“Feeling Powerful” as a Core Experience

Caster is a fantastic little indie game that I got into several months ago.  You play as a small character in a large, expansive world with some incredibly heavy firepower.  Acting as savior for the forests, you run around the level at sonic speeds, firing in all directions with a wide range of lasers and energy orbs.  By upgrading your stats and abilities as you complete levels, you fill out your character’s stats, increasing speed, power, and your destructive capabilities.  Over the course of several levels, your stats inevitably max out and your resulting impact against each enemy is monstrous.

The game has since been released on the PC, Steam, and the iPhone and has been well received by the independent games community.  While I don’t have specific sales figures, it would appear that the game has been successful for a title of its size.  It was reviewed positively on many of the major indie sites, and even appears in one of the editor’s choice categories on the iPhone for a time.

What can we attribute the fun and fury of Caster to?  The graphics?  The controls?  The story?  While all these elements are important, we’ll have to turn to our trusty Game Design Canvas to really see what makes Caster tick.  To begin, we’ll start with the game’s Core Experience. WAIT! There is more to read… read on »