MEMORY FRAGMENTS

I. New Art Direction:

When I joined LightBreak there were three main stages of gameplay: pitch tuning -> melody arrangement -> interactable cutscene. The note swapping aspect of the game is likely its biggest standout feature and sets it apart from other musical games.

After programming the map scene, which was a bundle of complicated systems in of itself, I was invited to be more involved more in the design of the gameplay centric levels. Soon enough I took over the visual overhaul of the art in these levels. Each level is an abstract representation of the Saaz, a magical instrument that allows individuals to transmit their personal experiences to another. Each level would need to be given art that reflects the location and emotion of the current plot point.

Each level has three primary parts:

• Central Saaz - Must be cubic with 6 sides to facilitate note swapping points

• Outer Saaz Islands - Initially planned to be purely decorative with unique animations per level. Ended up being the precursor to Memory Fragments.

• Background - The background is where we put the most abstract visuals. Sometimes this could be animated shapes, colorful waves, dense fog, or an empty void.

Keeping in mind our limited resources as an independent studio, I chose to go with a simplistic pipeline for the primary meshes.

I was responsible for designing, modeling, texturing, and implementing the large Saaz objects.

II. Pitching A New Gameplay System

As the team hypothesized how to extend the playtime of this gameplay loop utilizing current tools, I slowly realized we needed to add more to the current gameplay loop to facilitate the amount of levels we had. When concepting the Memory Fragments system I was considering our current gameplay systems, genre, narrative relevance, and scope. Fitting a new system into the old was a tough jigsaw puzzle, but over many iterations I figured out how to correlate the two.

Memory Fragments are hand crafted puzzles involving sounds isolated to the floating islands around the main Saaz cube. The core inspiration for this idea was games like Hidden Folks and Unpacking. I describe it to new players as Where's Waldo but with sounds instead of images. Hopefully this gameplay will attract audiences interested in tactile/ASMR experiences.

For this system I was involved in every step of the process from conception, gameplay design, planning, programming, and art direction. Our lead artist Dylan Swint created the majority of the assets found on the outer islands. Our music producer Bruzo was responsible for the SFX of these objects.

Memory Fragments - Core Elements:

• Pacing - The primary issue this new system is solving has to do with pacing. Before, the entire game was tuning and note swapping which reflects a procedural aspect of the game. This is now balanced out with a handcrafted aspect involving puzzles and environments unique to each level.

• Puzzle - Player is presented with a challenge: “What makes 𝑥 sound?” In connection to the Saaz Cube which is musical, this part of the game is all about natural sounds. Many objects will make sounds if clicked on, but the goal object may require multiple steps to find. Ultimately, the puzzles build in complexity as they are unlocked allowing systems to be tutorialized in sections. The objects found in these puzzles are tied to the narrative occurring in the following cutscene.

• Satisfaction - The puzzle solution should involve a satisfying action or stimulating event that the player would want to do/see again.

I was entirely responsible for the programming of this new system including integrating it into the old system, input tracking, state machines, puzzle events, physics interactions, and UI implementation. All of this culminated in dozens of scripts and, as a result, many hours of bug fixing and refactoring. To make the final product possible I also needed to be heavily involved in animation, audio design, shader logic, particle systems, and modeling.

Generally speaking, I did ALOT to bring this concept to life. It demanded many stages of re-evaluations to find the right balance of difficulty, satisfaction, and scope. I'm happy to say that the core mechanics and UX are locked in from here, but there is still quite a lot of work to do. 

II. Growing Experience

I've always been an extremely dedicated developer that dabbles in many parts of the pipeline. Not only have I been in the weeds of C# but I've had to take on a managerial role involving outlining goals, organizing needed assets, and assessing priorities. This allows me to see how my own plans fail or succeed, which has taught me valuable lessons. I continue to be involved in nearly every step of the process which expands my generalist role I hope to retain in future opportunities. Let's hope the future is fruitful.

Thank you so much for reading! Make all this work worth it by wishlisting LightBreak on Steam!