Hi everyone TL/DR: After more than a year of hard work we present our new game Under a Spell. Follow this thread to find out more [post]3997815[/post] THE FULL STORY Subscribe to the TouchArcade YouTube channel The success of our past releases has given us what we always wanted – a possibility to work longer on several more serious projects with much more content than a small indie team could physically put into a game by working on it in for just a couple of months. After almost a year of a nearly radio silence since our last release we are ready to reveal some details. A few recent twits by our team members could give you some ideas. [thread]303646[/thread] However, we still need a bit more time to prepare the info about our other projects, so stay tuned for more news from our team in the coming weeks. Today we talk and answer questions about Under a Spell. For the last couple of years, Artificial Intelligence has been giving us great help with solving different tasks in our other projects. In our non-game projects A.I. mostly solves tasks that are beyond complex. Usually ones that in a normal way are impossible to be solved or done during a lifetime. Regardless if it’s a lifetime of a man or a star. Some tasks we use the A.I. for require billions of years of computation time on the fastest hardware now available, but the A.I. solves them in a much shorter time on much less powerful hardware. It was inevitable, that someday we start using A.I. in our games. We always wanted to make a new word puzzle game. However, to make it a very good enjoyable game, beyond our common touch of polish and attention to details, we would need a much deeper knowledge of each of the languages we would like our word game to support. That’s why we decided to use our experience with A.I. as a helping hand. We started with feeding our A.I. with as much texts as possible – books, encyclopedias, movie scripts, articles. A.I. has learned from terabytes of data and countless billions of words. After that our A.I. has become an expert in several major languages and become a great help to making our new game a better game. So, what exactly A.I. does in Under a Spell? It does primarily two things. First, it helps to pull right words over almost two thousand thoroughly tested handcrafted levels. Not just in English, but also in other languages. On launch, we start with support for English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Russian and Belarusian. Adding more languages later. Second, it helps to dynamically control the difficulty of levels. With this approach, beyond some new and currently unique gameplay elements that Under a Spell brings into the word game genre, each player is guaranteed to get a unique game experience that is crafted especially for him. Best of luck to you all in enjoying our new game Under a Spell Step into the word magic with fun educational brain teaser Under a Spell. Solve a vast range of unique and challenging handcrafted levels backed by the help of Artificial Intelligence that learned from zillions of words from books, movies, articles humanity ever created through all its history. FEATURES ● Find hidden words in a mixture of letters ● Improve your vocabulary and spelling skills ● 1800 levels × 8 languages ● The more languages you play, the higher score you get ● Unique daily puzzles with progressive rewards ● Get the highest score and conquer the leaderboard ● Connect to Facebook and compete with your friends
WOW! I love the artwork, what a gorgeous looking word game. I hate to be that guy, but I have to ask... 1. Will this be a premium or freemium released game? (please say premium...fingers crossed) 2. Will I be able to play offline without the need for any internet connection? Tomb of the Mask is my one of my top 5 favorite games, so I would love to give this game a try before it is released. I really wish you much success with this game, it looks great.
Thanks We plan it to be nearly the same model as Tomb of the Mask - free to download, optional IAP, optional ads wihtout unexpected popups. Additionally, it has no energy/lives system, so there is nothing in the game actually that limits your playtime - you can play as much as you want online or offline. Yet, as anything that requires you to think, this game consumes your brain's natural energy. When your brain consumes most of available carbohydrates it might be hard to guess even simplest words in simplest puzzles. Eventually, you get tired and limit yourself, going sleeping till the other day. For me, for example, it's easier to solve puzzles when my mind is fresh, and, althouth I usually play before sleep, it's easier in the morning. Sure. Connection is, of course, needed to sync the game progress to servers, posting scores and etc., but most of it can be done, when you go back online. If those things aren't critical for you, then you can skip online completely and enjoy it just for yourself. If you love Tomb of the Mask and if you care or the monetization, then Under a Spell should be even better, because, as I explained above, it 1) has no limits on energy/lives and 2) you can play it on your own pace, taking a move after move with as much delay as you want. P.S. If you want to start playing the game now, two days before it goes live on public, ask @DayDreamer1 for the download code
Question: I tried the daily puzzle and it forced me to make words that left two separate block islands and I was not able to collect the last word because of the gap. Are there multiple options, and you have to figure out the order yourself or is there just one particular order only? Edit: I think I see now. The game looks fantastic! This might sound crazy but that poker chip in the free spin is so good looking it makes me wish you'd make a poker game of some kind #
Yes, this is it. There are multiple ways to solve the puzzle, but not all paths lead to the complete solution, although two separate islands of letter do not always mean a failure. So, as we are trying to be as friendly as possible to our players, the game shouldn't leave a player to himeself in case of a puzzle solution failure. The game tries to detect if the level becomes unsolvable as soon as possible. It should pop a message about it suggesting to tap the "retry" button in such a case. The good point about it is - if a level becomes unsolvable then the replay is free. There are no lives/energy you need to spend to continue playing. Other than that I can say that we maintain a list of improvements that could be done to the game, and, as you know, we listen to people and fix things, so, any feedback helps us improve. Thank you, old friend! Warm words like that is the reason why we keep our games coming =) There was a poker we made in around 4 years ago. We even made a few forum posts here. But then, a close to real casino sphere game, it didn't give us a feeling we were doing a right thing, so, eventually, we had to stop our plans going into that direction and the IP was transferred. Although, the graphics you can still find in our photo album on FB is something nice to remember (scroll to the earliest photos), but a bit higher than Pilot's Path and the MacLife scan P.S. It a very late night here in EU. So, if @DayDreamer1 didn't send you a download code yet, then she will do it when she wakes up
I love word games. This looks really fun, I would love a promo code if you have anymore left. Thx in advance!
Looks like it has a lot of potential. Love my word games too, still play Word Jong every day which really ages me!
Thank you for the code! I just tried the game for a few minutes, but I can say that I'm very impressed! The graphics are very nice, the game feels very slick, and overall I'd say it is put together well and is quite fun! Kudos to you on such a quality title!
Our team put heart into this game, and our players' opinion is of great value for us! Thanks a lot for your support!
Looks great, ready give it a try when it comes out. Reminds me of a cross between Mahjong and Boggle, two of my favorite games.
You're right, these are great games, and among others Under a Spell was inspired by Mahjong as well! I've sent you a promo in case you decide to try it out before its release.
Thanks for the promo code -- it was unexpected! Only touched the surface of this so far, but I can see already that it's really nicely presented and should be fun.
