Wacky Wizard
"Wacky Wizard" is a simple, 2D game point-and-click puzzle game experience. It features a fantasy story about a husband looking to find a magical solution for his wife that fell ill. In doing so, he makes his way to the local wizard tower. However, this wizard is kind of an oddball, who enjoys time-travel to collect all sorts of relics from modern times.
The wizard refuses to lend his magic to the unworthy. Therefore, the husband, which is controlled by the player, will have to complete the wizard's trials to gain his benevolence.
The wizard refuses to lend his magic to the unworthy. Therefore, the husband, which is controlled by the player, will have to complete the wizard's trials to gain his benevolence.
GXP Engine
This project was created in a custom, simple 2D engine, created by the teachers of my Game Engineering studies. It featured some basic code for displaying sprites or animated sprites on the screen, and that was pretty much it. Everything else had to be implemented the hard way by the programmer; me. I introduced a Scene system, which lets me switch images and move them around, or add music, sound effects, or other custom triggers.
If you shoot a red block, you push yourself away from it. The goal of the game is to avoid crashing into blocks for as long as you can, which will earn you a higher score. However! The longer the game goes on, the faster you will fall!
We noticed that players got hooked on the game instantly. There's so much to say about this one. The adaptive music track, the special effects, the increasing tension and the wobbly score going up... when everything comes together, it's a mesmerising experience.
We noticed that players got hooked on the game instantly. There's so much to say about this one. The adaptive music track, the special effects, the increasing tension and the wobbly score going up... when everything comes together, it's a mesmerising experience.
Gameplay
There's a lot to tell about this game. While the gameplay itself is not the most fascinating part, there was space for some incredible solutions to the limitations of the game engine that really enhanced the game experience.
The player starts off at the bottom of the wizard's tower, completely surrounded by darkness.
The player starts off at the bottom of the wizard's tower, completely surrounded by darkness.
If you shoot a red block, you push yourself away from it. The goal of the game is to avoid crashing into blocks for as long as you can, which will earn you a higher score. However! The longer the game goes on, the faster you will fall!
We noticed that players got hooked on the game instantly. There's so much to say about this one. The adaptive music track, the special effects, the increasing tension and the wobbly score going up... when everything comes together, it's a mesmerising experience.
We noticed that players got hooked on the game instantly. There's so much to say about this one. The adaptive music track, the special effects, the increasing tension and the wobbly score going up... when everything comes together, it's a mesmerising experience.
Issues & Fixes
Arcade Controller
This project started out as an arcade game project. For the purpose of the exercise, the teams working on it were asked to create a custom controller. This made it difficult to determine how the magnet gun should be aimed. In the end, the decision came to checking if the input was through controller, and then having a stick that could rotate in all 360 degrees determine where the gun was aiming. The crosshair would then take a fixed distance from the character. When no controller is plugged in, it would follow the mouse. This solved the aiming problem.
Teamwork
For the ones among you who have run team projects before, I am sure you are familiar with the projects where you have that one person. You know, the type who doesn't show up, doesn't deliver any work, but at the end, still tries to get the credits. Sadly, this project had one of them. Altough patient at first, the team could not overlook this behaviour, and eventually came to the conclusion that this person was not doing their part, and had to be let go. This is not an easy thing to do as a student, but it's a lesson I won't forget. I will take it with me into any professional career.