Genre: Adventure
Project started on: February 21, 2019
Project completed on: February 20, 2020
Approximate time spent on project: 180 hours
Casle Of Illvision is in parts my attempt at a text-parser adventure game, but again, with a twist. While you will be spending a fair time in text-parser mode, the game has actually four different gameplays and they all intertwine in the same maps and the same puzzles. Indeed, you will need to go through a roguelike, platformer and first person mode of the map as well in order to finish the game.
This means I had to split my time between four gameplay styles and didn’t extremely polish any of them. The platformer and fps come to mind as the least polished of them all while the roguelike and text parser are okay.
Writing a text parser means a lot of text to write, so it’s possible I haven’t covered all the possibilities people will try. I assume that at some point the players will notice the range of verbs they can use and stick to those. The roguelike mode is fine, but a bit too simple. I’ve added some puzzles here and there that can only be solved in this fashion - like the block pushing one - and I think the combat system works well. The platformer mode has some bad physics and the animations are laughable while the shooter mode is a bit too slow and combat oriented, and some objects might be impossible to go through.
These are all small flaws I recognize could be fixed with careful playtesting and iterating over the game, but that’s what I’m releasing and - bar terrible progress stopping bugs being found - that’s that for this project :D I’m happy to be done and I have to say that replaying it a few last times gave me some good feelings at certain points in the game - the first time you find a portal for instance - but it took me way too long to make and I have to find a way to do better for my next game.
Screenshots
About the game
50 enemies, split across 4 dimensions! Text your way around the word monsters, bump against roguelike adversaries, swing your weapon versus platformer foes and shoot at three dimensional opponents!
30 different items! Most of them will need to be used in the text parser mode at the right moment or the game becomes unwinnable! Some of them are weapons and armors that will help you in the other modes as well!
1234 lines of text. Read all about the rooms you are visiting, look at things, get inside an iron maiden and die, save at judicious moments or otherwise lose a ton of progress.
83 rooms to visit! From outside the castle to the first and second floor of the structure, doing a detour to the caves south of there to the four boss towers!
Collect up to 400 points and get the best title at the end!