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[Steaky]

Words for Evil

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Words for Evil is a fast paced word game combined with a fantasy RPG.

It features everything you expect from an RPG, including combat, hero progression, loot and more, all built on top of word game mechanics.

The game is available on PC and Mac. An iPad version will be coming soon!



 

 

Features :

• Full keyboard support - The game moves as fast as you can type
• Four separate word games - Battle monsters, unlock chests, defuse traps and cheat death
• 16 Heroes to unlock, each with their own skill sets
• Nearly 100 monsters to defeat
• 6 beautiful stages to discover and explore
• Deep combat system - Buffs, critical hits, armor, character attributes, disables, attack modifiers...
• Track your progress with the bestiary and stat pages

Hey everyone! I've been working on this game for a while now, and finally have a bunch of stuff to show off.  

The game is an RPG/DungeonCrawler/Roguelike built on top of wordgame mechanics. You do pretty much everything you would expect to do in a dungeoncrawler, except that you do it by spelling words!

Some cool features:

- Multiple Heroes (Party System)
- Each Hero has Multiple Abilities
- Levelling up and Unlocks
- Loot and Potions
- Four Minigames (all word based)
- Six Worlds




Anyway, let me know what you think!

[NachtkARTer]

I'm in! :D

Looks nice. Will  definetly look in here the next time to see more =)

[Steaky]

Okay, time for the first update!

Over the weekend I finished getting the blacksmith functioning.  The inventory system isn't really complex, as items work more like consumables, so once you equip them, you get the stats and that's it.



I've also got the first set of ability effects in.  Going to get a bunch more in over the course of this week, along with some new heroes hopefully

[Steaky]

New Update!

First of all, I wanted to show off a new environment which is finally done.



Other than that, I've mostly been making heroes and enemies and abilities all week.  Not sure how much of that I should show off, since part of the fun will be discovering everything...

But here's one of my favourites - Hire Assassin



I also set up a website this week which you can check out, though nothing much on it yet

www.wordsforevil.com

[txtsd]

This looks so cool!

[devMidgard]

Interesting, looking really good!

[JobLeonard]

It looks solid, and I know more than a few people who love word game. I think you're on to something - this could be really big!

[Steaky]

It's been almost a year since I last posted about this game!  I've been working full time, but my contract ends pretty soon, so I'm hoping to finish up and release asap!

I was mostly implementing audio/music this week, but I also finalized the design for the hero cards, along with the Main Menu.

[JobLeonard]

IT'S ALIIIIIIIIVE!!!! 

[Rebusmind]

Cool stuff.

[Steaky]

Hey Everyone,

This week I've been mostly working on behind-the-scenes stuff, so there's not much to share. 

BUT, I've also finished up a new set of enemies, so I thought I would show off a couple.  Ideally I'll have a pretty huge library of enemies by the end, so it should be fun to unlock and track them all. 

Also, I've got the last of the tutorial stuff in, which isn't too exciting, but still good to have!

Also, thanks for being excited Job and Reb, I'm happy to be back working on it

[tieTYT]

I really like that praying mantis (especially the wings) and that black worm.  Really cool artwork. 

I also like the effect of the blocks disappearing when you submit a word. 

These are two tiny things I noticed that I don't even know if I care about:

1. The top graphics seem to be in a different style from the bottom.  The top looks like video game pixel art, the bottom looks like a slick app. 

2. Shouldn't Shuffle/Clear/Submit have some border around it so you know it's a button to press?  I feel silly asking because you can tell from the words that they're buttons, but it just doesn't seem conventional.

[JobLeonard]

By the way, with the current title you're pretty much obliged to make a reference to

 

[Jasmine]

Subbed! Fo sho'!

[Steaky]

Thanks for the feedback so far!

These are two tiny things I noticed that I don't even know if I care about:

1. The top graphics seem to be in a different style from the bottom.  The top looks like video game pixel art, the bottom looks like a slick app.

2. Shouldn't Shuffle/Clear/Submit have some border around it so you know it's a button to press?  I feel silly asking because you can tell from the words that they're buttons, but it just doesn't seem conventional.

For the two visual styles, I think it works okay, even though it's a bit unconventional. 

This was something that I struggled with a lot when I started.  I don't have much art experience, so I had to pick a style that I knew I could pull off.  I also knew I wanted a huge amount of enemies, so it had to be something I could create fast.  Enter pixel art!

For the backgrounds, I actually started trying 3d, since I have more modelling experience...

Right away I knew it wouldn't look good

So I did pixel art for everything.  But on the bottom, because it's a word game, you need everything to be nice an clean and clear.  That's when I started to adapt the book cover inspiration.  The whole game should look like one of those old Penguin Book Covers, and the top pixel art is just the illustration to the story

As for the buttons, you're right, it's a bit odd they don't look like buttons.  When I started, I had these strange cutout buttons.  They didn't look great, but it was obvious you could press them.

Obviously this style of button REALLY clashes with the pixel art and the clean text.  So when I decided to go for the book cover aesthetic, I started to strip away as much as I could, eventually leading to just text.

You're right that it being obviously a button became a problem, but, because I use this style everywhere, you learn pretty quick.  For example, when you start a level, you see this screen :

This reminds the player that buttons are simple text, and also hints that the bottom of the screen is where all the interaction will take place.

In most cases, the buttons are also coloured quite dramatically compared to the rest of the text, so that helps too

[JobLeonard]

Here's something I don't get about mixing 3D and pixel sprite art: why not render the 3D at an extremely low resolution in some FBO (matching the pixel resolution, to be precise) so that it integrates more nicely, then nearest neighbour upscale it to the resolution of the screen? Wouldn't that solve the clash in styles? Plush be extremely fast to render even on old hardware.

[Steaky]

Yeah, that could definitely work (I think I understand what your saying).  It was more of a quick test than anything.

In the end, I'm not sure that pixel backgrounds took any longer than 3d would have, so I'm happy with my choice. 

I also do kind of like the strange mix of 3d and pixel art, though obviously not for this project.  I've got some ideas for stuff I might try once this is over

[JobLeonard]

If nothing else drawing all them sprites expanded your skillset, right? (they look good)

[ephoete]

The only problem in all these gorgeousness here... are the fonts. The rest is really good, perfect job for the animations especially.

[JobLeonard]

What's wrong with the fonts? I like it - clean and very readable. Yes, they are totally different from the low-pixel look, but they also occupy a separate space and the design is consistent within that separate space.