Light My Way

The name of the project is Light My Way. It's a story of a cute little dust ball called Dustie, getting back to the land of brightness. Dustie is the soul of a nearly-dead human. It's now wandering in a dark land between life and death. The player is the guide of Dustie, trying to lead it to resolve puzzles on the way to return to the bright.

Game Genre

Platformer, Puzzle

Platform

PC (Keyboard - Mouse)

Tool Used

Unity, C#, GitHub, Photoshop, Procreate

Play Game

Jam Site

Roles

UI Designer

Programmer

Duration

March 2022

48 hr

Jam Theme

Through The Darkness

No Limitation

Team Members

Demi Liu: game design, mechanic design, programming.
Konnor Zhang: game design, system design, level design.
Charlotte Guo: UI design, programming.
Xinyan Wang: game arts.

Design Process

Theme Interpretation

We (Team Ikea Shark) discussed many different understandings of the keyword "darkness" in the theme and finally decided to interpret this theme to a real-life situation -- COVID-19. COVID-19 is the darkness that took many lives. We believe that people will burst out with a very strong will to live before they die. Therefore, we designed Dustie as a will of a dying people. The player will be the guide in this area between life and death to lead Dustie -- the process they have is going through the darkness.

Gameplay Mechanic

It's a 2D Platformer puzzle game. The player controls Dustie by moving left/right and jumping. Also, the key feature is putting the power-up lights into the level, giving Dustie some special abilities.

Yellow Light allows Dustie to climb all shapes of walls.

Red Light allows Dustie to shoot his stings.

Level Design

Fundamental Game Elements:

Ground: Platforms that support the player avatar to stand.
Round Ground: Platforms that need climb ability to move on.
Buttons: Puzzle mechanisms that need the shoot ability to activate.
Spikes: Threats that players need to avoid.

Takeaways

Overall

We (Team Ikea Shark) wanted to provide players with experiences of narrative and puzzle-solving through the game, Light My Way. So, we used multiple levels to show players the different gameplay we have designed for puzzle solving, and the final level will be a challenge for them to make strategies based on all gameplay.

Personal

My role in the game jam was as a UI designer and programmer to implement the scene layout, level selection, visual/sound feedback, and interactive gameplay. I was also responsible to find fonts and audio resources to polish the game.