Alight

A demo for a narrative-driven puzzle game that takes place in a small village during the ming dynasty.

The main idea and challenge of designing this game was to create a narrative experience that could convey its themes and mood through its visuals only, mainly from symbolism. It was also somewhat of a playground for learning unity's vfx tools such as its particle system and graph.

The game takes inspiration from several different aspects of chinese folk religion, such as the "Hun and Po" belief, and a specific interpretation of "Diyu" as the afterlife the game takes place in. Light being the purifying element that is cleansing this village and bringing their sorrowful souls peace and clarity. Attempting to evoke, through its quiet but perturbed atmosphere, and monotone core loop, emotions of peaceful acceptance and personal (perhaps spiritual) growth.

The game's terrain is made with a world machine heightmap free version, and painfully stitched together to retain a high definition and detail through unity 2019's terrain tools. Every single asset was thoroughly researched, as well as the entire village's layout, to follow traditional chinese feng shui and customs such as: every house points to the same direction (sunrise and river), the village placement is very specific as it is an incline so sun bathes most of its residents, the position of the head of the village's housing, etc.

Most of my time was spent researching chinese culture so we could deliver a level/puzzle design that is historically accurate, which is extremely important for a variety of reasons. This led to the gameplay possibilities narrowing down significantly, specially due to how minimalistic the game and its UI had to be, and becoming somewhat of a low priority. The puzzle design however lends itself well to china's village's mazelike structures and has some interesting possibilities for a full game extension.

Made by a group of 7 brazilian game design students as a 5th semester project. The game is fully in portuguese.

A walkthrough is included.