Devlog #3 The Shadows & Interactive Objects

Great News!

LUNA has won the Best Visual Art of the Year award in the Indieplay 2016 games festival (Shanghai, China) last week! Woohoo! ╰(*°▽°*)╯

Like many indie game studios or dev individuals all over the world, sometimes it could feel quite isolating and daunting during game development. It's not easy to be a one-man band, so it's always nice to meet other game developers to bounce ideas, make connections, and most importantly, to show support for each other.

Trying to take a baby step for LUNA in the industry, we (Lantern Studio) submitted our game’s demo 2 months ago to Indieplay 2016, one of the biggest indie game festivals in China. Regardless of whether it would have won anything or not, it would already have been a great experience for us. During the last couple of weeks and the 2-day festival show, we met many game industry experts, individual developers, indie game studios, and indie game supporters. To our surprise, it could not have ended in any better way, as LUNA won the prize in the Best Visual Art category! This is such a huge encouragement for a small team like us, with still many miles to walk. We thank you all for keeping believing in us.

Okay, now let’s get back to the dev log. 

The Shadows  

You do notice that our game has a small subtitle call “The Shadow Dust” right? So what is it? If you have tried the demo, you must remember the shadow crow in the beginning. In fact, these shadows will be playing a huge part in the latter part of the game. It has also a lot to do with the character’s past and the mystery about the tower. So during the last month, we focused on developing the “shadows” side of the story in some of the levels. Here are some animations and concept art about these things from the dark side.

                                                                                       Shadow Creature - Concept Art

                                                             Shadows among the Paintings

Interactive Objects

LUNA is actually not a typical point-and-click game. With no dialogue/text to read and click through, it relies heavily on the interactive animations, music and randomly popped up effects to keep the player entertained while solving the puzzles. So we were also trying to get as many items in the background clickable as possible. Many still object are now being animated, designed with new sound effects and mini-game features. We hope they will add more fun and magic into the game world.

Devlog #2 Garden & Puzzle Design Paradox

This month felt like it went past really quick for some reason, so many things happened around us. UK has left the EU, England football team has been kicked out off the Euro Cup (good luck Iceland!), Roses died along with the young king under the seven pointed star, and Dragons are finally crossing the sea…but most importantly we have finished the design of one of the most complicated levels (so far).
 

The Garden

This new level includes three different locations which all applied with the dual character game play system. This means not only the artwork load has been tripled, but more beloved bugs are on the way (deep breath). As this dynamic dual feature is one of the thing most people are looking forward to after trying out the demo, so we are trying our best to make sure it's fun to play and easy to understand. 

However the typical paradox of any puzzle game is always :

“How to balance the difficulty of the puzzles between player’s ability and expectation?” 

If we made the puzzle too difficult, it might discourage the players to carry on. If we reduce the difficulty too much, it might lose some of its originality and the wow factor. On top of that, not to mention how hard/easy is a puzzle to the everyone? Simply this question do not have a straight forward answer.

So during making a hard level like this, we have to decide, are we more likely to favor the hardcord puzzle challenge, or more leaning towards easier puzzles with a smoother gameplay experience? After analyzing all the feedback from different groups of testers (gamers, game designers, friends and family), we agreed that to deliver a good game experience is more important than how clever or hard can the puzzles be. This means, based on what we have done so far, we need to reduce some of the difficulty of the puzzles even more than we thought. 

Instead of hoping players think their brain off to solve the puzzle, we will now provide some clues within the game (different from hint system). All the while making sure that it is not very obvious to the player to notice at the first place, however if you observe carefully, you will find it in the environment. In the same time, we’ll also pump up the" Mission Complete” rewarding sensation with more animation, effect and music. 

Therefore, due to the complicated puzzles in this level, during the next month we are expecting a lot of time will be needed to spend on the gameplay test. We have known this issue since the beginning of the development, but while making this level, we are really starting to face these challenges more than ever before. Programming and art has its set progress speed, 40 hours / week work load has been consistent since the ending of the KS campaign. However, the gameplay test is actually THE MOST time consuming part of the game development.

Okay, hope you don’t find that bit too boring to read. Now, brace yourself, without giving away too much, here are some new design and animation tease for this level. 

                                                                       Some concept art, level mock up and sketchs

                            This level requires a lot of new character animations, this is one of them

Devlog #1 The Grand Plan, aspect ratio & The Tower

The Grand Plan

After the most incredible campaign month ended, the team had a few days rest and then immediately jumped into the new development stage of LUNA. The days that "do whatever we feel like, whenever we feel like" have officially ended. With some solid funding in hand (thanks to you guys), we have now finally got the chance to plan about how we're gonna make LUNA really happen as a complete game instead of just a bag of interesting ideas.

A grand plan for LUNA has been established for approximately 18 levels ( 25+ locations ), with two storylines going side by side and delivered by animated cinematics. At the moment we've got ⅓ of the levels close to completion, another ⅓ of the levels require different amounts of redesign and the rest is still waiting to be done. That sounds like a LOT of work and we got just about 1 year to finish it, so you can bet that we are either working on LUNA or thinking about LUNA.

It’s gonna be the busiest, hardest year in our life thus far, but considering that we are doing what we love, this is also gonna be an amazing experience.

Change of aspect ratio

As many of you already noticed, our demo game runs at a 4:3 aspect ratio. The reason for that is because the demo was also used to test the iOS version in the early dev stage, and all the iPads have 4:3 screens. However for the best visual and game play experience, we think 16:9 would be a better and up to date screen format choice after all.

However, due to the massive amount of different mobile / tablet devices on the market, to have just one size able to fit all these different screens perfectly became a really big challenge for us. During the last few weeks, the team has been re-programming and reworking on some of the existing art materials to fit the new resolution and aspect ratio.

The change for the menu settings are also under modification, once it's done the players can manually quit the game and jump to any previous level whenever they like. It will allow the players to choose between different display modes, adjust graphics quality and audio settings anytime during the game.

The Tower  

It is the landmark in the world of LUNA and where most of the adventures will take place. No doubt, the tower is one of the most important design elements we are going to perfect. Here are some of the latest design and concept art for the tower and its environment.

We'd like to thank Concept artist Tang, who is helping the project voluntarily .

                                       We'd like to thank Concept artist Tang, who is helping the project voluntarily .

Players can expect to not only solve the puzzles inside the tower, but also experience the world outside it. We are also designing more actions for the characters, so in some game levels, they can jump and climb in the environment outside the tower., which we believe is gonna bring more fun into the gameplay.

Funded With Kickstarter & Greenlit On Steam

30 days ago, we started one of the most crazy and exciting journey of our life, with 4 people nervously staring at the computer screen and thinking: Did we make the right diction? Will there really be any one who would like our game? 12K really seemed like a million miles away. So when we got the first backer, we were so thrilled and almost couldn’t believe it. Then things just got crazier and crazier, when we were 100% funded, just imagine the awesome feeling multiplied by ONE THOUSAND times!

And now we reached the end, a wonderful, wonderful end. Not only that we successfully raised £17,570 (146% funded ) and achieved one of the stretch goals, but also when we turn around, we now see 1110 real people standing beside us, scattered across the globe from East to West, giving us generous support, showing love and faith. Also, we have received in total of 3695 yes votes and more than 300 comments from all over the world! This is such a big achievement for LUNA. It could not have been done without everyone's help! We can only thank you all so much for the support! 

We did it? No, to be honest, YOU DID IT! 
This is one of the most amazing achievement that any indie team could ever ask for. So Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, from the bottom of our heart. Thank you for giving us the chance to make something really special!

Check out our Kickstarter page and the Steam page.

Sincerely,
Lantern Studio Team

Some thoughts on modern days game music composition

By Wang Qian

Usually my normal work and life is reasonable and boring, but there are still a few things that can change my emotions like a roller coaster. Especially something like non-academic composition, just like LUNA. Sometimes I was so touched by the music, sometimes I couldn’t sleep because I had no inspiration, sometimes I got crazy due to lack of patience but still had to pay attention to the details. However, this made my life feel fulfilled and interesting. This composition work was not only just a work project, but it also provided me with lots of new knowledge after I overcame some hardships and challenges.

For example, in the level “Guardian’s Room” there are several different paintings, where every painting is a story that has a logical connection between each other. When I made the music for this level, I could not just develop a music as simple as a straight line, but should show some logical connection between the music pieces. For this interactive music, I met some technical problems which were not regular music composition problems, but instead were related to the interactive and unpredictable nature of a game.

Screenshot from Level "Guardian's Room"

Note: the text below is technical and boring. If you want to jump straight to the conclusion, here it is:
I don’t want to make cliché music, but interesting and unique music.

During the development of contemporary academic music, there was a bloom of new concepts and ideas about how music should be composed. I didn’t intend to compose any hard-to-understand music for the game (unless the game is avant-garde), but instead try to apply some of the new thoughts and ideas that I got from contemporary academic music concepts.

Here are some thoughts:

1. About the music composition for the whole game, the music motive should shift logically according to the game scene. The whole game music album should not be a “risotto” with no logical connection with each other. And this logical connection is not only the similarity of the instruments and feeling of the music, but also the connection of theme A to theme B when you develop the motive of the theme.
    
2. The music has four elements: melody, harmony, rhythm and tone color. In the long music development history, melody was always the priority. With the evolution of music, the harmony and rhythm are always fulfilling the music development no matter if it’s simple heterophony music or colorful romantic music, or even modern jazz. So nowadays, is it a step backwards if we emphasize mostly on the melody and not the other elements when we compose?
    
3. Should we follow the trends of the market when it comes to music taste? Or should we also lead the progress of music according to the games themselves? Movies, as a big part of the entertainment industry, frequently come up with new and innovative ideas for music, so why not games too?

When I composed music for games before LUNA, these thoughts didn’t come to me. I used to think that game music which suits a game was good enough. However, with the composition of LUNA, I began to think more about how game music should be composed. Although we cannot foresee how game music trend will developed, but one thing we are certain, which is that as long as it has the fun and uniqueness, we know we are doing fine.

About how to create nice but not cliché music, I’m still trying to work on it. Maybe when you listen to this music, you’ll feel like: “Hey, that’s cliché, it’s just so so!”. Yes, I also don’t think I’m doing a perfect job, but these are my personal goals and demands for my compositions, which will hopefully turn into some unique and interesting music as follows. If this composition can inspire and help you to connect more with the game, then it would be even better!

You can click Here to listen to the LUNA game music demo.