Andreas Skoglund, CEO of Cortopia Studios speaks with GamesBeat about Wands and Cortopia’s future.
Cortopia has been playing with magic since 2016. Its virtual reality dueler Wands started out on Samsung Gear VR and Google Daydream, but since then, its wizarding empire has expanded to Oculus Rift, HTC Vive, and, most recently, Oculus Go in May. PlayStation, one of the leading platforms for VR, is missing from that list, and that’s due to the challenge of porting between platforms. For now, the studio is focused on deepening the gameplay, reaching a broader audience, and fostering its nascent esports scene.
Our engineers, construction workers and wizards have been hard at work creating a brand new workshop.
We’ve basically rebuilt the whole thing from the ground up, making it more spacious, streamlining the functionality of the various stations, and adding a bunch of other improvements.
The new workshop is part of our 1.4 update which will be out this month.
My name is Ryan Bednar and I recently joined the team at Cortopia as the Creative Director of the studio.
Now that I’ve had a chance to settle in, I wanted to share our roadmap for the next couple of Wands updates so that you can know what to look forward to!
But first, let’s start with some context.
We know that Wands is a great game with an exceptionally loyal and passionate player base. We see them every day on our Discord, around the internet, and in the game.
That said, we acknowledge that Wands has some room for improvement. Once players understand how to play the game, they often comment on the the game’s unique depth of gameplay – specifically for VR. But the learning curve is steep, and we currently drop you into the deep end pretty early on.
So our plan is the tackle these issues in two parts.
The first is Patch 1.4.0 which will involve us rebuilding the workshop, and all of its functionality, from the ground up; as well as adding a tutorial sequence to introduce new players to the very basics of the game.
The second, Patch 1.4.1, will cover everything else. Improvements to our control schemes, tighter gameplay feedback, and more ways to play the game will all be areas of focus for us.
While subject to change, our current plan is to launch 1.4.0 mid-June and 1.4.1 sometime early in the fall of 2018.
I hope that you’re as excited for these changes as we are – and we look forward to continuing to make Wands the best game it can be!
Fresh out the Wands factory, we’ve just released our new update 1.3.9. With this update there’s several performance improvements, balance changes and bug fixes.
Improvements
Improved network sync for Flaming Phoenix
Major performance improvements for spell casting
Game balancing
Reduced cast cost for Cerberus collars from 35 to 25 mana and reduced time from 10 to 8 seconds
Reduced cast cost for Skull Specter from 35 to 30
Bug fixes
Players can no longer get hit during teleportation
Dragon’s Breath can no longer deal damage through shields
Fixed bug where more than 2 twins could be active at the same time
Splash damage doesn’t pass through solid objects anymore
Elevator speed on Aspis Prison now the same throughout the match
Oculus
Improvements
Improvements made to swipe input to both the GearVR and Go remote
Daydream
Improvements
Improvements made to swipe input
Misc
From now on players need to be signed in to Google Play Games to connect to Wands
Wands is now available and can be enjoyed with 6dof on Google Daydream’s Lenovo Mirage Solo. Wands has true positional tracking available right now.
The world’s first standalone Daydream VR Headset. Experience immersive virtual reality without a separate PC or smartphone. Deploy Google’s powerful WorldSense™ technology to lean, dodge, duck, move, avoid obstacles, and move naturally in The Beyond.
We’re super excited to share the news that Wands is now available on the brand new Oculus Go.
Easily enter the beyond in Wands with no PC or wires attached. Oculus Go is a standalone VR headset made to fit you. Designed with breathable fabrics, adjustable straps and Oculus best lenses yet.
We’re happy to announce our brand new Wands website.
Some of the improvements:
Vastly improved discovery across all devices; desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile. Basically you should now find what you’re looking for.
Improved visual experience overall, showcasing more of our beautiful game.
New section: Competitive. An area where we’ll add more info over time with the focus on the competitive aspects of Wands.
Improvements done to the forum.
New section: Wands Wiki. We’re super excited to share this with everyone. We now have a brand new Wiki for Wands and we look forward to adding a lot of stuff to it. Let us know if you want to contribute.
