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[Max Rudek]

>>>Play the demo on iOS or Android<<<

My project is the isometric puzzle game about pushing rocks and controlling clones set in the dystopian world.

Setup

The dystopian world where you and Yara live an idyllic life above the clouds. She's everything to you, a symbol of life, joy, love, friendship, your backup. You've always followed her voice through your common journey. Suddenly, everything changed when you mistakenly didn't execute her order. She fell down into the mysterious land of the Surface. Where the city of Brave New World is and the horrible things happen. You decided to look for her, maybe she's still alive... hopefully.

My goals

This is my first serious mobile game. It's not a common way to do a mobile. After a long research I've understood that something is wrong with mobile market. There are many games that rely on players coming back, players watching ads, players playing the same games. Of course there are also many, many great games like LCGO, MV, Florence, The Room... my goal is to join them. I know it's gonna be freaking hard. In Sole Light I want to touch subjects like: ordinary life problem solving, using others to reach your goals, sacrificing them through your journey to achieve what you want. I really believe that there is a group of mobile players who'd enjoy a deeper game. And my goal is to fulfill that.

Devlog

This is my first serious devlog. I'm really motivated to keep it up-to-date now. I'll try to keep this devlog lively as I make progress. I currently have a demo, so you can try the game, it's one chapter totally free.

Gameplay

This is your life. Discover the dystopia you live in. Push rocks, solve puzzles and try to make sense ofit. Perhaps you’ll even manage to stand out in the world of indistinguishable people. Or take the easy way out and just enjoy the gameplay and graphics, not really thinking much about all of it. After all, isn’t all what we do just about having a blast? You own this game, your experience is your choice. Reflect of deflect, no one sees, no one judges, no one really cares. Maybe it’ll help you look at a different angle at the world around you. Maybe you’ll just make it fun with no strings attached.









Features

• Discover the unique minimalist dystopian world
• Solve various puzzles by pushing rocks and controlling clones
• Expect more, look for a hidden deeper meaning
• Enjoy 6 extraordinary chapters that contains 36 hand-crafted levels
• If you loved Monument Valley and Inside, Sole Light is a perfect match for you

I've been quiet since the October 2018. But I'm back with a lot of new stuff.

Let me know what do you think about it, I'd really appreciate any feedback as well!

[Max Rudek]

So I added a lot of new stuff to the game I've been working on.

Core changes:

• Added new aesthetics and visuals
• New mechanic: Imitators (kinda like mindcontrol, they move the same as the player moves)
• New puzzles including elevators and rock pushing
• Deeper story

I struggled with optimization as there are a lot of triangles over here, but I faked many things and made them "static" or invisible to an eye. Now the game runs in stable 60fps on mid devices.

I had a soft depression... couldn't work for a while but I've overcome it and founded a game studio, also obtained a little help from my father's company so I can focus on it full time.

It's a mobile game... so it's really difficult to me to measure the P&L there but I've spoken with a few publishers, they seem to care mostly about Retention Day 1 for a game like this but only accept free or freemium model... I'm not sure if that's what I want. Maybe someone can share theirs experience with mobile publishers or how to get help when you have a vertical slice aka demo of a game, a company and a team of two at the moment.

Cheers!

[Max Rudek]

For those interested how the game looked like about 6-7 months ago

Here's a first approach to the main mechanic (pushing rocks) which is inspired by Sokoban style games.

Also the second one that is meant to create difficulty and challenge for a player is disappearing tiles. Player is kind of forced by design to think before moving.



As you can see a lot changed - smoother animations, improved feedback for a player and graphics in overall. Also a bunch of new mechanics were added.

[ChrisLSound]

Real nice art style/animations, real nice music. Excellent atmosphere all around. I like the presentation of the puzzles/mechanics as well. Great work!

I hope you find a publisher. This game seems great, and I feel like people would enjoy more serious mobile games if they could ignore the stigma around the platform and just give it a shot. Wishing you the best!

[Max Rudek]

Real nice art style/animations, real nice music. Excellent atmosphere all around. I like the presentation of the puzzles/mechanics as well. Great work!

I hope you find a publisher. This game seems great, and I feel like people would enjoy more serious mobile games if they could ignore the stigma around the platform and just give it a shot. Wishing you the best!

Thank you Chris! I really appreciate it. My mission is to change the way people look at mobile games.

I know it's gonna be hard to find one publisher among all those publishers sticking to statistics and metrics, but I keep that in my mind.

I see that you're a composer, it's really cool that you've liked the music, it's still a temporary one but the finished version should be pretty close to what you've heard

Have a great day or night

[ChrisLSound]

My mission is to change the way people look at mobile games.

You're well on your way to accomplishing that! I must admit I was hesitant at first, but loved the game once I decided to give it a try. Just this moment finished the last level!

BTW - if you need any help with sound effects, please feel free to reach out. I'd love to contribute in some way.

[Max Rudek]

My mission is to change the way people look at mobile games.

You're well on your way to accomplishing that! I must admit I was hesitant at first, but loved the game once I decided to give it a try. Just this moment finished the last level!

I'm really glad that you gave it a try. I'll do my best to accomplish my mission

According to SFX I'm currently working on some with a sound designer but I'll see how it'll go.

[Max Rudek]

What a day today. I've met with a very important person from Mobile Gaming community today. Awesome guy and he gave me a lot of great feedback and tips&tricks. I hope the fruit of this meeting will grow really soon.

That was a quick intro. I'd like you to know that I'm not only developing a game (that's what's the most interesting part to you) but I also meet people, talk to them and try to make a proper "marketing". Which is really diffucult but not impossible.

My goals for current week and the next one are really clear MAKE A TUTORIAL CHAPTER FINALLY, YOU MORMON!!

A lot of you guys seem to struggle with the first level of Sole Light, but the most part of you finish the game which means that my little experiment about releasing a demo without a proper tutorial to see what's gonna happen in terms of how intuitive the game is goes pretty well.

Oh and one more important info: our team is growing. The 3d graphic is joining this month to help us with the Sole Light development and learn as well.

Have a great day! Cheers.

[Max Rudek]

Yeah f*ck me. I wanted to finish the tutorial chapter as soon as possible but I got distracted. I made much more design or level design or document design or whatever design related that I almost forgot how cool is it to just create a new stuff for your game.

So I started working on a very crucial mechanic that is "undo move". Everytime the player moves the game registers the list of events that happened and remembers them. Why?

Because if you accidentally push the rock to far or make one step too far you can sometimes f*ck up a whole level. So with that mechanic you'll be able to undo every action because of reasons.

What you see on the gif will behave differently, only one tile should scale up at one time not all of them, but it's just a basic version. Oh and yeah, f*ck the colliders... for now obviously.

The main challenge for me at the moment is to use proper hierarchy and wait for every "undo action" because for example, when I press undo move there has to be a tile scaled up before the player goes backward and then the rock should move backward etc...

But it's really cool just code the new stuff   

[Max Rudek]

God damn it... I don't even know where should I start.
It's been few months since my last update but a lot has happened.

I am still developing Sole Light.. I know, I know it should be nearly finished but I still need few more months, shit happens.

Why actually? Because of things.
Running own company is difficult and consumes time. We're doing our best. You want a proof of that?

It's me standing at my Gamescom 2019 stand showing my game... I've never imagined that, but it happened.



The game is going well actually, we're more than halfway through. We're talking to publishers etc. but they need almost finished version of the game so yeah, we keep working.

Here, grab an Early Access Trailer of the game, hope you'll enjoy it.

[Max Rudek]

I sometimes ask myself a question what actually a Sole Light is.

Obviously it's a game. Maybe even a decent one, but not yet finished. It is an experience probably... a worth playing mobile game.

But for me personally it's a diagnosis of my mind before I started working on it. I was young and overwhelemed by the dayily routine, the system that gradually started fading out my identity and my place in the society. Also a lot of situations when people used other people to reach their goals without even thinking how devastating those situations can be for others.

So I started Sole Light and it now became mine perspective on society, routine, modern problems as climate change, losing self-identity etc.

I know a lot of you guys might say that it's "too much for a simple mobile game" or you can't see what I see but I though sharing my perspective and what pushed me to start development of this game might help me a bit, because I am struggling. I am struggling because there's my current life put on a bet, if I f*ck this up then I might seek for a change. It's not bad obviously, I kinda even like the idea of a major change in my life but I'd love to make more games after this one.

If you've read this (sorry for any grammar mistakes, I am not paying attention because it would crash my flow) thanks for that, let me know what are your thoughts, let me know your story and let's talk if you feel like you need to.

Some screenshots from the Chapter 4 which is currently in early prototype stage. Gameplay mechanics on this chapter will vary of course, at the momement it's just level design.

[Max Rudek]

Quick announcement!

We're going to soft launch next month but probably only in specified countries BUT if you'd like to check the game as well you can sign up to our newsletter and we'll invite you to the closed beta.

LINK BELOW
https://indeep.us20.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=47de12aa866433a8d3dbd6617&id=85a8d3d9ba

What a day was yesterday. I traveled to Poznań (Poland) one day before GiC and PGA for a Big Indie Pitch. 5 tables and 5 minutes each for pitching Sole Light to the judges.

And guess what, we've won 3rd place! Wohoo it's so cool to be appreciated.

[Max Rudek]

Hi.
So yeah it's been a while again.
If you're reading this I want you to know that somehow it's really difficult for me to follow all these "devlogs" "social media" etc. stuff there are so many more talented and consistent devs out there.
But if you somehow picked my devlog I don't want to totally disappoint you.

So here's what I've managed to achieve since last post.

The most important thing

Is that I was able to create 70% of the levels that are going to be in game (they only need final touches).
This is how some of them look like:





I also believe that we're really close to finishing the game really soon. We have almost prepared the rest of the levels and there's only 2 mechanics left to implement:

1. Undo move
2. Checkpoints

And the UI obviously.

So if you're following Sole Light I hope you're not disappointed, I am trying my best. It's my most ambitious project which happened because community of indie devs believed in me. Thank you all guys.