The creative process of Luminis Oculi
Luminis Oculi - version 1
Trying to come up with an idea...
So we had 5 weeks to finish our scripting assignment. I planned the first week for pre-production only. I knew I wanted to make some type of puzzle game. As I was brain storming I kept being inspired by the puzzles from the games Talos Principle and Inside. I wanted to have light beams that activate things, similar to those in Talos principle, but I simultaneously wanted the dark setting of Inside. I also wanted to have a terrifying demon that you have to get through by figuring out it's behaviour. Then I had to answer questions for myself. Where should the light beams come from? What will they activate? What is even the purpose of solving puzzles? How will a terrifying demon fit in to all of this? And how do I create an environment that makes sense for all these things to exist together? I could not answer one of those questions without having the answer to the others, so I had to keep all of them in mind at all times.
Summary of my idea
Basically the player would strive to escape the cave, but the only way forward is trying to solve escape-rooms and get through the demon mazes. The final thing before starting was making a level design document of all the rooms and what their purpose should be
Finally an idea
With 2-3 days of brainstorming and analysis, I then decided that the experience will take place in a very mysterious cave deep underground. This cave were to be properly established by introducing itself with a supernatural event in a natural world. The player would first be surrounded by beautiful nature, and then encounter a large mysterious hole in the ground that would suck the player in with some mysterious gravity. Player would go unconscious after falling into the hole, and then wake up inside the cave. Player has no choice but to go further into the cave, which will lead to the encounter of growing organic tissues infesting the cave. These tissues would have the ability to transmit power, almost like electricity. However player would need to find mysterious eyes that he or she can attach to different eye sockets in order to control the flow of power. Each puzzle would revolve around trying to make power reach "the eye gate", which is an organic gate that opens up and lets the player get further and progress in the game. And for the demon, there would be special demon mazes that the player would need to get through. The maze would have some indication of what's a good path and what's a bad path. The bad path would always lead to the demon showing up, forcing the player to run fast on the right path or get killed.
This is how it was supposed to work.
Demon mazes: Demon mazes with at least two gates each. Gates can be opened and closed by player only. While inside the maze player needs to try avoid the bloody parts because they will summon the demon.
Demon: A monster that chases player if they enter demon maze or forget to close the gate to the demon maze.
Eye gates: Doors that need to be activated with eye-puzzles and will allow the player to progress on the level.
Eye sockets: Eye sockets are part of the eye-puzzles. Each eye socket is attached to the wall and has an organic wire connected to an organic lamps or an eye gate. Once eye socket has an eye and simultaneously gets light from an organic lamp, it will transmit power via it's organic wire.
Eyes: Eyes can be picked up and attached to eye sockets. They can also be detached from the eye socket.
Organic spotlights: A spotlight attached to the organic tissue in the walls, that can be activated by connected eye socket. Each puzzle room needed both constant lamps and toggle lamps.
The goal of each puzzle room is to figure out the flow of current and to connect the eyes to the eye sockets so that the current leads to the eye gate.
This image is supposed to connect better with the text!!!
How it turned out before deadline?
I did manage to reach my scripting goals, but I barely had any time to actually think through and level design with what I had created. In the end I had a descent amount of tools but a very short game. I did playtest the game a few days before deadline. As it was playtested the game got a lot of cred, but was also critisized, mostly for the puzzle mechanics being a bit hard to find and the demon maze being very unclear. It was literally a maze and people couldn't find the right path. I did some quick fixes, increasing light where puzzle elements where located, and using
blood decals on the incorrect paths in demon maze, to scare the player into the right path. In the end it turned out a pretty good demo, but I felt there was so much more content to make If I had more time.
Pictures collage of Luminis Oculi version 1 here!!!
OR VIDEO OR BOTH!
Luminis Oculi - version 2
Why was I making a version 2?
If you remember from last part, I was not proud of having worked so little with the level design after all those scripts. During our portfolio-course, I picked this projeckt back up to finish what I started and truly polish it.
I made a new pre-prod as well aiming for a even more puzzle mechanics and demon behaviour. However as I was beginning to level design, I realized there was even more level design options with the current mechanics than I had thought previously. So much that there was no way I would have time to milk it all out and at the same time develop and implelment new mechanics. So I scrapped the plan of developing further mechanics and instead wanted to milk it all out. I also wanted to focus heavily on esthetics this time, since last time was primary a scripting project. This time, I wanted to make it all polished and really challange my versatility
The scripts
Since it had gone some time since last and I was now a little wiser and a little more experienced, I felt I needed to clean up the scripts a bit, and fix
some things that was not optimized, affected the ergonomics of the game, or had a chance of failing to work. I re-iterated a lot on my version 1 scripts during version 2 work, but nothing major were changed. Just some small polish-fixes.
Show scripts - Master BPs and example children. Character BP
How did my game change as I worked on it?
After having polished the experience esthetecly, I thought maybe this is about to become a completed experience. But then one of my fellow colleques pointed out that all the puzzles are way too obvious. As he said it I realized he was 100 % right. It couldn't really be counted as logic puzzles. I needed a CATCH to the puzzles. Then I realized not a single time does the mechanic of detatching eyes from eye sockets serve any purpose.
I updated the puzzle system so that one eye socket could activate multiple other actors and also so that one organic lamp could get activated by multiple eye sockets (though still only one required).
This gave room for more advanced puzzles with a catch, and not just linear connecting until it's done.
Even more critique
Then came some really hard hitting critique about all rooms feeling repetitive after a while. There's nothing new to this. It's just puzzle after puzzle, chase after chase. I am not challanging myself leveldesign-wise. Same assets re-used too much.
First I felth, oh no, I have put in so much time to make this experience longer, only to find out it now feels repetitive. But I asked my feedback providers more. It turned out they still believed it had potential, just that I had to create much more variety and make each part fell unique. It's not enough to only have unique puzzle solutions. I felt they were so right. I had gone on for so long with this project that all I though about was how to make puzzle solutions different, and not how to make the actual level feel diffenrent.
So I started working with separating the use of assets a little bit more to create distinct areas, create a few more materials, and add level obstacles to the puzzles. Working more with sight angles, height differences, bait and switch, lightning, hard/soft reveals, all these things that should be obvious to a level designer, but I had somehow let it slip my mind. This is when I was beginning to realize I have worked on this project for way too long, and I am beginning to lose my creativity because of it. Still I was really happy about the feedback. It meant I had lots of more work to do, but I knew where to start and I knew this would make the game so much better If I go through with these changes.
Some major changes was made here.
Show before and after!
A strong beginning and ending
The final adjusments were about polishing the beginning and the end.
Starting strong and finishing strong is a good concept for games I believe.
Show end result