About Us
Asgard Studios is a father and son team based in Atlanta, GA. I am the team's programmer and business manager. Also, I have a full-time day job, so game development is a nights and weekends activity for me. Raymond is the game designer and 3D artist. I have 30 years of software development experience, and my son Raymond has 7 years of digital art experience.
How Did We Get Started?
When I was a teenager, I was interested in art, writing, and history. My working class parents did not have a very high opinion of these interests, and they warned me that I could not make a good living from pursuing such dreams. They pushed me to a healthcare major in college. During my studies I found a new outlet for my creativity: programming. Based on my newfound interest, I pursued a second degree in Computer Science.
I became interested in computer games in college while playing Colossal Cave Adventure on a mainframe computer. In the early 80s, a co-worker and I started a venture to make text-based computer games in BASIC for the new market in home computers. But my partner drifted away and life interrupted my dreams of creating computer games.
Fast forward about 20 years and my teenage son expressed an interest in digital art and computer game design.
Was it nature or nurture? Good question. My wife was also interested in art when she was young, though her parents discouraged her as well. We had not actively guided my son in this direction. Of course, he had a keyboard in his hand from age two and we took him to art museums. He and I played video games together. So maybe it was nature and nurture that led him to his interests in art and games.
Now seven years later he and I are working together to make games on nights and weekends. He is doing the 3D art and game design and I am doing the programming.
Building Wizard's Castle HD
About three years ago, we discovered Unity 3D and realized that it would allow us to fulfill our dreams of creating computer games. We purchased the indie license and began learning how to use it. Around the same time, Raymond began 3D modeling first in Carrara then in Modo and Zbrush.
So finally a year ago, we decided we had learned enough to start building a game. Wizard's Castle HD is a ten level match and remove game. It was created in Unity 3 using C# scripts. Raymond designed all of the gameplay and the levels. I did all of the programming. Jeff Bucchino, a local cartoonist, did the 2D art work. We worked on the game part-time on nights and weekends. I also used several vacation days during the final crunch. In all, it took us almost one year to the day from the time we began work on the project until the day we submitted the game to the App Store. In addition to Unity, we made use of several Unity plugins including EZ GUI, Message Manager, iTween and Prime 31's Game Center Plugin.
The Game
In Wizard's Castle HD, the player enters a castle to find that its friendly Wizard has cast a spell and colored, magic balls are raining down from the ceiling. The goal of the game is to prevent the room from filling up with balls during each three minute round. Players match and remove balls by touching groups of two or more balls of the same color. While manageable at the lowest levels, the game quickly presents a difficult challenge to both hand-eye coordination and finding a winning strategy. Completing one level unlocks the next, and Wizard's Castle HD features 10 levels of play as well as Game Center leaderboards and achievements. Wizard's Castle for iPhone 4 has similar gameplay but only has 8 levels.
In addition to locating groups of still and moving balls of the same color and preventing the room from becoming completely filled, in some levels magic gems also drop from the ceiling. These gems have special properties; for example, the flame gem explodes to destroy nearby balls, and the gem with the infinity symbol slows down time.
Wizard's Castle HD is highly re-playable because the colored magic balls always fall differently. Players may earn up to three stars for each level depending on their score, and may replay any level to reach the maximum rating. Current Score, High Score, Level, and Time Remaining are continuously displayed at the top of the screen.
