Live the adventures of a wizard student with your spirit companion! Spend days learning whimsical spells, growing fantastical vegetables, brewing powerful potions and meeting other students while exploring the world outside the academy.
Cubenary is an indie studio with two experienced game developers who want to cheer up the world with wholesome games. While the year 2020 has brought many worldwide challenges, one positive is that it has allowed this talented team more time to dedicate to the Witchery Academy. Cubenary has long wanted to make a game with magical elements, adventures, and engaging game mechanics such as harvesting. They couldn't be happier with the positive feedback they've received on early pics and videos they've shared. To find out more and to support this project, please visit the Witchery Academy website.
Q: What is something that makes your game unique? The game is a wholesome game experience with vibrant and colourful 3D stylized graphics in a world where magic, school life, cats and engaging mechanics like the harvesting system are mixed together.
Q: How many times have you reworked the art of the game? After 7 months of work, we've reworked the art style 3 times, especially the characters. There is always something that can be improved! The same happens in code, I can’t remember the amount of times I’ve changed my systems!
Q: What advice would you share with other prospective indie developers looking to start their journey? Start with a small project, don't try to make anything unique, just take a simple game mechanic like a platformer and build from there. You can even take an example provided for Unity or Unreal, understand how everything works and try to add small elements. For example a pickup that makes you invincible or a classic coin to get as many points as you can. And any project you start, try complete it, for example if you do a platformer, when your main map and main mechanics are ready, add an initial title page, score page, restart functionality. Unity is more beginner friendly, there are lots of tutorials and assets you can use to start your journey.
Q: What do you do when run out of ideas or lose motivation? On those days, it’s best to take the rest of the day off, or a few days and do something different. Something that always helps me is to go for a walk while listening to a podcast or some music. I also take time to enjoy playing indie games, watch movies or my hobby, making amigurumis out of crochet. It’s similar when I face a bug or problem in my code, the best thing to do is take my mind off that for a bit and the solution presents itself without thinking about it.
Q: What is the best part about being indie? What is the worst? The best part of being an indie is to experience all the aspects of the game. As an indie developer in a team of 2, I have to wear many hats, my background is programmer, but I have to know a bit of art, design writing and the hardest part, marketing! This is what I love working as an indie developer, I can jump between roles, learn new things that you wouldn't normally do in a larger company. I feel very fortunate that I can make my own games and share my passion with lots of people.
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Wishlist IWOCon 2020 here.