I said last week that we’d have “proper combat with working enemies” to show off—a 90s back-of-box feature if ever there was one—and here it is!
Tag: mechanics
Magical Spell Masters Devlog Week 1 – New Beginnings
Magical Spell Masters ended up being one of the four projects selected for advancement into major production. (Parasite was as well!) This is rather gratifying, since we put some serious work into making that prototype as fully functional as possible in the time frame. Having it recognized as being worth fifteen weeks of group development time is great. We now have two programmers and an additional designer. Our original two artists moved to Parasite, and we’ve got three new artists in their place.
Parasite Devlog Week 3 – A Casual Fling
Week two of Parasite was about refining player movement, polishing off a prototype level, implementing an active ragdoll, and packing more assets into our lovely backgrounds. For the final week of our prototype production, we were focused on making a pitch video. This involved the deployment of quite a bit of smoke and the installation of a few mirrors, but mostly we were able to use actual gameplay footage, which was gratifying.
Magical Spell Masters Devlog Week 3 – Questionable Payloads
Week two of Magical Spell Masters was all about getting more assets in place and, for me, building the event-based logic to get things talking to one another. This week: refinement, a cute companion book, and the general scramble to close the game loop prior to the final build.
Parasite Devlog Week 2 – Weighty Appendage
Week one of Parasite was about putting in place our core systems—movement, enemy AI, sound. This week was more design focused, with our designer working on various iterations of the prototype level. These are already proving quite fun, and the designs have clarified some of the issues that fuelled my concerns about the physics-driven movement. Or rather, the prototype level has clarified by understanding of the game’s design. Parasite is about swinging and flowing through environments that are tailor made to the tentacle mechanic; it’s less a Carrion-style reverse horror game than it is a physics puzzle box. It helps to know what you’re making!
Magical Spell Masters Devlog Week 2 – Special Events
Week one of making our Magical Spell Masters prototype saw us coming to abrupt terms with flaws in the concept. The central mechanic was predicated on a player being able to spell any word, and the cleverness was in figuring out which words were the right ones. In practice this is difficult, and it certainly isn’t very fun. So we quickly pivoted to something more like a deck builder.
Parasite Devlog Week 1 – Better With Tentacles
As part of my current studies, I’m required to work with a team to develop two game prototypes. One is called Magical Spell Masters. The other—this one—is Parasite.
From a programming perspective, it requires a tricky compromise between platforming precision and physics-driven shenanigans.
Magical Spell Masters Devlog Week 1 – The Best-Laid Plans
As part of my current studies, I’m required to work with a team to develop two game prototypes. One is called Parasite. The other—this one—is Magical Spell Masters.
It’s one of those ideas that sounded great in my head, but didn’t take much time to prove itself flawed.