The Fool's Apprentice

I was originally leaning more toward "Mixed" on this, with the opinion that you should check out this game, but only if you're an existing genre fan and on a discount. However, by the end of my playthrough I came to the realization that you cannot save in this game - AT. ALL. In my personal opinion this is unacceptable for almost any modern game, not to mention a modern game on Steam with a $17 USD price tag. I would be upset if a free game on Newgrounds didn't save my progress, so when this game didn't I was beyond flabbergasted. Who on the development team thought this was a good idea? I would not listen to that guy very often if this is the caliber of ideas they're handing out - I'm sorry to say. This was an atrocious addition to the game and even though I didn't mind the issues I was running into while playing, this made me mind A LOT. That all said, not being able to save made every bad step the devs made up to this point stand out MUCH MORE. So basically: You're given an academy to raise the next studious minds in. You start with 2 (maybe 3, I forget exactly) rooms and you unlock the rest through resources you gain through gameplay. You also start out with a limited amount…

The Fool’s Apprentice is a cozy little magic management sim where you’re basically the babysitter for a bunch of chaotic wizard kids. You run around your weird little academy casting spells, fixing disasters, and trying to keep your apprentices from setting everything on fire. It’s quirky, it’s silly — and it really wants to be charming. Pros ✔️ The magic system is genuinely fun to mess with - There’s a surprising amount of spell variety for such a small game. I found myself constantly trying new combos or just zapping apprentices across the room for the drama. ✔️ There’s a lot of heart in the visuals - All the little animated creatures, magical clutter, and soft lighting give it a world that feels alive — like your own slightly haunted Hogwarts-lite. ✔️ The esthetic style was great - Even when I was frustrated, I still liked looking at it. Cons ❌ The UI is... a mess - Basic stuff like selecting spells or checking objectives is way more awkward than it should be. I spent way too much time trying to find things instead of doing them. ❌ The tutorial explains almost nothing - It walks you through a few buttons, then just drops you in. I had no idea what I was doing for a good chunk …

The game still feels incredibly early access and the fact that they don't list it as early access is... really sad. No active pause function, The tutorial is just... boring, No real way to keep apprentices happy, the game seems to freak out when trying to move an object in a certain way. The game needs a LOT more work before I would ever recommend this to anyone. Because as of right now its just boring.

I want to like this game but the lack of a proper save feature is not good. I get they are trying for a run based game like a rogue-like but it is barely tolerable for them not to have a save mid-run. I want to be able to spend little amounts of time on this game in bite size chunks. Also I feel like just starting out that my stuff gets stolen way to often, there is like zero grace period to get up and running. I can't recommend as it stands and will be asking for a refund.

I have played this game for 77min and have encountered 3 errors that say fatal error. There may be a good game in there but the instability of the game kills it. It has an interesting premise and i love the research angle. The UI is terrible. This has not been patched in a while, stay away from this game.

i cant unlock the other features..i dont know why the percent of success is always at 20-30%. no option to expand place. the furniture/workstations cant even get too close to each other. =___= would have been a nice game but too many sht