Luminous: Light Of Solitude
My Role in the project
Design Lead - I was the Design Lead for the first semester setting the tone, mechanics, and game feel
Producer - For the second semester, I took on the producer role, managing a group of 5 Programmers, 2 Artist, and 2 Designers.
Play the game here!
More Info
Game Summery
Luminous is a 2D laidback exploration game. Players play as Ling, a mysterious mermaid, and explore the ruins and uncover the secrets of the guardian.
Game Production
I took on the role of a Producer in the second half of the project while maintaining the role of a designer.
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I managed to document sprint and milestone progress reports while keeping track of the progress using Trello and making sure the team's timeline was on track, and I was blessed with a hardworking and motivated team and I am extremely satisfied to say that we have accomplished what we set out to achieve.
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Managing a large group of 9 with 2 Designers, 2 Artists, and 5 Programmers, I was in constant communication with the leads while understanding the tasks involved, managing and prioritizing features and assets to be implemented to the engine with the design direction in mind.
Design Goals
Serene Narrative Experience
For this project, we identified our strengths, beautiful artworks, and backgrounds. As such we aim to create a game that showcases this aspect fully.
As such, the mechanics we chose revolved around exploration, with pick-ups, and dashing serving as the core mechanics.
Narrative
We explored and pitched a few narrative ideas, and discussed with the artists the scope of the characters, storyline such as a wandering hermit crab character was removed due to time constraints, and eventually, we decided on a lost soul searching for her memories with a Romeo and Juliet romance in the background.
BackStory:
Once there was a thriving civilization at peace, a guardian was appointed by the gods to protect the citizens and maintain the peace, for centuries, the people respected nature and coexisted peacefully, and the guardian protected the civilization from all external threats. Over time, 2 distinct factions began to form, the ruling business class living in the surface metropolis, and the mineral-rich miners who were the workforce of the civilization. Unsettled debts and injustices piled up over time as hatred and animosity grew between the 2 factions until finally, a civil war broke out between the 2 factions.
Unable to protect the civilization, and bound to be unable to attack either side, the guardian can only watch as the civilization tore itself apart. Hatred slowly grew in the guardian as the guardian wallowed in guilt and despair until it saw civilization as the root of all evil. With a final blow, the civilization is in ruins.
A hundred years passed, and a mysterious mermaid girl awoke from her slumber, into a barren world, with eyes unclouded by hate, the mermaid ventures onto the world.
Iterations
We utilized Unity to prototype and condense the ideas to be implemented in the second semester onto the custom engine, throughout the journey we iterated and experimented with multiple types of mechanics that was unused for one reason or another here is our progress and iterations:
Initial Prototype
The initial prototype we made within the span of a few days, with different elements, points (white), Currents (black arrow), artifacts (green), enemies (red), and rocks (yellow/brown) and fish form (Green arrow).
Puzzle Iterations
In the clip above, we tried a timed sequence with portals (Blue) and lava (Red), and weighted artifacts (Green), but ultimately removed the idea due to limitations with the camera and the difficulty in clarity.
Boss Chase Iterations
We identified we wanted a boss sequence for this particular game, as such, we prioritized designing a chase sequence.
POST MORTEM
For this project, I experimented with multiple roles that I was unfamiliar with, taking up a leading position in the project was daunting. Here are a few key takeaways I have learned throughout this project.
Decisiveness
Being Decisive in picking decisions and sticking with them is critical in larger-scale projects, with a tight deadline we just have to take a leap of faith and pick a direction to get the project on track.
Letting go
Throughout this project, we had many mechanics that ended up not suiting the game and was eventually scrapped. It was hard to let go of the mechanics that we worked on, but it was vital to be done to make a coherent game.
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Thank you for reading