TGS has existed as an informal team since 2013, but in 2020 they took their work more seriously and started making their first commercial game called SpellTome, as part of the Nordeus booster program.
The team is gathered around Andria Milivojevic as a game designer and Aleksandar Pivin as a programmer. Besides them, TGS currently have Dragana as a 2D artist, Kristina in charge of sound, Luciana as an animator and Natasa as a social media manager. During the development of the game, the members of the team took turns in these positions several times, so that a total of about ten people participated in the development so far.
SpellTome is primarily a 2D narrative action adventure platformer for PC intended for people who would like a narrative game that is not too easy. The basic principle was to design a game around the mouse and keyboard as an input system, because the team believed that there were not that many such games compared to systems tailored for controllers – especially in this category.
The game was made in Unity, while all the assets – both in the form of art and animation – are hand made for SpellTome. According to Andria, it was important for them that every detail fit exactly into the overall vision of the game.
As for the mechanics, the system is somewhat reminiscent of twin stick shooters, where movement is defined by the keyboard and aiming by the mouse – actions that are performed simultaneously. From their experience so far, platformers are a bit slower in terms of action and depend a lot on direction button mashing, ie. to attack the enemy it is necessary to stand still or move evenly along one axis.
All the key frames around the movement of the enemy and the main character have been drawn by hand, and so far there are several hundred of them – a number that, the team is sure, will be even higher when the game is completely finished.
The game is available for wishlist on the Steam platform since the beginning of March. They hope to be fully released later this year or early next year.
In the end, we asked Andrija if they had encountered bigger obstacles while working on the game. “The main obstacles, apart from finding people who share similar values with us in terms of game design, were primarily in terms of fine-tuning controls which took us a couple of months. ”
For further testing of the system and the game itself, TGS will open a beta test branch via Steam, so those interested can apply.
We were also interested in what they think about the current state of gaming in our country. They say that the situation is improving from year to year, they themselves hope that in the next period we will be able to directly participate in creating opportunities for domestic enthusiasts to make their first games, especially for PC.