Magecraft

Magecraft was a vertical slice i made for my Design and Development 2 module in my 2nd year of university. The game is a magic based fps where the player must craft spells. The game features a simplistic art style and 15+ spells to add variety to the game.

The game forces the player to make quick split second decisions on what spells to craft.

A spellbook is available but this only slows time and does not pause the game so players need to think on their feet.

Magecraft was made with the idea of 'thinking on your feet' at all times. Though crafting spells would slow down time, the player needed to rapidly avoid incoming enemy fire, or launch their own counter offensive. 

The game included 4 base magic spells which could be used without crafting, those being an ice based projectile, fire based melee attack, a thunder based stun net, and a wind based double jump. The game features multiple 'crafted' spells such as 'thunder storm' which summons a thunder cloud over the target area which strikes numerous times. Another example is 'vanishing wind ball' which turns invisible after a couple of seconds in the air, gaining power and causing the player to choose if they want to risk more damage for less accuracy. A final example is 'ice field' which summons an area of ice around the player, freezing the enemy and reducing their speed whilst also allowing the player to skate along the top of it, increasing theirs.

A particular issue I encountered was the players struggling to remember the inputs needed for the spells. To combat this i included 2 modes. The first would allow the user to display up to 3 spells and combinations on the screen whenever they are crafting. This would allow some assistance whilst still playing the game as intended. The other would allow the user to select 4 spells they could 'quick-craft' allowing them to craft the spell in a single button press in response to a slightly longer load time on the spells crafting. Additionally to help, i included a tutorial area in a cave so that the player could learn the functionality of the game and learn some spell combinations. 

There were a couple of spells hidden in the game area. The player was required to use 'mage-vision' which utilised custom render stencils to reveal previously undseen objects. Using this, the player could discover multiple writings on the walls of the level, detailing the combinations for new spells.

 All assets were made by myself. I aimed for a low poly simple look with minimal textures due to my specialties and attention focused on other aspects

A font was used from DaFont called "Black Chancery" by Doug Miles - https://www.dafont.com/search.php?q=black+chancery