Luma
A cutesy isometric horror game set in a shadowy cemetery full of dark spirits
The Project
Luma is an game prototype made in Unity done during my first semester at UCF's Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy (FIEA) for the Rapid Prototype Production course. In it I worked with four other FIEA students to concept and create a game prototype within two weeks. Besides me from the Technical Designer track there was Angelo Pagluica (Programmer), Daniela Diaz-Rivera (3D Artist), Lori Carranza (3D Artist), and Zachary Hanitz (Project Management). For the project I coded the AI enemies, handled audio design and implementation, created the level.
RENAME THIS
When the team formed it was at the start of that semester. We as a team hadn't gotten to know each other. The main challenge of this project was generating an idea that we could complete for the two week deadline. It made it necessary to spend a lot of time deliberating early on in the project to try and figure out what we as a whole could do. Luma was the project that we settled on but it had actually started as an ambitious tower defense concept pitched by Zachary Hanitz. In it the player would navigate a dark maze full of evil spirits to run wires between the abandoned towers to bring light to them and activate them. Instead of having a top down perspective that is standard for a tower defense the player would use first person platforming to move around the environment. I pushed the team to narrow its focus for this project for both a scope and design purpose. A tower defense game takes a lot of art and while we had two amazing artists on our team it is a lot for both of them to do especially when neither of them specialize as animators. Put on top of the additional first person gameplay and the concept was simply out of scope. From the design perspective I took issue with how the tower defense layer was attached. With the towers all already placed and existing at their locations for the player to find them it robs the player of the choice in placing where their towers are. Together the team reframed the original pitch, focusing in on the navigation concept while shifting the perspective and making all of the characters 2D so that our artists can draw and animate them more easily.
Creating an Atmosphere
What makes Luma really good in my opinion comes wholly down to the fact that it nails its atmosphere. The blend of cute and horror make it incredibly endearing. Daniela and Lori did amazing with the art, both 3D and 2D, while Angelo, with a little help from myself, worked hard on the effects and lighting. It came together really well to create some strong visuals. To showcase all of that our game needed levels, however our team lacked a level designer (one of FIEA's other tracks) so I took on that responsibility. Knowing the games mechanics which gives the player no way to kill the enemies, only stun them, the levels layout was core to setting the games difficulty. It proved an interesting challenge to balance the game from this perspective rather than a purely mechanical or statistical
one, especially while trying to provide a variety of experiences during play. Some areas are more claustrophobic while others are more open.
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Further I ended up working on the audio to add to that atmosphere. While I have worked with audio before this was my first really getting deep into audio effects and modularization. It gave me an opportunity to really explore and play with Adobe Audition to mix sound samples I found on freesound.org to create the different audio for Luma. Choosing and working with those clips to help build that atmosphere was a great experience that allowed me to gain a greater understanding of how audio impacts a game.
