In development
Dr J's Portal Academy
Coming soonDr J has been fighting Stormveil for a long time. He made a game out of it.
The premise
You will be taught something they execute people for
Stormveil is a magic academy, and it hunts anyone who travels between dimensions. Dr J trained there. Stormveil expelled him for it, and they have been hunting him ever since.
You are an adept. Dr J is too hunted to teach you himself, so Famulus does it, lesson by lesson, in a base you build out of nothing. The moment you open a portal, Stormveil knows. Travelling is how you get stronger, and it is also how they find you.
Who you will meet
- Dr J
- Expelled from Stormveil, hunted for it, and the reason any of this is possible.
- Famulus
- His assistant, and the one who actually trains you.
- Stormveil Hunters
- Spellcaster assassins. Stalkers dive your back line, Veilbinders keep the rest alive, and Rift Beasts come in numbers.
- The Gatewarden
- Stormveil's guardian. A frontal shield that only cracks to burst damage.
The loop
Four things you are always doing
Build the base
Eleven structures on a 16 by 16 plot, placed anywhere you like. A Storm Spire pulling Runes out of the weather, a Séance Room that produces Grimoires and doubles as your summoning altar, a Menagerie housing what you summon, a Rift Portal to leave through, and the Adept's Study where Dr J's research turns into permanent upgrades.
Runes build and upgrade everything. They do nothing else.
Summon the roster
Thirty monsters, six rarity tiers, five roles in every tier, so any tier can field a balanced team. Grimoires are what you spend, and a summon always returns at least the tier you paid for. Your first is Boltling, a storm-beast that stands in front of the things trying to reach you.
Duplicates are not waste. They are how a monster levels.
Raid the dimensions
Real-time expeditions, fought rather than resolved on a results screen. You choose where each monster lands and when, and they fight from there. Ten nodes to a chapter, a boss at the end of it, and a score out of three stars based on how much of the objective you actually took down.
Every dimension leans an element. Bring its counter.
Hold the walls
Stormveil raids back, and you do not get to fight that one. Your defense is the layout itself: Watchtowers covering the approach, Ward Traps buried where raiders funnel, and Bulwarks shaping where they funnel in the first place. You can run an attack against your own base to find out what is wrong before they do.
A raid damages structures. It never undoes an upgrade.
What makes it tense
A monster that dies is gone
Not benched, not revived at a cost. Gone, permanently, even if you go on to win the fight it died in. Lose the battle outright and everything still deployed goes with it.
Which means every choice in a fight is a real one. Commit the whole squad and clear it faster, or hold monsters in reserve and send them only if you have to. And when it turns against you, you can walk away: retreating forfeits everything that run would have paid, and every monster you brought comes home.
The roster
Thirty monsters, six elements, five jobs
The six elements
A closed wheel. Each element hits the one it beats for half again as much, and lands soft against the one that beats it. There is no element that is simply better, which is why a collection beats a favourite.
- Storm flattens Verdant
- Verdant reclaims the Void
- Void smothers Ember
- Ember melts Frost
- Frost stills Arcane
- Arcane grounds Storm
Stormveil's own turf runs Storm, so its home ground answers to Arcane.
The five roles
| Role | What it does |
|---|---|
| Warden | Front line. Taunts, shields, and soaks what would have hit someone fragile. |
| Ravager | Single-target killer. Fast, and built to delete one important thing. |
| Caster | Area damage. Answers a swarm before it reaches your line. |
| Mystic | Support. Heals, buffs, and cleanses what the enemy put on you. |
| Trickster | Control. Debuffs, crowd control, and taking a fight off its rails. |
Bosses are built to demand specific answers. A wide roster beats a strong one.
The ladder
Six tiers, each with its own name for what it summons. A fully levelled monster from a lower tier can close on a fresh higher-tier one, but never quite pass it.
- CommonFamiliars
- UncommonConjured
- RareSummoned
- LegendaryAscendant
- MythicSovereign
- GrailPrimordial
Enclaves
Everyone is in one, and nobody attacks you
Enclaves
You are put in one from the start, so nobody plays this alone by accident. An Enclave has its own city and its own Portal, powered by Grimoires that members donate. Monsters summoned through it defend members under raid and join joint expeditions.
There is a boss every week that belongs to your Enclave alone, and a world boss that every Enclave hits at the same time, ranked by damage dealt.
Contribute to the Portal and you can draw on it. That is the only entry fee.
Nobody attacks you
There is no player versus player combat, and there is not going to be. The only thing raiding your base is Stormveil.
Leaderboards still exist, for base strength and expedition progress, individually and between Enclaves. You can measure yourself against the rest of the Academy without anyone being allowed to take your work off you.
Commanders
Patrons other players can hire
Commanders
Circle Commander and Enclave Commander patrons are written into the game as commanders other players can pick. Choose one and they collect for you on a faster cadence than the free option, which runs once a day.
The patron earns a bonus for being chosen, generated on top of what the hiring player gets rather than taken out of it. The more players who pick you, the more it pays.
| Commander | Collects every |
|---|---|
| Free | 24 hours |
| Inner Circle Commander | 8 hours |
| Enclave Commander | 4 hours |
Storage fills at about four hours, so the fastest cadence is the one that loses nothing to overflow.
Who can be one
Circle Commander
Selectable as an Inner Circle Commander.
Enclave Commander
Selectable as an Enclave Commander, and eligible to be chosen as an enclave's commander.
Coming soon
There is no release date yet, and we will not invent one
It is in active development and it is not finished. When it is close, it does not go on sale to everyone first. It goes to the Inner Circle, who play it, break it, and tell us what is wrong before anybody else sees it.
Builds, patch notes and the vote on what gets made next all run through the Discord. Patrons get every one of them first. That is the whole reason the tier exists.
Everything on this page is the game as designed. Systems can still change before release, and anything that does will be said out loud in the Discord rather than quietly edited here.