Avencast: Rise of the Mage is a role-playing game by Clockstone Studios. An unassuming apprentice mage, too bored to take part in regular studies, applies for early graduation from the magical Academy of Avencast. Little does he realize that the fate of the entire academy and, indeed, existence itself will shortly be resting on his shoulders.
The 2007 game is the first developed by Clockstone and heavily incorporates elements of fighting and other action games.
This game provides examples of:
- Alchemy Is Magic:
- The game opens with the player character having fallen asleep during alchemy class.
- There is also an alchemy-based quest for a Kyranian decursing potion.
- An Ice Person: With movement chilling to boot.
- Another Dimension: The source of the daemon invasion on Avencast.
- Area of Effect: A few, in both Blood and Soul skill trees.
- Attack on the Heart: Morgath's Sequential Boss fight ends with you exposing and destroying his heart to kill him forever. It's stationary, naturally, but uses a variety of energy attacks.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Any spell with a cast time is substantially less accurate than a faster spell, while usually being more mana-expensive. Additionally, the longer cast time makes you vulnerable to incoming attacks.
- Back Stab: The Shadow Walk spell turns you invisible and lets you reappear to make an extra-powerful attack.
- Barefoot Sage: The mentor of the main character is shown barefoot. The rest of the mages of the setting seem to have a penchant for sandals and unconventional footwear.
- Bargain with Heaven: Implied by the last historical document of the Kyranians: the gods promised that if the entire Kyranian people faced Morgath in a single battle, he would fall and at least some would survive.
- Blood Magic: Invoked by name, but it doesn't seem any more villainous than Soul Magic.
- But Thou Must!: Most of the Broken Bridges and Locked Doors have in-game explanations, but you only get an error message if you try to enter the final wing of the Kyranian base without the Elixir of Transcendence that allows you to fight Morgath.
- Bullet Hell: The final boss has shades of this.
- Canis Latinicus: Almost all of the onscreen spells and many character names are Latin...ish.
- Clipped-Wing Angel: Morgath's heart may supply immortality and ultimate power to any entity, but after you've beaten his hydra form it's a cakewalk.
- Combat Exclusive Healing: You have slow Regenerating Health, but the spells you use to self-heal only work by draining health from enemies. (You can still use healing potions, though.)
- Critical Hit: Averted. The same spell deals the same damage every time, only modified by your stats and enemy defenses.
- Deal with the Devil: You can absolutely trust Kulkurazz to fulfill his end of the bargain. The next time you see him, he's less interested in bargaining.
- Demon Lords and Archdevils: Morgath. It's not clear whether he's the biggest and baddest ever, but he's certainly up there.
- Dimensional Traveler: Gorlin. Not that he's doing much with it.
- Disciplines of Magic: The titular Wizarding School teaches the Pure Magic-based path of the Soul and the Magic Knight path of Blood. It's possible to train in abilities from both paths at once, but the Point Build System makes it easy for such a build to slip into The Red Mage.
- Empty Room Psych:
- At the very beginning of the game there are four classrooms. Three can be entered, but the last is infuriatingly inaccessible.
- Sure, just take the artifact back to the Planetarium and recharge it. Of course it's empty — you've already cleared it, even the boss who interrupted while you were charging last time. Just a boring fetch quest. You'll be fine, trust me.
- Escort Mission: Three students who have barricaded themselves in the Blood Magic wing and need to be escorted to the only safe room in the academy. All three are tissue-paper defenseless and like to stand right next to the player during combat. Fortunately they are also too dumb to open doors.
- Everything Fades: Averted. Every time you kill an enemy, whatever corpse it leaves stays there forever.
- Fetch Quest: Every side quest in the game.
- Fling a Light into the Future: The last Kyranian survivor.
- Subverted. In sending away two small children from the battle, the player's mother undercut the prophecy and allowed Morgath's victory, turning the Kyranian Heroic Sacrifice into a Senseless Sacrifice. Had they joined the fight, the Kyranians would not have been entirely wiped out.
- Force-Field Door: The daemon-proof barrier protecting the students' sanctuary.
- Friendly Fire Proof: The player and his summoned minions.
- Gem Heart: The demon lord Morgath is mostly organic and tentacular, but his heart is a massive crystal. You expose and destroy it in the final stage of his boss fight.
- Giant Enemy Crab: In the Crystal Caverns.
- Giant Spider: Also in the Crystal Caverns.
- Gone Horribly Right: The cause of the Avencast daemon invasion was an experiment in dimensional travel. They succeeded in creating a stable portal... pity about what was on the other side of it.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: The Kyranians sought Morgath so they could tap his heart and unlock immortality for their entire race. They found him... uncooperative.
- Gradual Regeneration: Both health and mana.
- Healing Potion: For when Gradual Regeneration fails.
- The Hermit: Seen only in the framing cinematics, but he's the audience for the whole story.
- Heroic Sacrifice: Quirius.
- Holy Hand Grenade: Non-fire, non-ice Soul magic seems to be this.
- Instakill Mook: The labyrinth beneath the school is patrolled by Magitek drones, whose Wave Motion Gun instantly kills the Player Character. Fortunately, they're Glass Cannons and the deadly attack takes a second to charge up.
- Instant Runes: Soul Magic summons up tons of these — surrounding the Hero, in rings around the beam attacks, as projectiles...
- Justified Tutorial: Given that the game takes place in a school.
- Lag Cancel: A dodge maneuver can cancel some recovery time when casting a spell.
- Last of His Kind: The Kyranian survivor. Subverted in that he meets a second survivor with a matching amulet to his before he ever learns what he's last of.
- The Legions of Hell: The antagonists for most of the game.
- Long-Lost Relative: Meganteolis.
- Magic Knight: Most Blood Magic spells are delivered up close and personal via pummeling blows.
- Magic Staff: All of your weapon options are staves, and you can only use magic while you have a staff equipped. You can find staves of all materials, power levels, and specializations.
- Magitek: The Kyranians.
- Also Theodisius' magic-powered wheelchair.
- Moses in the Bulrushes: The main character was sent floating out in the river, with only an amulet.
- Mutually Exclusive Magic: Averted. You can learn both Blood and Soul, and some playstyles benefit from doing so, though it risks becoming a Master of None.
- Mystical Cave: Graduation requires you to reach the depths of the Crystal Caves and complete a Threshold Guardian's trial to align yourself with either Blood or Soul Magic.
- Only Smart People May Pass: Many of the puzzles have in-game reason to be there.
- In a catacomb, a vain mage requires those who plunder his grave to spell his name.
- Another mage in the same catacomb requires anyone who enters to be familiar with her scholarly research.
- The Kyranians require those who view a particular art collection in the museum to first assemble a piece of artwork logically.
- Orphan's Plot Trinket: The player character was found as a baby with a mysterious medallion. Meganteolis turns out to have an identical one, courtesy of their shared Kyranian heritage.
- Parental Abandonment: The player knows nothing about his parents and has never had any contact with them, since they sent him away from the imminent destruction of their people.
- Playing with Fire: Spells in both Blood and Soul schools.
- Point of No Return: The game doesn't advertise that the portal to the Kyranian Waste is one-way.
- Portal Door: The portal from Avencast to the Kyranian Waste is a door.
- Sadist Teacher: Two of your teachers assign you easy tasks to earn your graduation. Della Gustera sends you alone to pacify a huge crypt full of hostile undead that the wrathful spirit of the Academy founder reanimated, then threatens to withhold his approval anyway for destroying the founder's body in the course of their Boss Battle. He must really hate people who sleep in class.
- School Setting Simulation: Chapter 1 has the Player Character working towards his Ultimate Final Exam in the titular Wizarding School. After he returns from the exam to find The Legions of Hell have invaded the Academy, Chapters 2-4 are based on reclaiming it and learning how to take the fight back to them.
- Secret Secret-Keeper: Gorlin is the only being still alive that knows the full story of the Kyranians, Meganteolis, and the player. He might have mentioned it before the Academy broke space-time and saved a lot of trouble...
- Sibling Rivalry: Meganteolis reveals himself to be the protagonist's older brother, but while the protagonist is trying to stop Morgath, Meganteolis is trying to claim Morgath's power.
- Slap-on-the-Wrist Nuke: High-end spells still derive their damage from Blood or Soul character attribute. If you fail to buff your damage stat, your nuke will be this.
- Sliding Scale of Gender Inequality: Type 3.
- There are no females on the high council of Avencast, no female instructors seen or mentioned, and relatively few female students. Explained in-game that Avencast has only recently begun to admit female students.
- The only female you meet outside Avencast is the player's mother. She is at least partially responsible for the failure of the Kyranian battle against Morgath because she refused to allow her children on the battlefield. It's implied that had the entirety of the Kyranian nation stood together, Morgath would have fallen.
- Star Power: The Planetarium collects the power of the stars and channels it to charge Magitek. Its apparatus can be aimed at different stars to support different forms of magic.
- Summon Magic: A tab beside Blood and Soul, but meant as a complement rather than a standalone. There is a separate line of summons for each magic path, unlocked with a minimum score in that kind of magic and gaining power from that stat.
- Teleporters and Transporters: For the Kyranians, a network of paired thrones decorated with carvings of human faces.
- Token Nonhuman: The Inexplicably Awesome gnome Gorlin.
- Ultimate Final Exam: The final trial to become a mage is a solo Dungeon Crawl through a monster infested cave to find a Power Crystal. Along the way, you find the remains of people who couldn't cut it.
- We Buy Anything: You can sell Gorlin more or less everything you find in your travels. Good thing, since he's the only merchant in the game.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: Did the other schools ever respond to Avencast's call for help?
- Wizarding School: Avencast is a magical boarding school, community, and research institute — not only does it instruct students in the various forms of magic, it has residential space and laboratory facilities for plenty of adult mages. The existence of other schools is mentioned, but never shown.
