Current project · In progressUpdated September 30, 2026

Path of Wizard

A 2D pixel-art platformer about an apprentice who becomes a wizard by understanding magic, not by accumulating it.

Built solo in Unreal Engine 5 with C++, Paper2D and my own FAB plugins. This page is the project's public logbook: what the game is, what is already built, and what comes next.

Erzen on the Belvedere at night, a lantern beside him, with the Library castle in the trees under the moon
Key visual of the opening level, the Belvedere. Native 640 × 360, shown at 2×.
Engine
Unreal Engine 5.7 · Paper2D · C++
Started
September 2026
Levels built
3 of 20
Current act
Act I of V
Native resolution
640 × 360, pixel-perfect
Stage
Vertical slice done, Act I levels in production
The game

Determination over talent

Erzen, 17, dreams of becoming a wizard but is turned away by the Academy, which only values innate talent. He finds an older road: the Path, built by the First Wizard to test whether an apprentice can become a wizard through perseverance, knowledge, courage and mastery.

Every major spell has a traversal use, a puzzle use and a combat use. Each area teaches one ability, then asks you to combine it with what came before. Combat stays secondary to exploration and puzzles.

Design pillars

  1. Exploration

    Hidden rooms, secret passages, lore, spell scrolls and shortcuts to discover constantly.

  2. Magic-driven gameplay

    Spells exist to open paths and solve puzzles first, and to fight second.

  3. Progressive mastery

    Learn a spell, use it on a simple object, solve a puzzle with it, then combine it with another one.

  4. Readable platforming

    Run, jump, one-way platforms and ladders stay responsive, and the walkable edge is always the brightest line on screen.

Five acts, an opening level and 20 levels

  1. The Apprentice's Beginning

    In production
    • Entrance
    • The Forgotten Library
    • Trial of Light
    • The Broken Bridge
    • Whispering Forest
    • Guardian's Riddle

  2. The Arcane Highlands

    Planned
    • Frozen Cavern
    • Wind Altar
    • Echoing Caves
    • Trial of Duality
    • The Vanishing Path

  3. The Forbidden Ruins

    Planned
    • Temporal Rift
    • The Phantom Gate
    • Shadow's Reflection
    • The Elemental Guardians
    • The Lost Scrolls

  4. The Final Trials

    Planned
    • Lunar Eclipse Tower
    • Maze of Illusions
    • Trial of Wisdom
    • The Corrupted Sorcerer

  5. The Path's End

    Planned
    • The Spirit of the First Wizard
Art direction

Ink and Lantern

Pixel art at constant density: one sprite pixel is one world pixel on a 640 × 360 base. The atmosphere comes from composition, values, light and depth, not from the amount of detail. The ambition is Ori, Hollow Knight and Unbound, reached the way Blasphemous, Owlboy and Dead Cells do it.

The forecourt of the Library: two stone Guardians holding cyan lanterns flank the gate while Erzen arrives from the right
Second key visual, the Guardians' forecourt: cold stone ramp, cyan arcane accents, warm windows.

  1. Ink

    Foregrounds and chasms are black silhouettes. The hero keeps a hard dark outline. Anything near is darker than anything far.

  2. Lantern

    One to three warm light sources per screen. They are rare, so they guide the eye to the path, the interactive object or the secret.

  3. Depth

    Seven planes from ink black to pale haze, tinted fog between the far planes, slow particles in front, and a parallax that reads in motion.

  4. Scale

    Erzen is 48 px tall. Arches, pillars, bookcases and statues are four to ten times his size.

  5. Readability first

    The walkable terrain is the only surface with a continuous bright edge, and Erzen's red exists nowhere else on screen.

Master palette · 45 colours in 9 ramps

Each ramp is the vocabulary of one material, from shadow to light. Only the three brightest values of Lantern, Violet and Cyan are allowed to bloom.

  • IInk
  • SCold stone
  • WWarm stone
  • BWood
  • VPlant
  • LLantern
  • AArcane violet
  • CArcane cyan
  • EErzen, reserved
Built so far

Three levels, from mock-up to engine

Each level follows the same route: a level-design mock-up checked by a path search on the player's jump metrics, assets generated and quantised to the act's palette, then the map, effects and screenshots built headless by Python scripts inside the Unreal editor.

L00 · Opening level · map Entrance

The Threshold

At night, in a mountain forest, Erzen leaves the foot of the cliff, climbs inside the Hollow Oak, discovers the Library castle from the Belvedere, crosses the pilgrims' footbridge and reaches the forecourt, where two stone Guardians wake and open the gate because he kept walking. No enemy, no spell: the level teaches the body of the game and sets the theme.

Grid
224 × 96 tiles, about 14 screens wide
Content
8 zones, 6 ladders, 3 checkpoints, 6 tablets, two Guardians in C++
In-editor capture: the Belvedere, with the castle anchored in the far parallax and a lantern on the path
In-editor capture: the two sleeping Guardians on either side of the Library gate
In-editor capture: climbing inside the Hollow Oak on glowing mushroom shelves
L01 · Act I · map Libraries

The Forgotten Library

A vertical S through a cathedral-library: entrance hall, great nave with rose window and galleries, the Archives, the rune room with its sealed door, the tower, the choir with the grimoire that teaches Fire Spark, and a book barricade to burn before the exit. Master Eldrin gives the hint, two skeleton guardians patrol.

Grid
216 × 80 tiles, 13.5 screens wide
Content
3 runes and a sealed door, 6 ladders, 32 one-way shelves, flying-book platforms, 13 captures
In-editor capture: the great nave with cyan stained glass, hanging lanterns and candle-lit bookcases
In-editor capture: the choir, where the grimoire of Fire Spark rests on its altar under a violet halo
In-editor capture: the entrance hall with a bookcase, candles and the first checkpoint
L02 · Act I · map TrialOfLight

Trial of Light

Five magic torches must be lit with Fire Spark in the order a fresco shows: star, sun, leaf, moon, drop. Two torches are hidden, one behind a tapestry with a draught as the only clue, one behind a barricade at the top of the tower. The hall opens on an evening sky through four monumental windows.

Grid
120 × 64 tiles
Content
5 glyph torches, a fresco, a secret chamber, a tower, 8 ladders, 9 captures
In-editor capture: evening light falling through the tall windows of the Trial hall onto a candelabrum
In-editor capture: the fresco that gives the order of the torches, lit by candles
Under the hood

Systems already in place

All gameplay code lives in my 2D Platformer template plugin, so the game and the FAB product improve together. Everything is data-driven: one Data Asset per spell, dialogue in a Data Table, puzzles derived from a single base class.

Roadmap

Where it is going

The design document asks for a vertical slice first, then one act at a time. This is the order of work, with what is done, what is on my desk, and what waits.

  1. Foundations and vertical slice

    Done22–28 September 2026
    • Player, camera and animation from the 2D Platformer template, Enhanced Input
    • Interaction system and reactive objects
    • Spell framework and Fire Spark
    • Enemy framework and the skeleton guardian
    • Puzzle framework and the rune door
    • NPC framework, dialogue and Master Eldrin
    • Checkpoints, save and load, level completion
    • Vertical slice “Begin”, a 120 × 22 tile section of the Library

  2. Art direction “Ink and Lantern”

    Done28–29 September 2026
    • Analysis of 15 references and the rules of the pixel art
    • Master palette of 45 colours, 9 ramps, one palette per act
    • Seven planes, parallax factors, 32 px tiles and edge dressing
    • Spell colours, interaction states, typography and interface
    • Unreal import pipeline: Paper2D settings, materials, post-process, validation checklist

  3. Act I, the first three levels

    Done29–30 September 2026
    • The Forgotten Library rebuilt from the v2 mock-up
    • Trial of Light with its five torches and hidden rooms
    • The Threshold, the opening level with the stone Guardians
    • Scripted tilesets, Niagara effects, halos, 38 in-editor captures

  4. Playtest and polish of the three levels

    In progressOctober 2026
    • Play every level end to end: Guardians sequence, one-way platforms, ladders, torch range for Fire Spark
    • Clean Erzen's palette from 23 colours to 8 and check his secondary motion
    • Camera vertical offset and integer-scale option for odd resolutions
    • Record the first gameplay video

  5. Act I, Levitation and the forest

    Next
    • The Broken Bridge: Levitation, moving stones to rebuild a bridge
    • Whispering Forest: several spirits give clues, only one tells the truth
    • Guardian's Riddle: the first boss, questions about the magic learned so far
    • Lyria the alchemist, a first quest and potion crafting

  6. Interface, audio and identity

    Next
    • HUD and dialogue panel in Cinzel and Alegreya, as the charter defines
    • Title screen, level names and the grimoire
    • Audio direction: exploration, puzzle, combat and boss music, spell and puzzle cues
    • One colour LUT per act

  7. Acts II to V

    Later
    • Act II, the Arcane Highlands: ice, wind, echoes, the balance of fire and water, vanishing platforms
    • Act III, the Forbidden Ruins: time manipulation, spirits, the mirror world, the Elemental Guardians
    • Act IV, the Final Trials: gravity, illusions, the Trial of Wisdom, the Corrupted Sorcerer
    • Act V: the Spirit of the First Wizard, a five-phase final trial

  8. Demo and store page

    Later
    • Public demo covering Act I
    • Store page, trailer and screenshots
    • Dev-log videos on EIS Dev
Dev log

Recent progress

  1. Opening level built: stone Guardians in C++, three parallax scenes tuned for the perspective camera, fireflies in the undergrowth. The game now starts on the Threshold.

  2. The Forgotten Library rebuilt from the v2 mock-up (216 × 80 tiles) with scripted tilesets, Niagara effects and 13 in-editor captures. Trial of Light built the same day.

  3. Direction replaced by “Ink and Lantern” v2: pixel art kept, 45-colour palette, seven planes, typography. All gameplay code moved into the template plugin.

  4. First art bible written, then archived the next day.

  5. Project created from the 2D Platformer template, first tiles and a first Library map. The vertical slice “Begin” follows: Fire Spark, rune door, skeleton guardian, Eldrin, checkpoints and save, all placed by a content-generation script.

Support the project

Keep the lanterns lit

Path of Wizard is self-funded and built in the time left between client work. Every coffee goes into the game: generation credits for assets, sound, and more hours on the levels.

Buy me a coffeeOne-off, no account needed. Thank you.

Follow the build

Progress videos go on my YouTube channel, and the systems ship in my FAB plugins. If you are making a 2D game in Unreal, let's talk.

EIS Dev on YouTubeMy Unreal toolsGet in touch