Fading Light by Null DIES

[raw]
made by Null DIES for LD34 (JAM)
Filii lucis, the children of light. Two twins. Darkness and Light. Dusk and Dawn are their names. Together their power ruled over the earths and heavens. Then there was a day, when the hounds of darkness rebelled against their king, Dusk. Left wounded, his sister Dawn sought to revive him by giving him all the light power in her.

After his sister's sacrifice, Dusk is driven by nothing more than to keep his sisters light glowing in him. Although his darkness eats up whatever light is left off her. He seeks the sacred stones so that he could revive her once again and restore the balance to this universe.

Sister Dawn, you may be a fading light, but you will not be extinguished

Controls:

A/D and Right/Left - Move
Space - Interact
F - Take light
R - Give light
C - Create a Lighting force

Note: We discovered a bug in elevators that affect people with low-end devices (where frame skipping occurs) that made the game almost unplayable, so we patched it and re-uploaded.

__Credits__

Game Design:

Lead Game Design: ElHassan Makled
Game/Level Design: Ismaeel ElSinaty
Nadine Ayman

Programming:

Lead Programming: Hassan Selim
Programming: Amr Nafie
Nadine Mansour
Mohamed Melouk
Mohamed Nagy

Art:
Art Director: Amr Kandil
Game Art: Farah Mourad
Miada Nour
Shady Magdy

Voice Over: Ahmed el Kady

Special thanks: AbdoulRahman Ihab
Mahmoud Nour

Ratings

Coolness 44% 1611
Overall(Jam) 3.04 764
Audio(Jam) 3.52 234
Fun(Jam) 2.95 685
Graphics(Jam) 3.61 435
Humor(Jam) 2.26 717
Innovation(Jam) 3.18 490
Mood(Jam) 3.62 212
Theme(Jam) 3.41 738

Feedback

torcado194
16. Dec 2015 路 23:22 UTC
interesting concept! it was kinda confusing at first but i understood it eventually. the controls were hard to get used to though
guoboism
16. Dec 2015 路 23:24 UTC
The 3D artwork is amazing. I like the story.
But I lost when I met the sprout. I can make it grow taller, yet what is the goal?
馃帳 Null DIES
18. Dec 2015 路 23:11 UTC
@guoboism: Thanks for the nice feedback :)
The sprout ... you're supposed to stand on it so it would carry you, sorry if that wasn't clear :(
ChromeWisp
19. Dec 2015 路 20:13 UTC
Was not very intuitive at first, but once I understood that taking light meant ungrowing a plant and giving light meant growing a plant, the gameplay became clear. Very nicely done, looks like it took a ton of work!
馃帳 Null DIES
19. Dec 2015 路 20:22 UTC
Yeah we didn't have time to make a tutorial of any kind, we wanted to put key icons that tell you to press "R" and "F" on sprouts/trees and maybe just one dialog during the first level.
I'm glad that people do get the idea after some time though :)
Jezzamon
20. Dec 2015 路 11:19 UTC
Aw, I was hoping for a lot more in this game with the size of the team. After I read the description I had high expectations, but it turned out pretty disappointed. I'm assuming you had more ideas but ran out of time

Here's my thoughts, reading through it seems kinda harsh but hopefully it's constructive:

The graphics were kinda boring. Everything seemed kinda dull, especially the trees.
The main character looked off to me. The way he moved and then floated when he was still was weird. Also sometimes his robe would sometimes come through the bottom of the platform. The lighting felt off, he looked weirdly shiny, at first I thought he had tentacles.
The graphics for the buildings, and the background looked nice. I think maybe if you used some interesting lighting, or something to get different colours into it, it would look good. Perhaps the contrast between light and dark could be emphasised visually? There just needed to be something other than dark and greyness.

Gameplay wise it wasn't very fun. I was waiting for the main mechanic to be introduced, and then it ended! I also think limiting the game to going round a single building removed a lot of potential exploration. There's really not much you can do but go around and then go up.

The controls were pretty weird, I've never played a game that used R, F and C before and it confused me trying to remember which was which, and so I died a lot at the start. Also C was never useful? But perhaps if you left the controls on screen it would be easier.

The music was really good though!

I think next time I'd focus on thinking of some simple gameplay, and implementing that first. Games that do well are ones with one core mechanic that's fun in itself, as opposed to games where you cram lots of features in to try to make it more fun.
Jezzamon
20. Dec 2015 路 11:21 UTC
I did manage to get through the game by the way! I think maybe the reason why I was disappointed was the intro was done so well, and the screenshots looked really promising! Hope you guys can improve for next time!
馃帳 Null DIES
20. Dec 2015 路 12:20 UTC
@Jezzamon: First of all thanks a lot for your feedback :)
I'd like to point out that half of the team were actually "interns", people who are completely new to our team, so don't think about the number :D
For the graphics we decided to go with the "Gothic" art-style and wanted to make it look gloomy (dark blue lighting), but you are right about the trees they need to be much better, and we could try to add more light to the darkness somehow, for example, yesterday I made the characters' eye glow and light up the place a bit.

Gameplay-wise, we actually designed 6 levels, but when we finally integrated the final 3D models (trees, elevators) all the positioning as off and we had to readjust everything and time was running out, so we chose levels 1, 3, and 6. A part that you didn't get to see of the core mechanic is the C button, there was supposed to be places where you have to spawn a force of light on top of a pressure plate to keep it triggered as you go through a sliding door that closes when the pressure plate deactivates. There were also levels were the player was forced to go up and down a bunch of times to finally unlock things (not just up and up like you say), this one also didn't make it :(
馃帳 Null DIES
20. Dec 2015 路 12:23 UTC
And about the controls, yes they are weird indeed, it was a very late decision and didn't get tested, and we didn't even make it configurable from the Unity Launcher, so we apologize for that.
luysse_l
20. Dec 2015 路 17:58 UTC
very fun game! nice work
Hot Box Games
20. Dec 2015 路 18:03 UTC
Very nice fleshed out, almost poetic premise! The gameplay was a bit confusing at first but once I figured out that i had to stand on the sprouts it became quite enjoyable! Good job guys!
I liked the music too, very dramatic.
PowerSpark
20. Dec 2015 路 18:04 UTC
Very interesting but it lacks a good puzzle using the growing mechanics. I didn't know what the levers were doing when I activated them too.
馃帳 Null DIES
24. Dec 2015 路 11:53 UTC
The levers do all sorts of things, in some cases they open sliding doors, and in the final level is *should* unlock the final elevator, but we mistakenly made the elevator activated by default :D
johnnwfs
24. Dec 2015 路 20:04 UTC
Nice artwork/graphics. Cool music.
NirabazGAMES
24. Dec 2015 路 20:25 UTC
good graphic! well done! :)
Nega Drive
03. Jan 2016 路 19:09 UTC
This game is screaming for a tutorial. Not a bad game though, presentation is nice, and I like the story and voice acting. Gameplay mechanics could probably use some expanding a bit, and definitely needs more in-game explanation. Good work overall though!
Jupiter_Hadley
12. Jan 2016 路 21:19 UTC
Neat game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 34 compilation video series, if you鈥檇 like to check it out :) https://youtu.be/lBXur6KZCzs