This concludes the short series of articles about the Alpha release of Wizards’ Duel. For us this is a big milestone, it is something that we wanted to do earlier this year but, as is often the case, real life and our daily jobs had other plans. Even so this is just a 0.1 release, the game is taking shape and is playable enough, but we are a far cry from finishing the development and start with the polishing phase.
What is in
- Basic Gameplay. Of course this is the important thing: turn based tactical combat, field of view, a sample hazard (lava emitting gargoyles) and vicious enemies.
- Two Spirits. The spirit of Truce (Exekiel’s signature spirit) and the spirit of Ice (the distant Yuki-Onna). Not all the possible effect for them are implemented yet but you can use Truce to protect yourself or attack enemies and Ice to freeze them in place for several rounds.
- Enemies of the Fiery Pits. All the names in the current bestiary will appear in this alpha and they will have most of their signature traits (fireflies will fly over lava to reach you, the shaytan are slow but sturdy, the salamander is fast and can set you ablaze every other round).
- Procedural Level Generation. Using our custom block generation you will be faced with an endless cave. Some features are not ready yet, but nonetheless you can open the configuration files and play with them to see the range of possibilities of the engine.
- Bugs. We tried for this release to be as bug-free as possible but of course we expect that there will be some issues, if you find any and are in the mood please feel free to contact us about them!
Source as of 6th of Septemebr 2015
What is not, but will be
- Spell combos. You have two spirits for now but they cannot be combined to enhance their effect. At the end there will be 9 spirits.
- Bosses. Our intention is for each boss to be unique also from a gameplay standpoint, so for this demonstration these are outs.
- Multiple Areas and Area Selection. The alpha has only one area, a cavernous complex just above the Fiery Pits, home of the Efreet.
- Multiple Characters. You can play only as Exekiel for now (even though, if you are crafty enough, you may find a way around this…).
- Polish. It should come as no surprise, but there is still a lot of work to do, starting from the user interface.
Don’t miss me, we will enjoy plenty of time together
See you in a week with the alpha release!
Thanks for reading.
Luca Carbone - Wizards of Unica Game Dev
