Something Magical

You play as a wizzard, who has the ability to revive dead plants.

HOW TO PLAY:

- Hold space to use magic
- ArrowKeys/wasd Movement

THE TOOLS

- Unity
- Visual Studio
- Pyxel Edit
- Audacity
- Boscaceoil

From the idea to the game

This contains some spoilers if you want to play the game. Maybe do that first and then come back to this wall of text if you fell like it :)

FIRST OFF

I am a professional software developer and create games once in a while in my free time. Most of the times they dont get finished. I have to say this is not a problem for me. Im happy if i can get a mechanic implemented and dont have the time or the perseverance to polish and finish afterwards. I participated about 5 times in Ludum Dare.

On this years valentines day, my daughter was born :)

I wasnt sure if i can finish a game for Ludum Dare or even participate. But i tried with a really small game with simple mechanics. I can say Im happy how this turned out. It would profit alot with some more polish and the one or another mechanic that i had to scrap in the progress because time was really running out.

I think this is the first time i participated in the compo and submitted my entry.

PLANNING A SMALL SCOPE

It doenst matter how small you plan, you allways need to scrap some ideas in the end in Ludum Dare. At least thats what i allways expierince ;) I would have loved to do a card game for this one but i realized pretty fast that im not capable of doing a game of that type in the small time amout that i have.

It came to my mind how scary this times are. I wanted to create something peacefully, a place where you cant get hurt and without any stress. I wanted players to have a good feeling when playing and have them feel to accomplish something even when its small. I think this game is the result of that. I never did something like that.

The idea was the be a wizzard that can revive dead plants. And maybe add some animals, like a deer or boar, and special skills.

THE GAME

GROWING

I think the biggest feature of my work is the mechanic to grow the grass. I have a simple tilemap with dirt tiles. These dirt tiles have an additional layer with an empty sprite renderer for the greens. When you cast your spell the greens grow magically. In the background a percent value increases when you cast in range of a tile and decreases when you dont. This percentage asks a greens texture for the amount of random pixels of that percentage and draw them on the empty green layer of the tile. I dont think this is the best way to do something like that but i really like the result and are happy i came up with that in such a short amount of time. And i love the fact i learned something about reading specific parts of a texture at runtime to do something with that information. I really think im gonna do somethin with that in a future game.

ANIMALS

My idea was to have a really lovely forrest with lots of peacefully animals running around in the end. Im not a very good artist to say the least. And time was running out very quickly. I added a bumblebee, a butterfly and a squirrel which all look pretty nice for my standards. The squirrel was supposed to run from tree to tree but this also had to be cancled due to time issues. It only hops around on the tree. But if you bounce into the tree it hides inside the leafes and comes back out shortly after that. The other two animals have a similar mechanic if you do bounce into their plant. They fly off and search for another plant, which looks nice.

JUICE

I know its a bit cheap but i added some glow to make it all look nicer, as i said before im not good at polishing games and dont have much expirience finishing games :P So i cut cornes a bit. Speaking of cutting cornes my code is a mess X_x but i guess some of you can relate. working solo in the compo for the first time was really challenging for me so im also ok with that^^

I also added some bounce to the objects when you walk into them and added some particles that fly off. This makes the world feel more real i guess.

ART

The only art i can create and are kind of happy with is pixel art. i dont think this art is a master piece but all combined together looks pretty nice in my opinion. I would even say its the best work as a whole i ever did. I did a lot of plants, some mushrooms, 2 tress and a bunch of different weed sprites. The animation of the wizzard could be better i guess. It also was scaled up because i decided to shrink the tiles halfway through :/ which makes it look a bit off i guess. Im happy how the casting animation turned out.

SOUND AND MUSIC

This was the first time i trusted myself to record sounds with my voice infact almost every sound effect was made with only my mouth. I also used some tinfoil and a paper sheet. With some filters in Audacity that all turned out pretty okish :D

The music was created with boscaceoil. I did some better work with that tool in the past but im a bit rusty i guess. I tried different things and ended up with that what you can hear in game. I would say its good enough for my standards but could be a lot better.

SCRAPPRED MECHANICS

- DOPPELGAENGER: I would have loved to have more active skills. Something like spawn a mirror image of your wizzard that walks around and uses magic himself.

- MANA: At first you werent supposed to have infinite mana to cast all the time. There should have been a mana fountain ore something to replenish but this was scrapped because well you guessed it: TIME

- Deer and Boar: These animals should have been there initially. But it would have taken me alot of effort to create thier behaviour in a somewhat realistic way. So i scrapped them for some much simpler insects :D

WRAP UP

If you have read this far. Thank you. Really. I dont know why i wrote all this down but felt like doin it. And as i started i couldnt stop.

I have to eat now or my wife will get angry. I hope you had a good time with the game. And im excited to hear your feedback.

Take care. Stay safe and healthy my friend.