Space Wizards

This was an independent project as well as my first publicly released game. It was released in the fall of 2005 as open source and was also featured in the IDevGames.com 2005 OMG Cup contest. It took a total of 8 months to produce.

When I began production I did not have a solid goal for what I wanted the game to be. Since this was my first large scale project I was more concerned about learning the technology needed to produce the game then the actual game itself. As my comprehension grew and the code produced desirable results I then began to fill in the gaps on what the game was actually about and how it would be played.

The game play and aesthetics of this game are a tribute to the 2D side scrolling shooter genre. Influences were found from specific games such as Mega Man, R-Type and Gradius. Like these titles the game sports a steep difficultly in which you must avoid an onslaught of incoming projectiles. The level format was also similar in that you fought progressively harder enemies and then ended with a sophisticated boss character. The game offers a unique control style for side scrolling games in which you must use the keyboard to move your character around and the mouse to aim. After producing the game I found that there had already been a select few games which also had this control style, most notably Abuse.

All content for the game was created by myself except for the songs and a few of the sound effects. The majority of the code was also self written, although several standard libraries were used. Full credits are given both in game as well as in a text file which is included with the download.

In early 2007 I produced the full design documents for a revision of the game, including storyline, game play, levels, enemies, artwork, ect. The revision is planned to be of much larger scale, although the style of game play aims to be the same. No plans for production have been made at this time.