The lighting of Whiskers in the Dark. Warning: stay out of the light!

Whiskers in the Dark was my first game jam game, and my first time using Godot. Coming into this project, I wanted to take an opportunity to learn more about Godot's 2D lighting and the process of technical art. When discussing limited space, we kept coming back to the idea of being limited to areas you'd normally avoid, and ultimately we arrived at the concept of dangerous light restricting you to the shadows. I set out to devise a lighting system that would be simultaneously tantalizing and foreboding, while meshing seamlessly with @skoprimon's fanciful pixel art.

Traditionally, pixel art tends to have lighting baked in (if it incorporates lighting at all). We wanted our lights to feel like they're pushing in at you from any direction, which can be tricky to get right in 2D! A naive solution would be to treat the art like a 3D object with smooth shading:

Lighting an entire sprite as a smooth object can break the aesthetic of 2D pixel art.

This can be flexible to any lighting environment, but starts to stray away from the types of pixel art that inspired us. We needed to take more care in designing an effect that fit the tone and style of our game.

I constructed our shading model with Godot Canvas Textures using a blend of custom normal and specular maps.

Shading our player was not the only lighting challenge, especially since our game requires you to navigate in the shadows, while being urgently aware of the light.

For this, we built up a light and shadow system to communicate danger and safety to the player.

This system is entirely dynamic, supports moving and dimming lights of different shapes, and allowed our level designers to quickly place and adjust lights to design challenging and atmospheric playgrounds of dangerous glare and welcoming -- yet fleeting -- gloom.

Technical concept art inspired by early design iterations. Warning: Stay in the shadows!