A 2D side-scrolling action-shooter. Venture into the Abyss, collect spell nodes, and combine or fuse them into unique, devastating spells.
A 2D side-scrolling action-shooter. Players step into the role of a mage venturing into the Abyss. Through exploration and combat, players collect and learn various spell nodes. By combining or fusing these nodes, you can construct unique, devastating spells to defeat the enemies lurking in the depths.
While playing Magic Craft, I was captivated by its highly flexible "spell programming" system. The ability to create unexpected chemical reactions through pure permutation and combination was incredibly thrilling. This directly sparked my drive to create: I wanted to build a game myself, bringing my wildest ideas for spell combinations to life through code.
Drew heavy inspiration from Noita and Magic Craft, specifically extracting their brilliant spell-crafting systems and satisfying character progression loops.
Referenced classic Metroidvania titles like Hollow Knight and Dead Cells to design the environment structure and enemy placement, emphasizing verticality and a deep sense of exploration.
Legend says the uncharted Abyss holds ancient "Spell Nodes"—and monsters mutated by wild magic. As a young truth-seeking mage, you venture into this forbidden zone alone. You must collect these fragments, "reprogram" them into weapons, and uncover the Abyss's deepest secrets.
Navigate swiftly through complex terrains and platforms.
Aim the wand with the cursor and left-click to cast your equipped spell.
Open the panel anytime to rearrange and tweak spells between fights.
Battle mutated monsters to secure resources and clear the path forward.
Delve deeper into the Abyss across multi-layered, interconnected terrain.
Gather spell nodes hidden in hard-to-reach areas and dead-ends.
Rearrange and fuse nodes to craft new spells, then loop back into combat.
The core "raw material." It's the carrier for all complex spells. Unlimited casts, but consumes Mana. Without modifiers, it's just a simple, straight-shooting magic projectile.
Default path. Fast, direct, and shoots exactly where you aim.
Ricochets off walls and floors. Allows for tricky angles and shooting around corners.
Passes through the first target, dealing high damage to all enemies in a line.
Stops in mid-air (or at cursor). Acts like a "mine," triggering when enemies approach.
Applies a burn effect for damage-over-time (DoT). Great against high-HP enemies.
Slows or freezes targets on hit. Controls enemy pacing to create safe attack windows.
Features "Chain Lightning." Bounces to nearby enemies upon impact. Perfect for clearing swarms.
Spell Editor Logic — Press Tab anytime to open the Spell Editor. Layout: Top is the Assembly Zone (active skills); bottom is the Inventory (collected spells). Craft & Cast: A Base Orb must be in the top zone to fire. Rearrange nodes freely to alter the spell's final form in real-time, just like coding.
Spell Crafting Rules — All crafting requires a Base Orb as the core. The game offers two distinct editing methods:
Place Modifiers (elements/trajectories) before the Base Orb. The system reads left-to-right to apply traits. Swap nodes anytime for quick combat adaptations.
Ex: [Fire] + [Base Orb] = Fireball; [Bounce] + [Base Orb] = Bouncing Orb.
Drag and hover an Element over a Base Orb to permanently fuse them into a powerful, high-tier spell. Consumes nodes, but yields massive combat advantages.
Ex: Fusing [Fire] into a [Base Orb] creates an AoE [Explosion Orb].
Instead of a monotonous linear path, the level features a multi-layered, interconnected structure.
I hid key chests (containing rare spell nodes) in vertical hard-to-reach areas or dead-ends off the main path. This utilizes the terrain to naturally guide player curiosity, rewarding exploration with crucial progression resources.
Starting from the safe zone on the left, as players delve deeper into the Abyss, the terrain becomes increasingly rugged. Meanwhile, complex combat encounters mixing ground and aerial enemies steadily ramp up the challenge.
I led the underlying code architecture and utilized an AI assistant to help tackle the heavy lifting of programming. Through this process, I successfully built the core Spell Editor and Spell Library, implemented a fluid character controller, designed two distinct enemy AIs, and developed a level save system—bringing my initial design blueprint to life as a fully playable prototype.
Spellweaver started from a feeling I got while playing Magic Craft: the thrill of typing a few nodes together and watching an unexpected spell come out. I wanted to build that feeling myself. The core of the project became the Spell Editor — a system where the player assembles spells the way a programmer assembles a program.
What the editor taught me: chain sequencing and deep fusion are not just two crafting options. Chain sequencing is reversible, read left-to-right, like a line of code you can reorder at any time. Deep fusion consumes nodes and permanently changes the spell, like a compile step you cannot undo. Designing those two modes side by side forced me to think about the spell system as a language: what the grammar is, what can be composed, and what must be irreversible for the choice to have weight.
What working with an AI assistant changed: I led the architecture and used Kiro for the heavy lifting. That did not remove the design work — it moved it. I spent less time typing boilerplate and more time deciding what the Spell Editor should allow, what it should forbid, and how the level should reward players who experiment. The tool made the code faster; the thinking about the system stayed mine.
The part I keep coming back to is that a spell system is a small programming language. The player is not just pressing buttons — they are composing, testing, and revising. Building that made me understand programming differently: it is not only something you do in an editor, it is something you can design into a game for someone else to do.