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Light's Out - Designing
Light's Out was the game our team pitched for the end of year project in 2023, it was a 3 month long project (September - November). The team consisted of 10 people.
Lead Designer - Alica Hayashi
Level Designer - Traveen Weerasooriya
Producer/Sound Designer - Blake Andrews
Lead Artist/Tech Artist - Phoenix Marsh
Animator/2D Artist - Bayley Tomkins
UI/3D Artist - Jack Kirley
3D Artist - Pasquale Russo
Lead Programmer - Devlyn Hendrie
Systems Programmer - Corey Abraham
Programmer - Devran Gungor
Unique Selling Points
Entry level puzzle with spooky themes (gap in the market).
Toon art style in a 3D environment, highlights child-like wonder from the perspective of a child.
Speedrun-based design to incentivize replayability.
Side on, moody puzzle based game that gives the player omnidirectional controls.
Light-based puzzles.
Light's Out was a puzzle/horror game that I worked on. The pitch for the idea was to create a horror game that was for kids (similar to that of Luigi's Mansion). While I spent a lot of my time working on the sound for the game, I was also the producer and collaborated on every design element in the game.
Each puzzle was defined by a type of "switch" the player had to interact with to "start" the puzzle. The first one is a powerpoint, the second a switch, and the third a lever.
The second puzzle the player encounters in the game is a light switch puzzle. The goal I conceptualised here was for it to be a math-based puzzle (similar to the likes of the PS1 Resident Evil 2). The idea in my mind was simple. The player must flick a series of switches to regulate the voltage, which would then turn the assosicated light off. This would be represented by a power box so the player could see if they need to turn on more switches, or turn off more.
This led to me spending a day at a cafe trying to figure out the maths behind it, I quickly realised that maybe this wasn't feesible. If our game is mean't to be a puzzle game for kids, with elements of introductory speedrunning... how does this work? Would they really be bothered doing maths in a video game?
This led to the idea of not having a system where the player has to balance a metre to turn off the lights, but turn off all the LED's in a breaker box. This was clearer and didn't require maths. So if the puzzle now was just flipping the switches in the opposite direction, how do we scale that? How do we make that more difficult?
Well the solution was to once again tie the amount of the LED's on the breaker box to the amount of switches for the puzzle. There would be 3, 4 or 6. Another issue we came accross while play testing the idea was how would the player discern one light switch puzzle with another? We did have the idea of making the model slight different for the light switche's depending on which one it was with (exposed wires was the idea), but with the amount of time left, it was easier for the designers to come up with puzzle rules, one of those being that a light switch puzzle had to be contained to a single room.
Another aspect of the game I worked on was the rank given to the player at the end.
Since our game is also intended to advocate for players who are interested in speedrunning, it was my responsbility on how to enforce that. My idea naturally led to a score system at the end of the game. Originally the idea was to find a way to combine the amount of puzzles the player solves, the battery remaining and the time remaining into some equation... It became complicated for me and even the programmers. In the end, it was reworked to be something much simplier. It takes the players remaining battery percentage over the time taken to complete the game, and that would give them an integer thats applied to a rank (A, B, C, etc.)
I worked on the story for the game and how we tutorialise the game for the player. I used a Call of Duty game for reference actually. A zombies map called "Mob of the Dead" has a loading screen thatexplains the gameplay loop and story to the player. I felt inspired at the time and wanted to do something similar.
This image here is what I came up with before I handed it over to the artists to simplifiy and put into the game.
Here I try to explain that your parents have left, and you must go to bed by a certain time, however there is a monster you must lure to destroy. In light there is safety, but you must sacrifise it as your parents have instructed you to. I overcomplicated it, but the solutions that arose were from the cut content. We had removed the mad dash, and the time limit, so they didn't need to be in the drawing anymore.
The end result
Alpha
Level tiler tools for designers
First easy, medium & hard level implimented
Final Dash was cut
All puzzles working
Glow Toy implimented
Beta
Level randomiser implemented
Opening added
Camera placement adjusted
Tutorial room added
Score system implimented
UI added for interacting and lights
Majorly updated assets
Gold
Additional levels finished & added in the randomiser
Spline tool for tall lamp added
Decals added
Final lighting & colouring pass
Animated vignette
Page updated
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