I’ve wanted to create games since I was a kid.

In elementary school, I discovered the Warcraft III World Editor. I created famous hit maps like…

• CUBE WARS.w3x
• happybeach.w3x
• Bearmee Wailliway.w3x
• TEHDICE-LOLOLOLOLOL.w3x
• THe CHicken.w3x
• TOP SECRET ()()()()()6%%%%87 7&&& 6 5 $ 3 3.w3x

Kudos to the Warcraft III devs for supporting map file names that resemble a fork bomb.

Despite being like eight years old, I desperately wanted to make stories. Occasionally, I would just use the editor to play out my own Civilization style gameplay all in my head. Making buildings, units, moving them between tiles, and acting out grand scale narratives. With time (and age), I actually got decent at it. I built my own RPG campaign that used custom models, modified resources, triggers, and more.

I eventually built my own ES: Oblivion mods with full story arcs and Half-Life 2 maps.

I remember deciding around 6th grade that I wanted to finally build a game of my own. So I followed a tutorial by Valve to fork the Half-Life 2 Source engine and set off to the races. I recall vividly sitting in front of walls and walls of C++ on my family’s desktop after barely figuring out how to download and open Visual Studio, in sheer shock and awe.

And that day I swore that I would one day understand Source engine C++ and build my own game.

Well, at least I’ll be able to accomplish one of those things.

If half-finished prototypes count as games, I’ve certainly achieved that goal many times by now.

I’ve built arcade game clones, a druid-platformer, a sock-matching mobile game, a crazy-experimental vector RTS game, a stardew valley clone, a merchant/vendor game. I’d start them, make huge headway, and lose steam before all core mechanics were implemented. Hobby gamedev is hard.

So I decided that I needed to pick a single game project with a doable scope and just finish the damn thing.

Skymagi

I love mages, castles, and tactics games. Let’s build one of those and commit to finishing.

I started with a concept in photoshop:

You have a flying castle and mages in your cabal. The castle has a set of magical sigils that empowers the spells mages can cast. I started with the idea that you could have a sigil per school of magic (Conjuration, Evocation, Abjuration, etc.) but narrowed the list down to a key set and added other magical tools:

• Evocation Sigil. Offensive spells against other castles.
• Abjuration Sigil. Protection spells from offensive spells.
• Floatery / Mana Font / Levitation Sigil. Keeps the castle floating.
• Teleportation Sigil. Provides Mass Teleportation of the whole castle and allows local teleportation onto other castles.
• Alchemy. Potions are important for any cabal.
• Scrying Orb. Otherwise you won’t know what you should hit.

Sigils should require an innate source of mana that flows through the leylines of the castle, which allows mages to channel powerful spells. Mages should have their own spellbook (and levels?) and cast without a sigil, but only weaker spells.

I also brainstormed some more advanced sigils/tools that could be used as unlockables/additions during a run:

• Conjuration/Summoning Sigil. Summon elementals or raise undead with necromancy.
• Graveyard. Store corpses from other castles that can supply your necromancer army.
• Roost. Find Dragons or Gryphons on your adventures and add them to your crew to fly around and harm enemy castles.
• Illusion Sigil. Cast spells like invisibility, create fake spell effects or units.
• Enchantment Sigil. Enchantment spells, like improving weapons/armor, or enchanting windows/doors, or maybe even charming spells.

Still many unanswered questions…

• Tile-based system or more traditional RTS navmesh?
• Multiplayer support?
• Should mages be more expendable or carry heavy weight?
• What kind of mages should there be?
• What’s the overarching narrative? (I like the idea of apocalypse/armageddon because… covid).

But it’s a start.

And there’s nowhere to go but up.