James Lambert – the developer behind the now-cancelled N64 port of Portal – has revealed that he's working on an N64 RPG in which you play a powerful wizard.

The working title of the game is Spellcraft, and Lambert says he was inspired to create it after being disappointed that many of the RPGs he has played didn't allow magic users to actually 'create' the spells they cast.

In Spellcraft, the player will be able to combine various runes in order to produce different magical effects. It's not a new concept; 1987's Dungeon Master had the same system, as did 2011's Magicka (from Helldivers 2 studio Arrowhead).

However, Lambert's game does seem to be doing something quite interesting with the mechanic, and he says that the eventual goal is to release it on a physical N64 cartridge.

Lambert has also been able to get VR working on Nintendo's 64-bit system. You could say he's quite the wizard, but one thing he sadly hasn't been able to do is resurrect Portal 64.

He notes that with the release of Libdragon, a potential stumbling block to development has been removed (Portal 64 used the proprietary Nintendo development library LibUltra, something Libdragon replaces), but that doesn't mean he will be reviving the project.

This is partly due to the fact that Valve wasn't comfortable with its development continuing, and the amount of work involved when it comes to retooling the code to work with Libdragon.

[source gamesradar.com]