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With the new decade upon us, I have started a new project. It's a game about wizards and spells and dungeon crawling. It revolves almost entirely around a single mechanic: the ability to create and combine magic "techniques" into unique player-created spells. There are no prefab spells in the game, and no leveling system to guide the combat. You and your enemies are only as strong as the spells you hold. You have the ability to create a lot of junk spells; the game will not hold your hand.

After a few weeks in development, I decided it was time for me to start writing about it to anyone who happens to stroll by. More importantly, I wanted to document some of the technical whatnots and whozits, for fun and because it might help to generate some interest in the game. I'm no marketing guru, but I love the game so hopefully that will shine through.

An Overview of the Game

I'm calling the game Spellbound.

When you create a new game, you'll start in a tutorial with a headmaster wizard. He'll teach you a few techniques and how to combine them. I'm thinking maybe the ingredients for a simple illumination spell. For example, Illumination and Propulsion to create a spell that lights up the area around it and travels towards a chosen target. This will be the first spell you learn, so I don't want it to be too complicated.

Then you'll be released into a large and randomly generated world with a village in the center and dungeons scattered all around it (and probably lots of other points of interest as well). The game will have a main quest, but ultimately you'll be free to explore as you please. You'll encounter bandits and monsters, and the more you fight, the more magical techniques you'll discover, which will slowly unlock more and more spell possibilities. The farther from the village you travel, the stronger your enemies.

The main quest will be supported by randomly generated quests from villagers. And eventually, my goal is to support some form of multiplayer co-op.

Measures of Success

In order for me to feel like this project was a success, the magic system needs to be awesome. It needs to be fun, and in-depth. I don't want people to feel restricted with the system. Think of it like Scratch but for spells and magic.

I also don't want the game to be buggy. That too is important.

But otherwise, I'm just having fun with it. If all I end up with is a cool tech demo with a simple goal, I'm fine with that.

In future blog posts I will go over different aspects of the game and how they're built, like:

• The world generation
• NPC behaviors and action queuing
• Maybe something about the rendering "engine" (if you could call it that)
• The procedural magic system (when I finish it)

In the mean time, thanks for reading this. If this project interests you, stick around. I'll try to keep you in the loop.

Bye!