Playable What Is Light?

[pLeet]

 

Hello everyone!

 

Last week I took part in Brackeys Game Jam, a one week game jam where game developers have to create a game from scratch. This year the theme was "Light". Everyone was free to join the jam either alone, or in a team of maximum 4 people. One of the most tough rule was the following: everything HAD to be created during the game jam, meaning we couldn't use any music, sound effect, 3D models, sprite or code created before this event. If you want to know more about this game jam, don't hesitate to click the link above.

 

I teamed up with Sancho, a young Mexican teacher. I took care of every aspect of conception and development, 2D graphics, building the 3D levels based on Sancho's sketches, as well as the publishing. Sancho took care of game design, 3D models, and background music. One week might seems enough to build a game, but working in the same time, I can assure that the nights were short in order to meets deadlines, but it was worth: we finished and published the game 1h before the deadline, and we are very proud of the final result.

 

So... What is "What Is Light?" ?

 

What Is Light? is a puzzle game where the player help a light finding his way out of the darkness. Light being both a particle and a wave, the player need to switch between those two form:  in particle form, the light can move in straight line, while in wave form the light brighten his surroudings. However the light can only be in one form at the time, meaning the player will have to switch to the appropriate form at the appropriate time.

 

Considering the short period of time we had, we didn't had time to put every game machanic we came up with during conception. However the game has 8 levels, an intro, a progressive tutorial, data tracking (number of deaths, movements, etc), a save system and credits.

 

The game is free to download at itch.io: https://sebastien-awali.itch.io/what-is-light

Works on Windows, and only weight 16 MB.

 

And... what's your toughs about this game jam?

 

We were cruelly short on musics and GFX for the game. For my next game jams I'll make sure to find an audio artist to join the team. Appart from that, the event was pur joy: I worked and exchange with a mature guy, we both learned from each other (him manly on programming, and me on 3D modeling) and more important, it was both our first game jam! In the end, we're very proud of our project, the game is neat and kind of complete for this kind of event, and we still have plenty of game mechanics to add (lenses, mirrors, prisms, plasma walls). I'm looking to keep on working on it alone if players/jury like it, and maybe publish it.

 

Votings ends on 22nd September. I'm very impatient to see how we did compared to the other teams ! In the meantime feel free to leave a comment here or on the itch.io page to let me know your opinion about the game, what you liked, what you didn't liked, things you think might need rework.