1st Anniversary Retrospective

One year ago today (yesterday) I published my first game spellcaster after having worked on it over the summer. I decided in honor of its first anniversary I would write a little retrospective on the creation and result of the game.

Pre-game: Aka the manual

Before I play and examine the games mechanics, I want to talk about the game’s manual a little text document I had made to make the game feel a little more retro. Upon opening the document, I was met with a spelling error in the summary of the game, “… you can summon minions to fight for” YOU it’s supposed to say YOU at the end but just abruptly ends. I knew I was going to find so many flaws with the spelling in the game and manual, but this was quick. Other than that the manual is nothing special it has a list of controls, an extended description of the game, a “Development record” that just says how it was a summer project, and info about the tools that made the game.

The Main Menu

When you open Spellcaster in your browser or as an executable you are met with the games name in large blue letters and the games horrid custom font.

Fun fact: The games font is just a tile sheet in Godot and all text is on a grid

The game has three options presented to you Begin Game, Controls, and last but not least Quit Game. I had an update planned to add an options menu and fix some bugs but it was going to include music too, but I never got around to doing that. The controls menu tells you how to play a little but that’s it for the main menu.

The Game

After playing a couple rounds here are my opinions. The first few rounds of combat are you slowly moving your minions towards each other or moving towards your opponent to get in range to shoot them. The game lacks too much strategical depth but can still be a fun half an hour or like ten minutes.

The Graphics

The game graphicly and in concept takes “Inspiration” from a game called chaos for the zx-spectrum. Spellcaster uses the zx-spectrums color pallet and has simple 1-bit sprites in different colors. It’s not the best but for beginner pixel art I’m kind of proud of it.

The Sound Effects

The sound effects are mostly default beeps and boops from audacity, The exception to this pattern I think is the attack sound effect which is me throwing noise makers in my backyard.

In conclusion

The game was a fun first project and for that it will always hold a special place in my heart.