Hello there!
I would like to share my upcoming game called OverLight, which is a casual/puzzle/arcade game. The basic gameplay is based on laser beams and variously shaped glass blocks that redirect them. Your goal is to make two different beams go trough the same blocks (by manually breaking some of the blocks), which makes the block overheat and blow up. For every block you destroy manually you loose points, for every block you destroy using lasers, you gain points (so you can’t just randomly break some blocks). Of course, there’s more to gameplay (special blocks, various modes and such), but it’s based on this simple idea.
Funnily, this is actually my first Unity project, although I already have some experience with game development. Idea, design, code and graphics (except the font) are done by me, music is by Kevin MacLeod (royalty free under creative commons, maybe I’ll get exclusively composed music later though). The game runs fine on mobile devices as well (Android, iOS).
Here are some screenshots:
Here’s the first official trailer:
You can find playable demo on the official website. I’m also looking forward to feedback
Also lastly, I took a photo of myself proudly holding the Credits screen of my game
Plus one silly video if you’re interested (it’s not supposed to be an official formal presentation of the game, just a little joke), the game being played live by my cat! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2SnqXLZEIg
Very original and it Looks fun! I also like the sound and visuals.
It might be different for someone actually playing the game, but from my perspective it seems difficult to tell the beams apart. Did you tested with different colors? like red and blue, and the combined beam could be purple.
I was thinking of better distinguishing the beams as well, so far I made them “pulse” a bit in the direction the beam is flowing, to hint how they travel and also when they travel though blocks, it’s animated. Different colors could definitely help, but problem with that is, that differently colored beams are actually part of gameplay in more difficult levels - some blocks will for example let trough only a specific color component and in order to overheat a block, two same components need to travel trough it (so purple is not enough, it would need another beam with red or blue). I will think about it though, maybe I’ll figure out something else to distinguish them better, although as a player you usually see how they travel when you destroy blocks, I guess you’ll see when I provide the web demo.
I’ll provide a web demo as soon as possible, when I finish a few things I want to put in it (plus right now, I’m kinda making the system load various levels, instead of quick dirty piece of code that configured the game for testing) :3
Hi again! I uploaded a webplayer preview now! So you can try out the game, it’s still somewhat far from the final game, but I welcome feedback anyway, as I’m changing stuff all the time!
I like the webplayer version: Without looking at the instructions, my only suggestion is that it would helpful to give the player some kind of directions in game. And, while I liked the animations in the main menu, when it first started I felt like it was a bit too intense (the baseline jitter in the options). But, I like the style quite a bit, and thought everything was very well done in the game.
I like it a lot! The gameplay works well with the visuals and sound, it’s very rewarding to break pieces. It takes a while to start playing with some direction instead of just clicking and hoping it will do something.
I still find a little difficult to tell the beams apart. The flux help though.
Thanks for the feedback! Sorry to not update recently, I got busy with another project that had a deadline.
ncst: Thanks, there will be tutorial in the game later. I’ll try to tune down the jitter a bit on computers, more people complained about this. It doesn’t seem that distracting on mobile devices (smaller screen, so the jitter seems smaller, I wan’t try to to scale it based on display resolution)
Also, I played a bit with the glass/crystal block design, because of some complaints about their looks and here are three variants I tried (the first one being the old one):
Variant 1 (old one):
Variant 2:
Variant 3:
Which one does seem the best to you? Or would you try an entirely different one? And maybe tweak the existing ones?
After seeing the video, i have one complaint about destroying crystals effect! It builds up to something epic, like a big explosion, and then puf! Do some chain bursts of crystals. If this will make level to short, add falling ones, or something
Sedesikus: Thanks ^^
What do you mean by chain bursts of crystals though? There already are chains, it’s when it shows the combo text and you get extra points - for every subsequent burst that happens, without you touching any of them.
Different coloured lasers would be nice to tell things apart, combining the colours where they meet in the same block. It’s a bit hard to track with just red.
Farfarer: Yeah, I’m thinking of how to better differentiate them, other than using color (which will be part of gameplay later). I’m thinking if I shift the hue just a bit, not too far from red, but enough to make them look a bit different (there will be basically three basic colors - RGB and these will combine into secondary colors - CMY and white). May I ask though if you’re judging based on screenshots or the web-player demo as well or the video? The lasers are animated and sort of “pulse” in the direction in which they’re going, so that might make recognizing them easier.
The layout is always different, as the blocks are randomly generated. What is different is the glass appearance of the blocks themselves.
Yeah, I played the web demo. The pulsing helps, it’s just a bit oddly chaotic in general for something where there is no time limit (are you adding one later on?). It feels like the game is rushing you but in reality there’s no pressure to plan your next move.
Yeah, I’m changing the game mechanics a bit, as in, right now combos only happen without the player’s intervention (basically you can’t destroy any more blocks when they’re breaking, so combo can only happen if the blocks fall right into another laser-break after last one), but now you can trigger another combo if you break blocks to cause another laser-break (overload) within a small time limit, to score more points.
Also, there will be multiple modes, the basic arcade won’t have any time limit by itself (other than the combo one, to score more points), basically you’ll have to get certain score to get to the next level. However, there will be time based mode, where you need to score as much as possible within a time limit. There will be at least two other modes too, with a bit different gameplay.
