Team up with a friend and wield magic to fight monsters and solve puzzles! Play our free demo on PC!
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Update Coming This Week! (January)
about 4 years ago
– Sun, Jan 09, 2022 at 09:47:15 AM
Hello everyone! Happy New Year!
Just wanted to provide a quick heads up about the next update to those of you waiting for more information for this month. I'm working on an extensive post to release this week that will cover all of the progress made on Spell Blaster since the last update. Thank you for your patience! :)
See you then,
-Sudo (Developer)
Status Update & Open Hiring (Artist Needed!)
over 4 years ago
– Fri, Nov 12, 2021 at 07:04:22 PM
Hello everyone! I hope you're having a great month so far.
I wanted to give a quick update on the current status of the game.
I'm still hard at work preparing a playable slice of the game with some updated features/content which I hope will be ready for testing by you guys very soon.
Some new features:
-New Magic Arrow Spell
-New Bomb Spell
-Enemies spawning
-Pickup/throw certain objects
-Climbing
-Implemented depth system for multiple elevations
I'm also working on situations where the stage music will dynamically change to a Battle tune. Here's a preview of what that will end up being like:
Karl did a great job in composing this tune. It'll add a more cinematic flavor to the gameplay if you can imagine walking into an area and a bunch of enemies spawn in and the combat music kicks in!
Lastly, an important update!
Our beloved and talented artist Diego is going to be taking a temporary leave. He just welcomed his first child into his family so he's got much more important responsibilities at hand! I'm wishing him the best and looking forward to his return once things get settled on his end.
In the mean time, I'd like to bring on a new artist to help out in Diego's absence.
Extra notes: The most important factor is someone that is comfortable with creating sprites/animations to match the artstyle of the game and to meet the level of quality that currently exists. Please shoot me a message if you're interested or can refer someone you think would be up for the task!
That's all for this update. Take care!
Reaching for New Heights!
over 4 years ago
– Sat, Oct 09, 2021 at 01:13:28 PM
Hello everyone! Hope you had a great week! Today's update is something I'm really excited to share.
Lately I've been rethinking the level design of the game and the overall structure of the stages. Originally, it was a conscious decision to keep the stages flat as I figured it would allow me to create levels fast and the limitation would inspire creativity.
an example of the early level design style
A couple of weeks ago I decided the gameplay could become more interesting if there was another dimension added, a z-axis, so that we could implement varying levels of height! Thus, after over a week of struggle, loss of sleep, and a brief descent into madness... I finally managed to add that extra perspective to the game, and put together a rough draft of a scene to demonstrate to you:
As you can see from the video, the player is able to both walk under the bridge and then go up the cliff ramp to reach a higher elevation in order to walk over the bridge. It sounds simple enough, but took quite a bit of effort for me to get figured out. (Thankfully I had some help for some of the questions I had! GameMaker devs are amazing)
This system is fully integrated into the gameplay. That means that if you're at a higher level than an enemy (you're on a cliff, and they're on the ground), and you fire a spell, it would go right over the enemy's head. Collisions are also respected in this way, meaning you can walk under the bridge when you're on the ground level, but if you were standing on the bridge, an invisible collision wall would prevent you from going over the edge, whereas you'd normally be able to walk through that invisible wall if you were on the ground. Make sense?
So what does this mean for Spell Blaster going forward?
It means you can expect larger stages, secrets to discover, better designed levels, and more interesting gameplay overall. Imagine this: you have to bounce up on a spring to get to the top of a cliff where you then have to shoot a switch. If you were on the ground you wouldn't have been able to hit that switch, but at the higher elevation we have new options! Oops, you also caught the attention of some enemies on the cliff who didn't see you when you were at the lower level, now it's time to fight!
This is just the first step of a grand plan I have recently completed to retool and polish up the gameplay experience. I'm looking forward to showing off more of what is in the works over the coming weeks. Please let me know what you think!
End of Month Update (September 2021)
over 4 years ago
– Thu, Sep 30, 2021 at 08:53:13 PM
Hi everyone, I hope you had a great September! Tomorrow is the start of a new month and I'm super excited to continue on with the development on Spell Blaster. So I'll recap some of what was done in September.
Most of this month I was busy preparing for Game Developers of Color Expo which happened last week. It was a wonderful conference that brought a lot of new attention to Spell Blaster. In fact we managed to get over 2000 wishlists for the game on Steam. Which by the way, please wishlist the game on Steam if you haven't yet. It helps boost the game's visibility :)
In the last update I showed off some new key art for the game:
This is just a small sample of what the final cover art for the game will look like.
You can expect to see more character art in this style in the future!
The Hover Dash is a new spell being worked on in the game. It's still work-in-progress. There's more to its functionality I'm still designing and programming, and there's more animations to add as well. This spell will be useful for traversing stages, flying over pits, and attacking enemies. Here's another look at the landing impact animation that will deal damage to foes:
New Music Preview:
It has been a while since I got to show you guys a new tune, and there's plenty of it that has been done, but here's one I really absolutely love that Karl composed for the Desert stages:
That's it for today. I have a goal to finish up a sandbox stage for you guys to test out some of the new features I'm implementing soon. Hopefully I can get that done and in your hands in October.
Thanks for your support as always!
Zone Voting Results & GDoC Expo Announcement!
over 4 years ago
– Thu, Sep 23, 2021 at 02:19:42 PM
Hey all! I had planned on updating on the results from the last update post's poll to decide the next Zones sooner, but I've been so busy lately. So without further delay, the winners of the poll are:
Spooky Graveyard Zone and Sunken Temple Zone!
Thank you to everyone that participated in the voting. I think these Zones will turn out to be fantastic additions to the game. Please look forward to it!
Game Devs of Color Expo
Spell Blaster is a featured game at this years Game Devs of Color Expo! Be sure to check out the website and all the other awesome games from super talented developers around the world.
That's it for today. I'll have one more post for the End of The Month update next week. This next one will have some new information related to gameplay and I'll even show you guys a new spell.
