Take charge of a Conservatory of enchanted academia in The Fool’s Apprentice, a magic-school simulator that tasks you with shepherding unfortunate apprentices into lofty wizarding careers. You’ll fit out your academy with magical study aids, research the forbidden arts, and cast timely spells to intervene in your pupils’ work when most needed – or just to mess with them.

We’ve been eager to get our warlock whistles wet since the game’s announcement earlier this year, capturing our imagination with its fantastical setting, irreverent tone, and substantial pre-established world-building. This title is set in a bespoke connected universe created by developers The Planar Danse, which spans a number of existing games and literature. It’s a magical experience that, unfortunately, needs more time to cook.

The Fool’s Apprentice casts you in the role of accomplished mage Arcanist Tharn, tasked with managing the affairs and prestigious name of the Arcane Conservatory. It’s a classic simulator experience, blending elements of games like The Sims with more structured simulations such as Two Point Museum. You’ll furnish the Conservatory with study desks, skill-boosting decor, and arcane workstations, before enrolling keen apprentice wizards and gently guiding them to raise their skills in schools such as Thaumaturgy and Hexcraft.

While you don’t control apprentices directly, you’re able to influence their studies via a number of interactive spells. You can physically move them around with Levitation, enhance their abilities with Alacrity, or simply Disintegrate them into ashes if they’re proving disappointing. It’s a neat flavour-informed approach to simulator gameplay, letting you get more hands-on with the day-to-day activities of the Conservatory. You can also cast your spells on furniture and the ever-invading thieves, which is immensely satisfying – it made me wish that The Sims would let you eviscerate their notorious burglar with a single click.

When apprentices have decided they’ve gained enough skill in a particular field of magic, they’ll ask to be approved for a “runic viewing”. This is a difficult exam that allows them to graduate from the Conservatory and spread the word of your excellent magical stewardship – that is, of course, if they survive. The exam can quickly cut short the life of even gifted apprentices, encouraging you to only approve skilled mages. Graduating apprentices is a requirement for unlocking some of the more complex workstations and a key element of progression, which means you’ll want to be strategic with which pupils you send to the exam.

Unfortunately, the title’s unique mechanics and soundtrack are silver linings in an otherwise mostly unplayable game. It’s difficult to describe my experience with The Fool’s Apprentice without this review devolving into a simple bug report.

Despite these issues, the game would remain at least functional (if frustrating) if you were able to re-load a save and avoid triggering them; however, there is no save function in The Fool’s Apprentice, which I discovered after running into a game-ending bug around half an hour in. It took me no less than four restarts (which, because of a bug that stops the ‘Disable tutorials’ setting from working, meant four repeated tutorial sessions) before I was able to plan out a route that wouldn’t break my current run. My efforts were in vain, however, when this run eventually became soft-locked anyway when none of my apprentices would complete their runic viewing exams. They would simply line up and become impossible to interact with. I tried to keep playing, but after some time, my Conservatory’s furniture started to inexplicably disappear, and the shop became totally inaccessible. Unable to progress, I had to abandon yet another playthrough.

Look, there are definitely a number of fun ideas in The Fool’s Apprentice. It’s a cool spin on the simulation genre with some unique charms. However, at the time of release, the game is sadly not in a state where you can play through it from start to finish. I’m hopeful that the development team will have the time and resources to update this title in the coming months and see through their vision for what could be a neat little magic school simulator. As of now, it can’t be recommended.