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[Ooghijmiqtxxa]

We've been working on this for about 3 months now and it's finally at a place that we can start sharing some information. So here it is, Wordcery: Curse of the Diretome for the iPad!

The idea of Wordcery is very simple. Each player is given 7 letters and must take turns spelling words in order to deal damage and defeat their opponent. Players can also cast spells and use a wide variety of items to aid in battle.

When a word is placed on the board, its letters can sometimes trigger special runes on the playing field. These runes give the player a powerful bonus. There are three different kinds of runes:

Rune of Might: Doubles the power of the letter that lands on the rune.



Rune of Magic: Charges a random spell in the players spellbook for use in battle.



Rune of Riches: Gain gold equal to the power of the letter that lands on the rune.

Positioning yourself to activate the most amount of runes is a good way of vanquishing your foe.

In addition to the runes, there are a number of spells that can change the tide of battle at any moment. Blast your opponent with a Meteor Strike or pick which letters you wish to have in your hand with a Flash of Brilliance.

A fully-charged spellbook:

Players can also use their gold to purchase items at the Bazaar. These items are not as powerful as the spells, but these gizmos and doodads will get you out of a pinch when you need it the most.

We are crunching like crazy to get things ready for a local game dev meetup here in San Francisco later this month. After the meetup, I hope to have a video showing off some of the other features in Wordcery.

[Ooghijmiqtxxa]

What We've Done: April 16th - 23rd

We got a few of the spells in game with some basic particles. We're trying to get all the spells in first, then we can start working on the effects.

Here is a quick video of my favorite spell in the game, Soul Swap. Soul Swap switches your hand of letters with your opponents. It's temp coder particle art, but I was ecstatic to see some sort of effects.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1810190/soulswaptest.mp4

We received some voice acting samples but I'm thinking the voice is a bit too kiddy. I was thinking of maybe trying to find a Scottish voice actress for Lexy. Here are the samples:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1810190/loss1.wav
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1810190/loss2.wav

I've also changed the UI a bit, but unfortunately that won't make it into the build for tomorrows meetup.

Old on top, new on bottom.


If anyone has any tips/suggestions for what we can use to create the particle effects for the various spells and items, I'd be very grateful. I've been playing with TimelineFX, but I'm worried with retina display assets + animation sprites from TimelineFX, the size of the app will be a bit too much. 

Hopefully tomorrow goes well and people like the game. I'll try to take some pics at the Meetup but I'll probably be too busy watching the iPad to make sure it doesn't get stolen.

[Ooghijmiqtxxa]

The meetup went very well! I brought two fully charged iPads with Wordcery and both were played until the batteries died which I think is a good sign.

Two of the biggest critiques (other than the lack of effects) was knowing whose turn it is and the feeling that the computer was doing more damage because the players health bar was bigger but represented the same number value. So to fix that, we took the health bar from the bottom of the screen and made it more "fighter" style. We also created an effect that glows around the health bar of whose ever turn it is.

Click to see it in action!

We want to do some animation for it but it does the trick for now.

We have another little meetup here in San Francisco on the 9th so we are trying to get as many of the critiques from the past meetup fixed before then. 

[ScaryPotato]

That`s a pretty neat idea for a game, Scrabble and Magic rolled into one form like that:) The graphics look really nice so far, seems pretty clear and intuitive. How many words does it recognizeÉ (Sorry that É thing is my question mark)

Also, did you get the `cover art`done my Matt DixonÉ It looks very much in his style, which is great...I think that the letter blocks in her hand could be enlarged or something to draw a little more focus to them rather than other elements in the picture, hahah!

[Ooghijmiqtxxa]

Thanks Scary! It recognizes pretty much the entire English dictionary with some exclusions for names. We also have a feature called a "Spellstrike" which are key words that we flag as special and whenever one of those words are played, it does extra damage and grants you another attack. Most of the spellstrike words are words that have to do with fighting, war or violence. Example: Bruise, Burn, Stab, Maul, etc.

Yup, Matt Dixon is doing some work for us. He is fantastic. I've worked with him before and love his work. We are going for a mix of styles. The characters will be his style and I do the rest of the art which is more dark and detailed.

The tiles, swirl and highlights from the hand are all on separate layers in the PSD, so when we get to that stage, we can make all of those elements animate and pulse to give Lexy a little more life. Glad you like the way it's looking!

[ScaryPotato]

This is something I'd really enjoy playing, if only I had an iPad! I just now realized the post where you say in big bold letters 'click to see it in action' is a video. 

It looks really good in action so far, and the Spellstrike concept adds a nice twist.

Animating the glow and tiles of the sorceress would look amazing! In fact, it all looks pretty amazing. One of the first things that struck me actually are the nice subtleties of the in-game graphics. I've never used them myself, but have always been a big fan of that raking texture you've got on each tile, heh!

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to seeing how this progresses!

[Ooghijmiqtxxa]

@ScaryPotato: Thanks! We will be trying to get the game on Steam once we have it finished, but first release will be on the iPad for sure.

@Gabriel: Yup. Matt Dixon will be doing all of the character art for the game and spell art. He's a fantastic artist and a great guy: http://www.mattdixon.co.uk/gallery.htm

We started working on the single player portion of the game. Mostly the world map and a quick mock up of how the conversations will go. I'm using some place holder art for the icons to help figure out how we want to do quests and side missions.



We will using a different character art (it's actually pretty creepy having the character staring at you when they're having a conversation) but we don't have them yet so we had to use the main menu art.