next »

[Sephius]

Update:
New trailer:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa97W-YRJkA

The Light of the Darkness on Kickstarter:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/epifanica/the-light-of-the-darkness-the-game

Hello,

my name is Fernando Rabello, i´m a artist and i live in Brazil. I'm currently working on a indie game project called The Light of the Darkness. I believe you probably should hear a very little news about game development in Brazil. Well, we are trying to change that a little.

The Light of the Darkness, is a side-scroller, with elements of action and RPG, similar to games like Casltevania, Odin Sphare, Muramassa, Actraiser. The game is based on a universe project that i been developing for some time, called "The Light of Darkness". A universe with its own mythology, wildlife, culture and physical. The game has a deep history that goes beyond the game. The game shows a painted art illustrations. The animations has been done in flash using 4 types of animations techniques: Frame by frame animation, object bases animation, 3d animation (pre-render), and pre-render visual effects (particles, energy, explosions effects in general) that are mix together to create good animations with the best of each techniques.



The universe of The Light of the Darkness is a project of fantasy/fiction set in a new and unprecedented mythology. The universe approaches themes such as prejudice, religion, wars, social relationships and the dialectics between opposite elements. It is constructed through a series of parallel stories and audio-visual materials. These stories interact, generating a huge net of events. Besides the stories and parallel events, the universe of The Light of the Darkness has a main story and a main character. This story represents its spine, and relates to all other events depicted in the universe.



The intention of the universe of The Light of the Darkness is to explore a setting that has a great potential in approaching correlate themes. This setting is constructed through a dialectics between the concepts of Light and Darkness. This allows us to make use of a series of provocative and intriguing themes, controversial and of great dramatic potential, such as racial prejudice (whites versus blacks), religious conflicts and the incompatible relations between social groups that tend to despise one another. This is what the universe is about: the dichotomous association between distinct instances or entities, hereby exploring these metaphoric matters so that they became concrete tensions, almost real. Therefore, in this universe, we have creatures of Light and creatures of Darkness.



We placed a hybrid creature in this world which belongs to both groups, but at the same time belongs to none. By being hybrid, Sephius, the protagonist, suffers prejudice and despite from both sides, not being accepted by none of them. All this creates an interesting context to be approached. The plot that constructs the stories of the universe is in itself quite complex and deep.

Game development scene in Brazil is extremely hard and hazy. There is really few game projects here that come out of the paper. Is very difficult to get funding and support. Colleges are very rare and when there are, its just too inefficient to train professionals. Until today there is no game industry in Brazil despite the fact there is a big game market that consuming only foreign games.

There are about 1 ½ years I've been working with other professionals from various parts of Brazil in this project, we have dedicated much effort. Last year, while professionals who had entered and exited the project, we released a trailer that had a great reception here in Brazil and is widely publicized on websites and blogs. Our demo was done entirely in Flash (Citrus Engine) and we have tried to continue with the project, trying to follow the development within our difficult reality.

Our Flash demo served a good purpose to show the game, his art and his idea. But given our limited resources, the demo does not show much of GameDesign we plan. Its very uncompleted yet. We realize that development in Flash give us very low chances of getting any support or funding to complete development on this platform.



We are therefore willing to port it to another platform, such as XNA would enable us to more easily get the support you need. I don´t  have, however, found a 2D engine that is really useful for porting this game out of flash. The overwhelming majority of engines are 3D and look kinda strange to work with 2D sidescrollers.

I wonder if someone could help us, guiding us, for example, what kind of engine would be better for us porting the game development. I'm currently trying to find new contributors to this porting work, then it would also be very welcome anyone who wanted to collaborate on this project anyway. It is a serious project and has been used quite effortlessly.

I am posting some pictures and videos of our game below. In the website you can view images and text of the characters and the universe history. Any criticism,comment, of course, is very welcome.

I will updating this topic as our development progresses.

Screens







Videos:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NqWlubZRlZU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Catb6VsFvJw


Below is the project's website:
http://www.thelightofthedarkness.com
http://blog.thelightofthedarkness.com

[flavio]

Congratulations, it's wonderful!

[BitShift]

This looks great!  It reminds me of ActRaiser.

[idoru]

It's visually fantastic. I especially like the layered environments and the menu screens.

However, I do have one critique: In the concept art, the main character's right wing is from an angel while the left wing is from a devil. In the gameplay videos, the angel wing is always facing the camera. The devil wing should be facing the camera when the character is facing left.

[Sephius]

It's visually fantastic. I especially like the layered environments and the menu screens.

However, I do have one critique: In the concept art, the main character's right wing is from an angel while the left wing is from a devil. In the gameplay videos, the angel wing is always facing the camera. The devil wing should be facing the camera when the character is facing left.

Thanks!

About the character wings this is because we are in the early development stage. We will produce all animations in a way that depending of character facing player will see the correct wing (light and darkness). This is quite challenge however because we need to find a technique for that propose since simply making all animations for 2 wings is to much memory expensive.

[Sephius]

This is a package withs screens, concepts, videos e etc. If any one want do download:

http://www.fernandorabello.com/tlotd/tLotD-Media-Kit.rar

[57E]

Looks great so far.
Definitely something I'd like to play some day.

Only criticism I have is that smoke effect on bottom of the view in "A Luz da Escuridão - Demo Alfa Walk Throught" is slightly anonying as it's stuck on view in front of the player character no mater where he goes.

[ANtY]

Graphics look fcking awesome!  
Also gameplay looks like fun, but I'd like to see more dynamic fight moves and other movement actions (dashing, wall-jumping, etc.)

Fog on the bottom looks badass

[hughperkins]

Wow, it looks stunning!  Wings are a nice touch too.  I thought they were just for decoration, but they actually work!

[ANtY]

Also background and environment looks great.

I saw the longer video and fights look boring and unnecessary. Monsters are dying in strange way, standing for 10 seconds after last hit without any action and then falling on the ground - weird. I'd change fight system or throw it out.

[CoreDumped]

wow amazing art  Congrats!

This reminds me of a game i used to play long ago: Altered Beast

[AndrewFM]

I'd second the comment about the fighting. The animations in this are slow and bulky (that's not a bad thing; it adds to the fluency of the movements), so they don't particularly lend themselves well to action oriented fighting. I'd focus less on a "hack-and-slash" style battle system, and more on a strategic and tactical one.

Also, a personal preference, but you should probably replace Papyrus with a different font

However, other than those two things, this is looking great. The art style is really nice; the scenery looks fantastic, and I love the animated logo.

[Sephius]

Thanks so much for the feedback guys. About some topics:

- Animations are slow: Yes they are. In the beginning of the development of the animations, we looking for make the animations more realistic, less styled. But the fact is the combat became too slow. We already redone most animations making them more fast with a better timing. But its was not putted in the game yet because we are another priorities right now.

- Papyrus font: Unfortunate, i use this font for this project since 2002, very early Avatar and the over use of this font we see today. We will change the use of this font, however, since its become to much common.   

- Combat issues: Well, we are in too early stage of development so, there is a lot things to do in this aspect. So don´t worries, we will improve this a lot.

- Flipped character problem (wings dark and light), bugs, and another problems: Same thing here, there is a lot things to do yet. We are focus to work in the priorities first. We still need financial resources to really put the development on the fast trails and we work hard to archive this.

Any help you could do will be great for us. Divulgation is one of the things we need most at the moment.

[Sephius]

Hey guys, i have some news. I started a Kickstarter campaign for this project:
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/epifanica/the-light-of-the-darkness-the-game

There is this new extended trailer on youtube to, showing some improvements we have done with the game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aa97W-YRJkA

I ask your support in this journey guys. It´s very important.

[Zack Bell]

I love this. Considering a donation