LUMEN

Genre

Puzzle

Production Time

6 weeks, 50%

Engine

Unity

Team Size

Platform

Mobile

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My Contributions

Main Menu
User Interface
Saving/Loading
Pickups/Collectibles
Unlit Shader
Gamemanager
Scenemanager
Cutscene Implementation

Helped With

Jumping
Pit Trap
Enemies

Main Menu

I came up with the idea of having a physical book as a main menu since it matched our game being a fairytale. The book uses Unity in game UI elements parented to game world pages in a book. Each page has a separate animation and to be able to turn multiple pages att the same time I had to use animation layers and coroutines.

The transition to open the book also uses Unity Cinemachine to create a smooth transition. I also used Elin's swiping system to be able to swipe pages with your touchscreen.

User Interface

I created a separate scene in Unity containing all UI elements and then added the scene to render in front of the active scene. In retrospect, this was an unnecessary feature and added nothing to the game, but it did mean that you did not have to add UI to every level manually which did save time and headaches.

I used the same design as our reference game "Lara Croft Go", where I wanted the UI to be nonintrusive and hidden unless clicked.

Saving/Loading

Since I wanted to go above and beyond with the UI of this project I also made a system that saves and loads your progress, so if you change your settings or collect collectibles those will be saved to a binary file. I didn't want to use JSON due to its slower reading and easy manipulation of data. The lotus in the main menu shows if you have collected collectibles on that level before.

Saving your settings proved very helpful due to the nature of mobile games, you want to be able to close the game and return at any time. Having to redo your preferred settings every time is annoying.

Pickups/Collectibles

I made collectibles that you can pick up during the levels. One of the harder features was not removing them if you had already picked them up when we loaded the levels. I also added the UI element when you pickup one.

Unlit Light Shader

We discussed having light as a puzzle but having multiple lights is very intensive, especially for a mobile game. I ended up trying out stuff and made an unlit shader for the light which works with our performance budget.

Jumping Animation Curve

I made animation curves as an editable field on the player component. This way it was very easy for animators to change the curve of how high the player should be during each frame of the jumping animation.

Pit Trap

I worked with August to make and fix the pit trap. We had a few bugs such as only checking if it was exactly the second time it was being passed for it to fall. With this bug, you could move a rock over the trap to trigger the breaking and then walk over it without any consequence. Working on the puzzle components of a game was really fun and I learned a lot.