Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic is a turn-based strategy video game in a fantasy setting. Shadow Magic is the third incarnation of the Age of Wonders series, and is a stand-alone expansion to Age of Wonders II: The Wizard’s Throne. All three games were developed by Triumph Studios. The series is a spiritual successor to Master of Magic, featuring strategic overworld and tactical combat layers.
The key element of the Wizard’s Throne and Shadow Magic are the player’s leader, the Wizards. In contrast to other iterations of the series, they do not gain experience and are weaker in direct combat than Heroes, who can be hired. As with preceding games, players can research spells from chosen elemental spheres of magic. Spells are cast at vastly longer range when residing in AOW2‘s defining Wizard Towers, returning less prominently in Age of Wonders 4. There are fifteen races in the game, of varying good and evil alignment.
The overworld contains basic Civilization-style cities, with unit and building production, along with gold and mana strategic resources and locales like dungeons. Game scenarios offer three different layers, the Surface, Underground and Shadow World, added in Shadow Magic. The Shadow World returns in AOW 4: Eldritch Realms as the more hostile, dungeon-focused Umbral Abyss. The campaign focuses in part on its titular antagonist, the Shadow Demons.
As with its predecessors, Shadow Magic was designed for single-player and multiplayer, retaining a more active multiplayer community versus AOW2 TWT. While the graphical engine is the same as that of The Wizard’s Throne, every race received new buildings and at least one new recruitable unit, three new races, and new maps. Much requested by fans, Shadow Magic introduced random map generation to the series.
After the end of the official support with patch 1.3, the game was unofficially developed by the fan-community via a community patch. The franchise was re-released on Stardock’s Impulse digital distribution service in September 2010, soon after via GOG.com and GamersGate, and finally through Steam service.
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