Pokémon has a collectible compendium of creatures. Spellirium has a collectible Dictionary of words. Every original Pokémon teevee show ended with the Pokémon Rap. And what’s better than the Pokémon Rap? Practically everything.
Robby “the Doogs” Duguay is responsible for the bang-on musical homage,...
Just to illustrate the diversity and divergent thinking of the puzzles in Spellirium, we prototyped a battle with a creature called a “flobbert”:
This challenge is interesting because it implores the player to not excel, by word game standards. By making longer, more difficult words, the player gets into...
When i say that Spellirium is a cross between Loom and Boggle, i ain’t just whistling Dixie. Brian Moriarty’s adventure game masterpiece, which was so classy with its use of a Tchaikovsky soundtrack, remains one of my favourite games of all time.
It turns out, as i reveal in the video, that i didn’t...
One of the biggest gameplay innovations in Spellirium is that beyond including a certain word puzzle mechanic, each challenge and battle is actually a unique and distinct puzzle-within-a-puzzle. By “reading” the player’s actions in the puzzle grid, we end up with a number of data points including word...
After players complained that the previous Spellirium prototype was too laborious when it came to building words, we reversed the click scheme for Prototype 2a. We knew, by this point, that we wanted the player to be able to rearrange the word grid in Spellirium, and we knew the player had to be able to build words, but how?...
You can get a lot of crazy, disparate and dizzying feedback from people when you playtest a game. i’ve come to understand that when one person gives you a suggestion, you should note it and give it some consideration. But when many players give you the same feedback, you gotta make that change.
Once piece of unanimous...
Barring our earlier Oculus Rift shenanigans, this is the first “official” Spellirium Minute video. This one takes us back – waaaaay back – to five years ago, when we were applying for funding to get this weird little game off the ground. We were reticent to just go ahead and start building the game,...
The first in our series of development vlogs (or “video blogs”, if you’re like me and are uncomfortable with “v” and “l” appearing in such unnaturally close proximity) is an exploration of the very, very two-dimensional Spellirium on the very, very three-dimensional Oculus Rift.
The...
The Spellirium Pre-Order campaign has been running for a week and a half now, so i thought it would be a good time to check in with stats and reportage.
Although we don’t have a fundraising target posted, a dream scenario would have us raising $50000, so that we can cover off voice-over comfortably (at ~$20k), and then...
The Powerups system in Spellirium is pretty cool, but it was hastily-built so you might not even know it’s there. Here’s how it works:
(click to read the fine print)
Powerups can add different types of letters to your grid (vowels, and high- and mid-scoring words), the can increase your energy, protect your...