Overview / Usage

The Handbook is an RPG, where you take control of a wizard and explore the mysterious world of The Handbook.

Protect an isolated town and its inhabitants from the dangers that suddenly are at its throat. Meet characters with their own stories, grievances and quests. When the landslide happened, an evil force awakened. Now the town is surrounded, cut out from the rest of the world. You must find the root of this if you want to have a chance of saving the people and continue your journey to find the owner of The Handbook.

You are playing as the wizard apprentice Tim. After only taking a peek at the handbook, it is up to you to learn all the spells you once had at your fingertips. Take hold of the 5 primal elements: water, vison, fire, ice and earth, each with 2 spells. You will aquire these spells as your power grows and your level advances. But your learning doesn't stop here. Tales tell of advanced versions of these spells, make your Healing Stones push enemies away from you or make your Water Tide spawn a helping ward. That is if you can find someone willing to teach you.

Slay hordes of wolves, duel with gangs of bandits, brawl with tribes of dwarves and infiltrate the lair of otherworldy creatures. Find the propagators of the evil in this world and put an end to it. Mobility and maneuver is key in handling multiple foes at once.

Visit, run and uncover every corner of the town and its surroundings. Find every hidden mistery, treasure and detail in a beautiful and immersive world.

Team Members:

Foca Bogdan (Programmer|Artist)

Anton Mihai Cosmin (Programmer|Designer)

Methodology / Approach

The project started at the 2021 Global Game Jam. Due to some misunderstandings, we found ourselves to be just 2 people in this team. We gave our souls and sweat in that event and made a much bigger game than we expected. We decided to continue the game after we received pozitive feedback and this is the result.

Managing our shortcomings

Neither of us is an artist or has any background in drawing. We had the idea to do cardboard cut-outs so we can use use simple assets and still maintain a quality product. This not only gave us an unique art-style, but made it possible for us to have visuals at all.

2D sprites but 3D world

Even if we use 2D objects, the project is still 3D and the camera has perspective. To assure everything is rendered properly we used a custom z-rendering axis and a lot of sorting layers. Also, the world is at a 90 degree angle so the y axis represents up even in 3D.

Technologies Used

Unity Engine

Visual Studio

Photoshop

Audacity

Other links

• Steam page