WICKED WIZARDS
- GAME TRAILER
- GAMEPLAY DEMO
Wicked Wizards is a cooperative multiplayer FPS set in a world that blends the aesthetics of heavy metal and high fantasy. Players assume the role of one of the three eponymous wicked wizards: the fire-wielding Pyromancer, the heavily-armored Abjurer, or the scheming Alchemist.
Together, you and your comrades of chaos will use your host of unique combat abilities to defeat hoards of unicorns, pixies, and other sickly sweet enemies. Defend the mystical orb from the forces of good and spread your corrupt influence across the lands.
Wicked Wizards was created in Unity by a team of 38 students over the course of one academic year as our senior game design capstone project.
I acted as the team's creative director, where I was responsible for facilitating conversation between disciplines and establishing and maintaining the game's core creative identity. I also assisted the character art team in designing, modeling, texturing, and implementing our three player classes.
CREATIVE DIRECTION
As Wicked Wizards' creative director, I was responsible for working with the game's leads to both establish the project's creative identity and ensure that the decisions we made over the course of development aligned with that identity.
At the start of the project, I worked with the design team to define our game's core pillars and target audience, which would inform the decisions the designers would make going forward. I also worked closely with the art team in establishing our game's art style and aesthetics, as the unique blend of metal and fantasy motifs was a defining aspect of our game.
Being creative director on this game was definitely not without its interesting challenges. Wicked Wizards went through major changes from initial concept to gold master. The game started as a FPS/tower defense hybrid, where each class also came with two unique towers that could be placed in the world. The intention was for these towers to accentuate each class's unique playstyle.
Over the course of development, the tower defense gameplay began to clash with the cooperative FPS gameplay. We found that playtesters either didn't utilize the towers, or they felt the tower gameplay was far less engaging than directly attacking the enemies. This proved to be a pretty fundamental issue with the game's core vision. So, we opted to largely cut towers from the game, revisiting our pillars and vision statement to reflect this change. This was a difficult decision, but ultimately resulted in a more focused and cohesive experience.
- CLICK TO ENLARGE
CHARACTER ART & UNITY INTEGRATION
As part of the Wicked Wizards character art team, I assisted in the creation of our three character classes: the Pyromancer, Alchemist, and Abjurer. I concepted and iterated on the characters' designs, modeled and textured each class, and finally implemented the characters and their animations in Unity.
I created each character's first- and third-person models in Blender, and then UV unwrapped the models in Maya, since our character animators would be working in that program. I then textured each model in Substance 3D Painter.
- UNITY BLENDER MAYA SUBSTANCE 3D PAINTER
