James Nicholson

As my first design project at the Guildhall, Trials of the Archmage was fun to work on, but it offered its own set of challenges. We knew we wanted to make a magic-themed puzzle game from early on in development, and elemental magic was a natural choice for puzzle mechanics with clear functions that still make you feel powerful. We fiddled with four elements briefly, but we ultimately settled on the interplay between fire and ice, since we only had a team of four, with one programmer, one artist, and two level designers. Inspired by the early Harry Potter games, we wanted to create magic by drawing gestures on the tablet. This was initially tricky to execute on while still allowing the player to have control over the wizard character's movement, but by placing the movement controls in the bottom left and the jump button on the bottom right, this allowed the player to cast with their right hand whenever they didn't have to jump. That combined with a slow-mo effect while the spell was being cast allowed for smooth player movement and magic controls.

However, having only two elements to work with left us with a tricky interplay as designers. We had to think of logic puzzles that got progressively harder with only two powers aside from movement. As a result, we settled on fire as a destructive force that could kill enemies and burn obstacles while ice would create walkable surfaces out of water and enemies. They could also activate different kinds of moving platforms. On more advanced levels, players had to choose between destroying things in their way, but also depriving them of potential platforms to reach the end goal of the level. The player had to incorporate planning, timing, and positioning to get to the end of each level unscathed. And because we wanted to allow players to die or solve a puzzle incorrectly, we allowed for a near-instant restart whenever they wanted, keeping the punishment to a minimum.   ​