Welcome to the first ever development blog for our upcoming game "Spell Thief"from here we will be releasing weekly updates on the development and progression of Spell Thief. Expect posts showing off our art and cool features as we implement them.
The Team and Roles
It wouldn't feel like you were getting an insight into the development of the game if you have no idea who we are who who does what, so we will introduce to you our team and their roles within it. Ben Guest: Team Lead,Lead Programmer, ProducerAce Fortunato: Lead Artist, AnimatorJames Carroll: Lead Designer, Level Designer, Mechanics DesignerAlexi Goncharuk: Programmer, Version ControlAshwin Libera: ArtistPaul Carter: Artist, Social Media Management, MarketingYomal Kumarasiri: UI Designer
Current Development Overview
Now that you have an idea of who we are and what we do, its time to give an overview of our current progress so far. Spell Thief has been under development for 6 months, The team formed in February 2018 and began prototyping game ideas and researching potential markets as part of the final year of our uni course. Over the first few months we had many different ideas as to what we wanted to develop as a team, our original concept was labelled "Golden Shot"; a top down military shooter that used limited ammo and ricocheting bullets shield much like a live action game of pong. Development on "Golden Shot" went for a few weeks but as we tested it we came to the conclusion that this wasn't the right sort of game for us to make, the concept was cool but we just were not having much success executing it. Soon after dropping the project, we came up with a design for a more action orientated top down shooter. With inspiration from James Bond and films such as Captain America and John Wick we started the prototype for what would soon turn into Spell Thief. You would play as an agent (Or similar character) who would have little to no ammo and must grab enemies to take their guns and use them as hostages as you fight through the game. The team however decided that, although the concept was cool, the top down shooter market was saturated with military and sci-fi games. So we came up with the idea of instead of stealing guns, you would steal spells. This is when we first game to the idea of Spell Thief. a fantasy game with a unique spin using melee combat as a focus.
PAX
We presented Spell Thief at AIE's PAX booth this year and had several dozen people turn up to check it out, after 6 months of development we are glad to see such a positive result.
