Master of Orion did have.

3. Master of Orion's at least minimal spying systems

4. Very cool would be to have, which almost no fantasy 4x strategy game has done, is use a tactical battle map system similar to the age of Wonder series.
Master of magic tactical battles were okay but nowhere near as challenging and interesting as age wonders. It needs real fortifications and town structures that could be defended like AoW.

1. In my games I rarely bothered with normal units. I would just gather all heroes I could get my hands on, put them all in same stack and level them up. They soon become immortal and nothing AI has can beat them. At the same time my cities didn't produce troops as heroes took care of everything.