Wizards & Wagons is an intriguing blend of Oregon Trail, Kingdom Rush, and Tetris [Sponsored]

Wizards & Wagons is an intriguing blend of genres that offers you the exploration of an RPG, the battling of a tower defence, and the tile-managing goodness of Tetris.

You're a hero who's down on his luck after the main quest is over and the Dark Lord is slain. Fortunately, a magical businessman shows up and offers you a wagon and the chance to take on the life of a trader to earn back your house and become a hero once more.

And that's exactly what you'll do in Wizards & Wagons as you travel the world trading goods, battling enemies on the roads, and upgrading your wagon and weapons.

To celebrate the launch of Wizards & Wagons, we spoke to Lim Yi Ming, Lead Game Designer at Touch Dimensions, about the unique blend of gameplay on offer here, the challenges faced during development, and the plans for future updates.

What do you think Wizards & Wagons offers that you can’t get from any other title on the App Store?

"The idea of trading goods within a fantasy world filled with enemies has to be the most unique part about our game (as you very aptly put it, "Oregon Trail meets Kingdom Rush with a bit of Tetris thrown in"), but we really had fun exploring the concept of having the hero who saved the world become bankrupt and leaving him to fend for his retirement."

What challenges did you face during development, and how did you overcome them?

"One thing that pleasantly surprised us was how we were still unable to come up with the ability to gauge how much gold our players will make in even their first year of trading.

"I know it sounds horrible that the game designers themselves don't have an inkling of something so fundamentally crucial to the balance and concept of a trading game but we ended up with so many systems that change demand and supply that the end result became rather unpredictable.

"I'm pretty sure that we finally got the balance right, but we took a lot of time fixing details such as trade routes and the price, elasticity, replenishment of each good because playing the game itself was the only reliable way to determine if the changes work."

Which part of Wizards & Wagons are you personally the most proud of and why?

"I love how we managed to squeeze in an entire world of five continents and 25 towns, with different NPCs inside each unique town adding a little bit more to the background story of the world you're in.

"If I had what I wanted, every NPC would tell you his or her life story but alas, this is a trading game and we had to save some space for inconsequential economic news."

Do you have anything planned in terms of future updates for Wizards & Wagons and, if so, can you give us any details of what these might include?

"We definitely want to expand on the world we created and we plan to do so by including tons of quests, events, and companions that will add more flavor to the game as well as more epic bosses and enemies to defeat and, of course, more ways to power up your wagon to meet new challenges!

"We’re also working on a series of missions for players to develop Arcadia, an arctic town that’s currently unpopulated."

Have you any plans to bring Wizards & Wagons to any other mobile platforms, such as Android or Windows Phone?

"Yes, absolutely!

"This is the first game we've created with Unity, so porting it should be a breeze. We'll need testing to make sure it works on different devices without a hitch, but it will be done!"

Wizards & Wagons is available right now from the App Store [download].