Dev Blog - Wizard in the Wild
Originally posted 3/30/24 on my game dev website
This week at Futuregames I presented Wizard in the Wild, a fantasy adventure game project created by me, Malin Scheibe, and Renjing Yang for our four week visual scripting course in Unreal Engine. It was our first time using UE5, and I'm thrilled with what we created. Our assignment was to create a simple game with a win/lose condition, 3 challenges, a game statistic, and several interactions.
I finally got to write for and create a dialogue system, and it was so much fun to see it brought to life with Malin’s animations and cinematics and Renjing's level design.
In addition to the dialogue and writing, I also worked on the UI, player health and mana systems, and all the audio.
An interesting challenge we had was how to prevent the player from spellcasting at the start of the game, so I suggested limiting the mana and restoring it to full upon pickup of the final quest item — the wizard’s staff. It solved our problem and fit into the narrative, so it was a win-win!
I learned a lot about blueprints and UE5 during our project, and also how adaptable a game writer needs to be to ensure the dialogue always supports the gameplay. One of our assignment requirements, for example, was to include interactions in the game. After I wrote the initial dialogue, our level designer hid the second quest item, the wizard’s spellbook, in a box with a key. It was a fun challenge to figure out how to explain this to the player, as the NPC has told them that animals stole their belongings. Pigs aren’t known for their finger dexterity, but I was able to work in an explanation that involved the other wizards who dumped the player in the forest.
Overall it was a fun challenge, and I look forward to learning more about UE5. You can watch a video of the gameplay here: