Wizard Cottage (LoFi Games & Chill)

Inspiration: What inspired you to create this world? What other worlds or media influenced your creative direction? I was reverse-inspired by all the expansive, combat-focused worlds that I tend to build, meaning that I strove to make a world that felt cozy and pro-social. Per the focus on mobile, I wanted a gentler, less twitchy vibe, which works better on that platform. I was also inspired by the new size-changing mechanics, and how they completely shift a player's perspective of the same space. A chill, friendly cottage at normal scale becomes a parkour course at tiny scale. Making a world that was, at the same time, gentle and kind but also fun and exciting was a challenge that I found exhilarating.

How we built it: What were the key tools and processes you used to create the world? If this is a team world, who contributed and how did they contribute? The CMI asset library and AI generative tools were extremely helpful in making (arguably) the best looking world I've ever built. Importing textures also allowed me to create a flipbook animation that I find absolutely adorable (when the bottle lands on the cartoon wizard). The ability to import music also allowed me to play an album of professionally made FB-licensed music (and play it on an AI-generated record player!). All these tools were instrumental in crafting the look, mechanics, and overall vibe of the world.

Challenges: What were the biggest difficulties you encountered, and how did you overcome or work around them? Overcoming my lack of typescript knowledge was challenging, but I was able (with some effort) to create a basic bridge script to perform the scale changing operation in typescript, and send events to it via codeblock script. This technique allowed for utilizing advanced mechanics without having to learn all of typescript.

Accomplishments: Which parts of your world, or your building process, are you most proud of? I'm really proud of how delightful and smooth the scale change feels. It's already a fun mechanic, but it didn't really click as magical until I made it a gradual process, and incorporated some well-timed sounds and vfx. It's one of those interactive experiences that just feels fun to do over and over again.

Next steps: How are you going to keep improving the world? What would you like to add if you have more time? I would add some wearables and other goodies, which players can buy with the coins they collect or HW credits. I would also expand the music options for player who just want to sit and chill.