Noé imagines. Dad builds. Noé decides.

A world of our own

It began as a family project, a world of castles and magic with a throne at the end for whoever earns it. Noé had the ideas. Dad set out to build them.

We called it The Kingdoms of the Mage Kings.

Noé said no

The first version was a single castle floating in the sky, with an arena inside. You fought three waves, opened the treasure, and that was it. If you wandered off, the game brought you back.

Noé played it and said he felt locked in an arena. He wanted a whole world, with several castles far apart and the freedom to walk from one to the next whichever way he liked. He also wanted to break blocks.

He was right, so we started again.

The gate stays up

Open became a rule we could check. The Mage Kings is a normal survival world, with no forced game mode, no invisible wall and no pull-back. The only time the world puts you anywhere is the first second, when it sets you down in the courtyard of the Snow Bastion.

The details follow from that. The Bastion's portcullis is built raised and stays raised. Trials are places on the map, not the game itself. You start one by touching a brazier and end it by walking out of the ring. Royal chests open with the power you learned at the altar, not with a victory. The spellbook offers a way home to the Bastion, and it is only ever an offer.

One of our tests starts outside the walls of every site and walks, without flying or digging, to each chest, altar and brazier. If it cannot get there, neither could you, and we fix the place before going any further.

The balloon

There was no picture for the hot-air balloon. Noé described it in words. It had to stand near the middle of the map and work for someone who cannot fly. It had to need fire to start, with a real chance of getting burned. Its fuel had to be limited, yet always enough for the trip if you prepared. And the kingdom in the clouds had to be really high, not a few blocks up.

So that is what we built. Coal becomes embers. The flare burns for three seconds, with a ring of flames to show where not to stand. The climb is 180 blocks and takes one minute, and it is a real climb. There is no teleport button anywhere. A bell at each end calls the balloon when it is waiting at the other one.

Who does what

Noé imagines the places and the rules. He chooses the pictures, 73 so far across 23 boards. He plays what comes out and he judges it. He is the client, and he can say no.

Dad builds everything that turns a picture into a place, from the scripts that lay the blocks to the previews and the checks. If Noé says a tower is too small, Dad is the one who makes it taller.

The designing, the building and the testing we do together. Noé has said no twice so far, once to the first version and once to the first set of icons, which were too plain and looked nothing like the pictures he had picked. Both times we started over.

From a picture to a castle

Every place in the Mage Kings goes through the same six steps.

Noé picks a picture

Each picture board shows a handful of proposals for one thing, such as a starting castle, a lava fortress, a trap or a sword. Noé points at the one he wants. From then on, the place has to be recognizable to someone who knows that picture.

A script lays the blocks

No block is placed by hand. Each site has a builder, a script that writes the whole castle, the same way every time. A taller tower is a changed line and a new build, not an afternoon of clicking.

We look before we play

The site is first built outside the game and drawn three ways, from a corner, with the roofs off and as a floor plan. We put the drawings next to Noé's board. Is the outline right? The colors? The thing that made him choose it? Several rounds are normal.

The tests walk through it

Then come the contract tests. Every block name must be real. Nothing may spill outside the site's plot. Each kingdom needs its altar and its royal chest, and the four on the ground must show their own ore. Last comes the walk, on foot, to every chest, altar and brazier.

The real engine builds it

The whole world is then created on the Bedrock Dedicated Server, the game's own server program, with nobody connected. It loads every item, block and recipe, builds all 23 sites, and runs our 229 checks. One of them sends the empty balloon up for two seconds and measures how far it climbed.

Noé plays it

A server cannot say whether the ride is fun, whether a trial is too hard, or whether the armor looks like the picture. Noé can, and a place is finished when he says so. The Mage Kings is at this step now, which is why it says In development.

The workshop in numbers

• 73 pictures chosen by Noé, across 23 boards
• 2 times Noé has said no so far
• 25 automated tests the world has to pass
• 229 checks passed on the Bedrock Dedicated Server

About this site

Everything on screen is drawn live in your browser, and the castles are the real builds from the game. The scripts that lay the blocks in the game laid them here too, and the balloon is the game's own. The land between the kingdoms and the three building sites were modeled for this site, and the map is drawn tighter than the real one so a single flight can take it all in.

That is how we work.

The world it produced is one page away, and so are we.

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