Adding to the pile...

Elemental to me feels like an old storybook I had as a child. Monsters live in the forests, a great mystery calls from the past and a hero rises to reclaim the lost world, fighting demon and sorcerer to bring it back to its former glory. The art style plays into this well as the units look drawn and perhaps painted in some aspects. The buildings have a painted and almost three dimensional paper look as I look closer. When I marry my queen I even get a fancifully drawn portrait of our union. I get the design and it works very well towards immersing me into this game to the point where I start to narate my hero's every action, the map is the biggest contrbutor to my need to narate.

All these elements contribute to a very unique and delightful game. I know The Makers are currently dealing with the significant problems cropping up after release, but it seems as good a time as any to discuss some very easy to implement additions that will help sell the style of the game to people less imaginative than myself. For one, the marriage drawing is the only one in the whole game. How about having that little publishing company you have working for you draw up ten more of those scenes for the really big moments in the game? These types of additions would help tell the story of the Elemental sandbox, lending to a reciprocal feeling in the user, promoting immersion into the kind of story the game is telling. Eventually the user should be making up their own stories as they play. This is the essence of role playing, allowing the user to create a new reality that is merely based on the interface you have created.

I also think it would help if we received some archetypal characters into the game. Janusk is a great start to some type of wizard or knowledgeable old man that teaches our young hero about his destiny. I like Janusk, though I would think he could be a little more mysterious and old. Perhaps from a different era of humanity, when civilization was in a better state. I hate to reference Star Wars as it defames my credibility and cost a great deal in royalties, but Obi-wan Kenobi is a great archetypal wise man. Merlin is good choice as he could say something like, "I have traveled the depths of time to find you," or some such thing.

The whole tutorial could be given by Janusk the wise and he could give mysterious hints about future quests and events as you go along. The key to storytelling is to give the audience information without them realizing it. I would also think that the spells could follow a similar trend. Each spell should have something interesting to give to reader so that they want to read about it every time they use it. I suggest a riddle or rhyme being the description for every spell and a scroll-over option to tell the denser kind the exact function of the spell.

I realize this will take alot of time to properly implement and it may not be possible for you to take on. I am just throwing some story based ideas out there, hoping that this is the same kind of game you guys are going for. I for one need this game to increase its story as much as its stability and balance. I will continue to post such ideas and I wonder if any of you had some good suggestions for increasing this part of the game.