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The Wizard: WizHarder now in Early Access!

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The time has come! The Wizard is finally live in Early Access! That took only 6 years! So let’s talk a bit about what that means, what we have done and what we plan to do:

State of Affairs

As you maybe saw in the Early Access notes, the game as it is right now is pretty much the original Wizard, with major visual upgrades, a remastered soundtrack, and a lot of small improvements that we’ll keep on rolling out continuously. That includes the beginning stages of a new leveling system (instead of collecting XP, spells will now upgrade with use) and, of course, the checkpoints so many of you have asked for – nay, demanded! – for years.

So the game is fully playable and we’ve tried our best to catch the most egregious bugs and mechanical inconveniences. But of course, the game is in active development, so things might not work as intended now and then. Such is the nature of the beast. But fear not! We tend to work quickly, so any bugs or requests you have should be swiftly taken care of.

If you want to report a bug, talk features, or just hang out and follow the development, the easiest way to that is our Discord server. You can join us here: https://discord.gg/qfyND9D

Upcoming Attractions

Aside from improving and expanding the base game, we of course have grand plans for the future!

Roguelike Mode

This one has been on Hackenstein’s bucket list from pretty much the first prototype. An endless Roguelike Mode, where you can wizard away to your heart’s content, and Daily Challenges to measure yourself against your classmates!

This will likely be the first major addition we’ll tackle, and as it grows, we might also incorporate the new features, spells, enemies and the like, into the main campaign as it fits. There are a lot of cool ideas floating around already, and we’d really love to get your input and feedback!

Level Editor

If you follow our weekly Hootouts, you’ve heard us go on about how level editors are often our favorite part of a game, so naturally we want to include one for The Wizard as well! We’re thinking of a Mario Maker-type approach, where you can build levels and have to be able to complete them yourself before submitting them to be played by others. Should be exciting to see what everyone will come up with!

Customization and Accessibility

Lastly, we really want to give players as much control over the game as reasonably possible. Especially when it comes to the Roguelike Mode, we know that everybody has a preferred way of playing, and we’d like to allow you to customize it just to your liking! Our goal is to expose a lot of settings, but offer setting templates, as not to overwhelm players who just want to get on with it. So instead of fixed difficulty modes, you’d have difficulty templates, and we’ll also let the community help us determine what those templates should be.

We’d also like to make the game as accessible as possible, so in addition to gameplay settings, we want to be sure to cover visual, control, and other settings that will help everyone have the best possible time with the game. Here, too, we’d really love to hear from you if there’s anything in particular you’d like to see in the game.

Timeline

We still have a bunch of things we want to add, tweak, and improve in the base game, and there’ll probably be more as more people play it. We also need to recover a bit from pre-release crunch and enjoy the holidays with the few loved ones we’re allowed to see.

So serious work on the big new features will likely begin January, and we would estimate that it might take us around 6 months to implement them. We also know that we’re consistently wrong in our overly-optimistic estimates, so it’ll probably be in development for a year or more. But as mentioned before, we always aim to not have Early Access mean a husk of game, but a fully enjoyable experience that we will continuously improve and update along the way.

We sure hope you enjoy it, and if you want to join our wholesome little community, here’s the link again: https://discord.gg/qfyND9D

Stay safe and Happy Wizarding everyone!

<3 Your Hypnotic Owl Team

Hypnotic Hootout Stream + Podcast

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After we had such a great time with our birthday stream, we decided to start a weekly hangout where we chat about life and stuff and maybe even play a game or two! Come join the Hypnotic Hootout, every Friday, 4pm CEST on twitch.tv!

And if you can’t make it, worry not! The Hootout will also be available on YouTube as well as a podcast! You can check out the first episode on these channels right now:

Games For Change 2018

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Last week, I once again found myself traveling across the pond, to visit the Games For Change festival in New York. It was a great couple of days, filled with interesting talks, fascinating games, meeting friends old and new, and in fully crabtacular manner, zero sight-seeing.

Still, here’s some sights I done saw:

Crabman out.

A MAZE. Berlin 2018

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We had a blast at A MAZE. Berlin. Here’s a couple of impressions from our time there.

The game shown in the end can be played over on itch.io. Have fun!

Crabman out.

Hypnotic Birthday 2018

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HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO US!!! Five years of Hypnotic Owl! How exciting!

And to celebrate our 5th birthday, we’re giving away 1 Hypnotic Hoodie, 3 shirts, and 5 mugs to our newsletter subscribers! Just subscribe before May 1st to enter!

Crabman out.

Train Jam / GDC 2018

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‘MURICA, FUCK YEAH!

So I got to go to Train Jam as well as GDC in San Francisco recently. Words still elude me in describing what an amazing experience it was, but suffice it to say, I had blast, hung out with a bunch of friends as well as making lots of new ones, seeing some awesome talks, and all in all just having an incredible time.

Here’s a couple of images from the scenery whizzing past on the train:

You can play my jam game Down By The River here. Have fun!

Crabman out.

Splash Jam ’17

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Guess where I was? That’s right, Norway! On a cruise ship! Livin’ it up! Crossing the arctic circle! And also jamming, I guess!

Check out this short video collage and be amazed, as I was, at the ridicously beautiful landscapes!

As always, the jam project isn’t quite ready to be released, as it needs a lot more content before it can work (or the question whether it does can be better answered), but if you’re curious, give our latest podcast episode a listen, where we discuss it in some detail.

Next up: South Africa! Who knew a struggling indie dev’s life could be so exciting!

Crabman out.