Magic and Muzzle

Inspiration

The inspiration for the game came from other turn-based games like Pokémon and Inscription

What it does

Magic and Muzzle bases its combat system off of 3 different element types that the player can use as spells against enemies off of the same three elements (Water, Fire, and Grass). The player must strategize their selection of spells based on certain buffs and scenarios. The game mechanic allows the player to choose 2 spells, one basic and one special, from one of the 3 types. If the player chooses for both spells to be the same type, both spells get a small buff with the risk of having one less element type to be at their disposal. The effects of the spells and elements follow similar rules to rock, paper, scissors where fire does extra damage to grass, grass does extra damage to water, and water does extra damage to fire. Additionally, fire spells do less damage to water, water does less damage to grass, and grass does less damage to fire. Spells of the same type to the enemy have no buff/de-buff effect. The player must manage their mana during battle as they are only granted a limited amount per encounter. A low damage, no mana cost attack called ‘Punch’ is available to be used if the player runs out of mana or strategizes a series of attacks to include the ‘Punch’ attack to save on mana. Players have access to mana and health potions that they can use once per tern to regain some of those points in battle. As the player levels up and progresses, their mana bar and health will increase. Both player health and mana regenerate to full after each encounter. Before each encounter, the player may choose to swap their spells out with other ones. The player must traverse three levels fighting to reach the tower where they will face off against the witch as a boss battle to get their dog back.

How we built it

We built the game using the pygame library with help from OpenAI's ChatGPT. Most of the work done by the AI model was busy work and ended up being set backs on developing the logic functions.

Challenges we ran into

The first challenge we ran into was figuring out which programming language to build our game on. Additionally, our originally idea of the game implemented speech recognition and the webcam to analyze hand signs to cast spells in game. After some consideration and professional advise, we decided to postpone the webcam and speech recognition mechanic due to time constraints. Miscommunication and timing on certain portions of the project was the biggest challenge we faced. Many of the game features required all the sprites and button png which were drawn by hand by Helen Ly. These challenges all build upon themselves that delayed the time we could really start on the final idea.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Overall we were proud of the creative implementation we wanted for the game. The sprite animation done for the characters is a great proof of concept for later development.

What we learned

This was all our first hackathon and game development so we all learned the design process game development and use of AI in helping vibe code.

What's next for Interactive Sorcery

Our next step for our game is to finish the turn base logic for the game. So far we only have animation and UI working since we did not have enough time to resolve errors with the turn base mechanic. We also had ideas of implementing a multiplayer mechanic in future iterations of the game.