Spellbound: An RPG with the freedom to craft custom spells

WIP games, tools & toy projects
#1

Hi guys!

I was more active on this forum a few years ago under a different account, but unfortunately I lost access to my old one, so I had to create a new one for this post.

After a few months of development I finished a small demo for a game I’ve been working on called Spellbound. It’s an RPG with magic combat, dungeon crawling, and looting, but there’s a twist: there are no prefab spells.

All magic spells are made up of smaller components (“techniques”) that, when applied to the spell, change it’s behavior and appearance. You can find these techniques in spell tomes littered around the world, and use them to create any type of magic you want.

You can select specific triggers that invoke effects to be applied on selected traits. As an example, this can be used to make a healing spell; apply the effect of increasing the Health trait whenever the spell is cast (there are a handful of available triggers, cast being one of them).

You are only as strong as the spells you create.

Right now, there is just a simple story about finding a lost amulet for your friend, as well as a number of randomized dungeons to loot. But in the future this game will have a much larger story line with an actual questing component to it.

I posted the demo to itch.io here. I’m always looking for feedback, so if you’re interested, give it a try!

Demo Trailer

sVBJ2BoKeLU

Planned Features and Development Cycle

I have lots of ideas for this game. I want to flesh it out into a full RPG with questing and a detailed, immersive world. I also want to make the magic far more advanced and capable, since that is really the core mechanic of the game. Co-op multiplayer is also on the (far away) list of things that I want this game to have.

The demo itself won’t be updated (very often). It is at a point right now where I feel like it is sufficiently playable, if not rough around the edges. But I am taking notes and keeping track of all the feedback I get from people playing it. This way I can implement them as I start to flesh out the core features.

When the next stage of the game (alpha) is more ready, I’ll start posting updates here and on itch.

Thank you for taking the time to read this!

#2

I found it quite enjoyable, got me entertained for ~30 minutes and i will come back to it.

The “one mouse click = one attack” is annoying though, not because i don’t like to button mash, but pls don’t make me kill my left mouse button :smiley: I would really love to have the option (enabled by default) to just keep launching attacks when holding down the left mouse button, that would make the gameplay less annoying IMO.

#3

I’m glad you enjoyed it so far. Great tip about the mouse controls, I don’t know why I didn’t think of that. I’ll change that ASAP.

#4

I’ve pushed a new build, you should see the change if you redownload :slight_smile:

#5

Feels a lot more natural now :slight_smile:

I noticed some other rough spots:

  • Buying/selling stuff at that guy near the house is tedious, you have to re-enter the menu for every item you buy.
  • The spell creation is a bit to sparsely documented, it was 50% obvious and 50% what does he mean by that.

Otherwise idk, it needs more diverse enemies and content, i have encountered only 2 enemy types so far. I didn’t start the quest yet, just checked out the dungeons.

#6

Already killed some zombies and homeless wizard in severs :smiley: Not yet really tried spell moding, mb you should implement some tutorial on it, because it looks alittle confusing.
In general game is fun, wana try it again, and it was very cool to see how character rotating in editor, nicely done ;D

#7

Thanks! I’m glad you enjoyed. I’m going to be continually updating the game once I’m less busy, and I’ll be sure to post updates here as well as itch.

[quote]Feels a lot more natural now Smiley

I noticed some other rough spots:

Buying/selling stuff at that guy near the house is tedious, you have to re-enter the menu for every item you buy.
The spell creation is a bit to sparsely documented, it was 50% obvious and 50% what does he mean by that.

Otherwise idk, it needs more diverse enemies and content, i have encountered only 2 enemy types so far. I didn’t start the quest yet, just checked out the dungeons.
[/quote]
I agree, 100%. Adding in some non-humanoid enemies with unique attack styles is on my list. I also want to enhance the magic system, so that enemies have varied spells that get harder as you explore. Right now, they have a simple projectile spell.

As for spell creation, it’s hard to say whether the initial difficulty is due to a lack of tutorial, or if I need to abstract it a bit more so there are less steps to achieve the same effects.

For example, the spells are basically just two circles. You can make spells in a lot of different forms but ultimately they are all somewhat similar: circle, arc, cone, ring and aura (which is really still just a circle but less dense). So rather than adjusting every single property (radius, arc length, etc.), why not simply choose from the list of possible forms? I’m sure it would be much easier to learn. I will explore that idea.

#8

[quote]As for spell creation, it’s hard to say whether the initial difficulty is due to a lack of tutorial, or if I need to abstract it a bit more so there are less steps to achieve the same effects.
[/quote]
Nono, you need to give more in-depth information on the effects of all the options while browsing them.

It’s frustrating because there is no way a player who doesn’t know how everything works behind the scenes can judge the quantitative effects that some spell options have on the final result without trying them all. The player is unable to make informed decisions if you do not provide enough information on the individual spell options (a button hover pop-up would be the right place).