Gwiz is intended to be an homage to the old style Wizardry(tm) games, by Sir-Tech Software Inc.. It aims to mimic the feel of Wizardry V:Heart of the Maelstrom(tm).

I wanted to help fill out the current stock of games freely available to Linux users, and having been a longtime fan of these types of games, I thought it would be a great and rewarding challenge to try and copy the feel that these games presented.

I began work in February 2002 (though I do not remember the exact date, it was probably around the 20th). I did not flowchart the project at the time, because I already knew what the end product was going to be like. Retrospectively, this was a mistake.

As early as March 9, I was feeling a little burned out, and I was going to shelf the project. That was my plan, until my LUGMaster advised me to just release what I have, which (predictably) showed a little public interest in my work. This in turn, prompted me to continue development.

At the time of its release, it was called "Generic Wizardry Clone" (GWC) but was later renamed to GWiz, a (not very clever) pun on the pronunciation of "Gee Whiz."

Eventually, I did scrap the project as it was; I could not hunt down a critical showstopping bug. Considering how badly written it was (my first real-world application programming experience) I decided to rewrite it.