Wordsmith Blog

Apologies to my pre-orderers; I was hoping to have a version of Survival for you guys to play by now, but it’s taken longer than I expected to get it working.

Moreover, I’m away this weekend, and when I get back, I’ll be starting a new job at Slant Six Games. That doesn’t mean I’ll be unable to keep working on Wordsmith, just that it’s going to take longer than I had hoped.

Here’s what I’ve been working on today, anyway – the spoooooky graveyard. What objects would you make that can kill a ghost?

Keep the faith, folks.

I’m a little late posting this here… last week, zConnection posted an interview/preview of Wordsmith.

http://zcint.co.uk/article/indie-week-wordsmith

Sorry, I haven’t had time to package up a new version today – I’ve been busy with other stuff, like creating this blog, and making the map for the new mode, Survival:

No objects yet, but this landmass has about three times as much space as the demo map. For a sense of scale, look closely and you can just see “Wordsmith guy” in the middle there, next to the sun icon.

Oh, and I just got a day/night cycle going. (Bet you can’t guess what happens when you make a “sun”…)

Next up: scripted monster attacks after night falls! This thing is going to rock.

Cheersgames.com has existed for about three weeks now, but without a blog, it was pretty cold and lifeless. I bet most visitors don’t even understand why the site is called Cheers Games.

So… hi there! My name is Laurie Cheers. I’m running a one-man game studio that I call Cheers Games, and the first game I’m making here is Wordsmith.

I’ve been working on the Unity version of Wordsmith for about six weeks now. Here’s what I have on my “to do” list -

• Minor bug fixes – bridges and islands don’t position themselves over water correctly at the moment; letters can fall outside the available level area; when you kill the dragon, the game should end; you know, minor issues like that.
• More sound effects. For example, the “swoosh” sound works ok for the dart, but things like rifles, bombs and missiles are eerily silent at the moment.
• Better pixel alignment. Sprites are getting distorted because they’re not aligned to screen pixels correctly. Need to figure out how to fix that.
• Survival mode. The next step. So far, in the demo, combat has been fairly undemanding (with the obvious exception of the Dragon – who you can’t really defeat in combat at all). Survival mode will have a day-night cycle, in which you build up your resources in the daytime, and prepare for enemies to attack you at night. As long as you’re prepared, they won’t be too hard to kill… initially…
• And then Multiplayer? This is the long-term plan, only vaguely fleshed out. I feel like Wordsmith is crying out for some multiplayer options. Why does it have all those cosmetic items, if not to distinguish yourself from your friends and show them how creative you are?