I have been working on this game together with a dear friend of mine for the past few months.
Both him and myself are seasoned artists in the game-industry, so we both have day-jobs to attend to; but we’re very excited on finishing this game none the less!
MageMaze is a puzzle adventure game targeted for the iPhone/iPod Touch mobile market where you play as Svenn the Svaliant, a svearsome warrior with a speach disorder who is on a noble quest to reclaim the gold stolen from the local svillagers by the sinister mage Yngvarr the Ynvoker.
And of course, it’s made using Unity (iPhone Basic and desktop).
This game is still a big work in progress, and many things are not final at all. But at least it’s somewhat playable, and as such showable.
We are planning introducing new weapons featuring longer durabilities, a much more forgiving and non-random difficulty curve, new monsters with unique abilities, varying backgrounds, new gameplay mechanics, etc… So still a lot of work to do!
We have put the game online on it’s very own place on the intarwebs at www.mage-maze.com where you can play one level until you get svlain.
Any type of feedback on the game is much appreciated!
And last but not least, some screenshots! click the image to play the game
That’s a cool reinvention of a certain board game with sweet visuals (by the way: is there any other way to get good graphics for my game besides kidnapping some artists? ;~). With more gameplay variety this is going to be awesome!
Btw: The hero looks like the swedish version of Duke Nukem :~)
Lovin it as I already stated on our forum over at theunityartist.com! Very addictive and I especially love the looks of the title. Now make me an iPad version!
Thomas: Patience, young padawan! And an iPad version will come your way.
newbrand: Kidnapping artists is a bad idea, we tend to get finicky and require high maintenance.
My best suggestion would be to get artists warm for your ideas/game if you can’t afford to pay one. Try to convince them it’s a good product that can offer artistic satisfaction. But cold hard cash is a better motivator for most I guess.
And thanks! Yes, Svenn does look a bit like Duke Nukem, albeit without the double barrel shotgun, strippers and awesome oneliners.
Twiik: Agreed. The controls are awful with a mouse. We are trying to make it more responsive and make it feel more natural. But it’s hard to simulate flicking behaviour with a device such as a mouse.
Either way, it’s on the to-do list!
gnoblin: Thanks. And the controls aren’t intuitive for a browser because it’s not meant to be one… We just put the browser version online because that way we can show it to much bigger crowd. We will however, refine the controls for the web builds.
Asvarduil: Thanks! Most of the art (including the characters) is done by Michael Dashow. I did all of the coding for this game.
If you don’t mind I would like to ask some questions regarding the use of Unity in a pure 2D workflow like yours.
What’s your impression of Unity’s ability to handle 2D graphics like this?
Is it easy to work with?
Do any of you have any experience with traditional 2D engines? If so what differences are there and were there any obstacles to overcome?
Are there any benefits from using Unity for a straight up 2D game like this?
Pixel perfection is important with 2d graphics and surely with your game. Is this easy to accomplish in Unity’s 3d worflow or is it a constant obstacle?
I’m asking you because although I’ve seen Unity being used in a few 2D games before none of them have been traditional looking games like yours.
How is the setup for your game at the moment? Do you have an orthographic camera looking at textured planes?
Sorry about all the questions, I’m just so curious.
2D work using out of the box tools from Unity, I wouldn’t attempt it if I was you. I’m not bashing on Unity here, on the contrary actually. It’s focus is still a 3D engine to my knowledge so I’m not surprised there’s a big lack of 2D support.
But two simple words and a number will make your traditional 2D work in Unity much, much, easier! Sprite Manager 2
MageMaze is almost exclusively built using Brady’s Sprite Manager 2 (http://www.anbsoft.com/middleware/sm2/) addon. There are only about 2 ‘handmade’ quads in the game, maybe 3.
We also use Sprite Manager for static elements (read: no pixel animations) because of it’s pixel perfect option. Having sprites render pixel perfect is only a matter of checking a box.
I have played with applications like RPG Maker and they have the advantage of simplicity. Because they don’t support the 3rd dimension. So you’re just dealing with 2D cartesian space in screen coords and don’t need to take in account the usual 3D stuff like transform matrices.
On the other hand, having a third dimension available in Unity is potentially much more interesting. Because you can mix 3D content with 2D sprites. A huge plus imho. It’s not what we need in MageMaze, but it’s nice to know that if we were ever to transgress from 2D to mixed, it shouldn’t be too hard at all.
And yes, everything is rendered using orthographic cameras.
We have updated the online demo with a new lives system. So now you have 3 chances to try to survive, or it’s game over. We will add a 1up item later on though.
Check out http://www.mage-maze.com to try it out!
Also some bugs were fixed, and some new ones were introduced.
And we also put a development blog online at http://blog.mage-maze.com
Nice game! I’d change the particles emitter of when they catch you though: it’s ugly as it is now.
OK now I managed to trap two minos in a side of the screen and the game transformed in “RUN ON THE GOLD” being soooo boring.
I consider it a glitch.
Suggestion: you may do that after 10 turns an enemy is trapped he will simply get so angry that will destroy a wall and come by anyway
Yip, we are adressing the enemy trapped issue right now actually. As it is a big gameplay killer. If all goes well it should be in the next update. But I’ll need to do some thorough testing on the matter.
The fighting cloud puff is also being reworked, the one you’re seeing is just a 5 minute stand-in graphic.
PS: there are no particles in the game, it’s all sprite goodieness.
When you lose your sword it sticks to the character while it fades as he walks around. It must either dissapear before you have the chance to move around or fall to the ground where you lose it.
Not much gameplay yet, but the graphics just kick so much ass.
Next update will contain smarter monster AI and hopefully level progression and traps. And with many other neat little features still on the to-do list.
The game did bug however right after Sven told me about the acid monsters dissolving weapons. After that I could not move and the player graphics had been offset from the actual players as all the monster were attacking me in the top right corner even though it looked like I was in the bottom left corner.
