A wizard whose spellbook pages were stolen has to fight their way through obstacles and enemies in an enchanted forest to get the pages back. WizWood is a top-down shooter inspired by the arcade classic Gauntlet.
The idea
In the very beginning, we liked the idea of a top-down game and all the artists agreed to work on a fantasy theme. Gauntlet was a natural reference and a good starting point to develop our own game. However, there were things we wanted to change about Gauntlet. We did not like how the controls felt in the original game, and we thought it would be cool to turn the usual dungeon crawling into a more open-space world, which would also allow the main character to use a wider set of abilities.
The idea of progression in the game through the acquisition of spell pages was almost immediate, and so were the main character design and most enemies. We also liked the idea of having three levels with clearly distinct environment and we started working towards that goal.
The Process
The initial progress was quite slow as we did not have a clear idea of what the main mechanics would look like. The feedback we received was very useful and helped us understand in which direction we wanted to move.
Once we had the complete set of spells for the main character, it became easier to develop the game further by calibrating the enemies and designing the levels.
The work was mostly done individually at home but we had a weekly meeting to gather ideas and opinions and to help each other. Both programmers and artists had some major individual areas to focus on but everyone helped here and there whenever needed.
Play the game here!
https://overlunch.itch.io/wizwood
Our Team
Programmers:
Esa-Pekka Palonen
Oskari Kuusisto
Artists:
Helmi Voutilainen
Leonardo Fedi
Riina Koivisto
