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[Speelbaars]

<sup>Hey everyone!

We're Speelbaars an indie development team from the Netherlands. We're eight students working on our debut game called Lumini.

We'll try to share as much as possible on our development progress here and with dev blogs on our website (http://speelbaars.com).</sup>

^{Lumini is a game in which you control a swarm of little creatures with the task to keep them safe from harm. On your journey you'll encounter different enemies and environments with which you'll need to deal. How you deal with them is up to you. By gathering energy you can get new Lumini at crystals in the game. The new lumini will be evolved versions of the originals with each their own special ability, the type of lumini and amount you get is based on actions you took in the game so far. The swarm adapts to your play style. You can also split up your swarm and control both sub-swarms at the same time to solve puzzles and get and edge in combat situations.}

<sup>The story of Lumini is that the lumini have been gone for thousands of years and in the mean time another civilization has disrupted the balance on the planet. The old civilization has deplenished the energy on the planet causing the environment to go haywire. With the disappearance of the civilization, the lumini come back to the planet, but find themselves in a changed and hostile environment. It's up to you to find out what happened in the passed and how you can restore balance on the planet.

We try to tell the story entirely through environmental storytelling. You won't find any cutscenes, text or voice overs in the entire game.  The aim is to give the players hints, pieces of the puzzle as you may and have them put together the story themselves. It's not necessary to understand everything about the planets history on your first playthrough.</sup>

The aim is to release the game this summer on Steam(we've been greenlit in May 2014) and we're still working on getting it released on other stores and possibly consoles.

Feel free to give us feedback as we definitely need it!
Follow us on Twitter(https://twitter.com/Speelbaars) and Facebook(https://www.facebook.com/speelbaars).

[Speelbaars]

^{We're currently building the third world, which is gonna be a forest that is supposed to give the player a more happy and hopeful feeling after the 2nd (desert) world that is more melancholic and depressing.}

An overview of one of the 5 scenes (the forest has actually 5 scenes instead of the 4 that the other worlds have)




We're also playing around with light effects (in-game shots the scene above)

^{We also started working on the upgraded abilities of specific lumini types.
The yellow lumini will have a radar as a final ability to find energy that you use to breed new lumini.
We'll be hiding some energy plants out of sight, for which you'll need the radar.}

Radar function with awesome programmer art

^{The last thing we've been working on (and still testing with a lot) is the use of wind 'tunnels' in puzzles and other parts of the level.
It's fun to get a boost, but we still have some issues with movement while being boosted (as illustrated in the puzzle below)}

If you have any feedback or tips feel free to share! 

[Speelbaars]

^{We already shared it yesterday, but here is the radar ability in action.}

^{Our concept artist also made some concepts for narrative locations in the forest and the first architectural designs for the last world in the game (which is gonna be a rural area with it's own distinctive architectural style).}

^{We also added a Lilly type of plant in the world that interacts with the swarm. It has no real gameplay function besides giving the feeling that you're part of the world and that it reacts on what you do. Making the world fun and something you can play around with adds to the immersiveness of our game we think.
It has no model yet, I'll share another gif when the model is implemented.}

Let us know what you think. Do you like interactive objects in a game that have no real impact in the game besides adding fun and immersiveness?

If you have any other tips or feedback, feel free to share!

[Ninja Dodo]

Well, I'm biased since my brother is working on this, but game is looking sweet.

Do you like interactive objects in a game that have no real impact in the game besides adding fun and immersiveness?

More environmental feedback is always good! Makes the world less static.

Good luck with development! 

[Mixer]

Ooh, the game is looking very polished indeed. It's a pity the gif is lagging for me bit, maybe it is just my browser. Really interested in these swarms, they are interesting to watch twirl around and follow each other.

Goodjob for planning out with those mockups first :D