next »

[brandom]

Alpha Post

This week (the week of 11/10-11/17), we focused on significantly improving the visuals and overall theming of our game. We added a range of animations, including walking, idle, jumping, spell-casting for the player, death animations, and enemy attack sequences, enhancing immersion and feedback. The tilemap system received a complete overhaul with visually appealing tiles that not only look better but also streamline level design. Adjustments to the fog mechanics make it more transparent and less obtrusive, while fire hazards now include a visual indicator before reactivating, preventing unexpected surprises. We also introduced a new pre-game scene where the player's father bestows the wind ability, reinforcing the narrative theme of creative problem-solving through wizardry. Quality-of-life improvements, such as refined gravity, platforming physics, and UI updates, round out the polish, alongside reconstructed levels for a smoother and more engaging experience.

These changes were motivated by the need to create a more cohesive and visually compelling game world while enhancing player interaction and clarity. The project is progressing toward a well-rounded action-platformer that emphasizes creative solutions and player choice. Next, we plan to add smoother, more cohesive transitions between levels, potentially incorporating lore elements and an overarching mission to deepen the narrative. Additionally, we aim to develop 1-2 more levels that raise the stakes, potentially featuring a boss fight, and introduce parallax scrolling to enrich the background visuals and create a sense of depth.new



Windows: https://www.indiedb.com/games/windy-wizard/downloads/windy-wizard-alpha

Mac: https://www.indiedb.com/games/windy-wizard/downloads/windy-wizard-alpha-mac

[brandom]

Beta Post

This week we focused on polish first, and new content second. So to improve the polish, we went over the visuals for our game and made them generally more cohesive to both other sprites, but also our theme. This included adding wind-like particle effects to our projectile, changing our ui to be environmental, changing our tileset for the environment completely, adding a new visual to our enemy door based on how many enemies you need to kill, and changing various sprites and assets to better suit our colors and theme. These changes spruced up our game's visuals a lot and helped communicate to the player what our world and main character is. Additionally, we focused hard on bugs we both found and those that were found by our playtesters, fixing various oddities and unusual behaviors that would happen and ruin immersion. Lastly, we added to our story, tweaking the dialogue and adding more to the story, including a new cutscene in which our dad gets kidnapped by pesky goblins and an end scene to help close out our story in which we finally save him. We also added new scene transitions between the various levels to bring about a sense of continuity as you go from level to level. These changes were all made to make the game feel more cohesive, professional, and generally more cool. We also added support for parallax scrolling, and next week we plan on incorporating some fitting backgrounds to use it.

Going forward, we’re going to focus more on adding new levels and content in general, including some kind of climactic scene. We want to continue to explore the more interesting aspects of our game, making the player think on the spot and solve small open puzzles in order to progress. In our climactic scene, we want the player to have to really think on the spot, reacting and thinking fast to kill enemies and avoid danger.



Windows: https://www.indiedb.com/games/windy-wizard/downloads/windy-wizard-windows-beta
Mac: https://www.indiedb.com/groups/unity-devs/downloads/windy-wizard-beta-mac1

[brandom]

  Release Post

This week we focused on adding some final touches to our game and polishing it further. This included adding a new climactic scene to our game, finishing the story started earlier off in a cool way. This new scene gives a sense of closure and a fun little section for the player to fight through at the end of the game. It also wraps the game up well and gives a good moment before the credits at the end of the game. We also redid our menus to give them a more interesting, and cohesive look with the rest of the game. Our main menu in particular now has some visual flair to it to draw more attention. We also fixed various bugs that appeared in previous builds, especially weird behaviors that would happen with the various enemies. Now the archers only draw when they actually see the player and goblins aren’t as frustrating to push when they are trying to attack the player. We also fixed the various bugs that would occur in the different scene transitions that would cause some weird visual bugs. We have also added to and expanded our introductory level to hopefully teach the player the base mechanics of our game better than before. This includes better, less frustrating early jumps that still require the player to use the air jump, and some larger ones that show the player what they can do. Various sounds in the game were also replaced with better, more cohesive ones, including enemy sounds and the sound the air projectile makes. These changes all increase the polish of our game, getting it into a state that people can play bug-free and immersed in the game and levels.

Going forward, we want to focus on upping the production value of the game and adding a lot more content. This would include properly adding nice parallax backgrounds that fit the theme, and adding more different levels in different worlds with different themes to explore on top of the castle theme here. We would also hope to expand the story further, adding more beats than the ones we have and add some sort of progression to the player as the game gets longer.



Web Build (no download!): https://gamejolt.com/games/windywizard/949995
Windows: https://www.indiedb.com/games/windy-wizard/downloads/windy-wizard-windows-release
Mac: https://www.indiedb.com/games/windy-wizard/downloads/windy-wizard-mac-release