Animated Narrative - Week 10 - Prototype

For Week 10, I decided to make a quick game prototype in Unity for the idea that I developed during the Iterative Workshop class assignment (attached below). I used the ideas that I had in class to come up with a game mechanic and a simple playthrough level (seen in the video). The main idea of the game is that the player must go from Point A to Point B to win and can only step in lit surfaces to stay alive. If the player steps on a dark surface, they lose health and die. In the game, the player can only move left or right and can jump or double jump, to get to the endpoint.

This prototype examines the theme of ‘Light’ and ‘Movement’. The game examines the theme of light as the gameplay mainly relies on light sources to achieve a goal. It examines the theme of movement through the movement of the character and the camera, which is always following the character. By creating different kinds of light sources that the player must go through (Normal Light, Moving Light, Blinking Light, and Scaling Light) and allowing the player to only have basic movements, I was able to add a sense of challenge, interactivity and fun to the game. This wouldn’t be possible if this were a linear animation piece.

A similar theme about lighting in games has been mentioned in Dynamic Lighting for Tension in Games, a journal article was written by Magy Seif El-Nasr, Simon Niedenthal, Igor Knez, Priya Almeida and Joseph Zupko. In this article, they talk about how different lighting patterns simulated through their basic characteristics, such as direction, variation over time, color, brightness is used to create and manipulate tensions in a game. 

After reading this piece of article, I was able to flush out some ideas about different types of effects and variations in the spotlight. And after some experiments and playing through the basic characteristics of the lights, I was able to mimic the tension and create some urgency in the game.