Into the Light | designer

Looking for the Light

Solo Project

2018 - 18

★ About the Game:

Into the Light is a heartwarming game about a group of friends going through a misunderstanding. Using comics and puzzles, play through the main character's inner struggle to understand both her friends and feelings.

This game is designed for mobile devices, making use of gesture recognition. This game was created using Unity and C#.

★ Design:

Question: Since this is a solo project, what kind of story do I want to tell?
Solution: I wanted to tell a story that focuses on the main character’s feelings. This story is about a girl who feels like she is drifting away from her friends, mostly due to circumstances, and the feelings she goes through from that realization.

Question: Since this game was designed to be on mobile devices, I wanted to incorporate the touch screen in a way that would reflect the character's emotions. How could I do that?
Solution: I decided to use the touch screen to solve puzzles, where the puzzles symbolize the main character’s emotions in the form of a dairy. For example, in the climax, the main character feels like all of her friends are leaving her and experiences heart break. In the puzzle page, the player sees a full heart, and uses the touch screen to draw a line through the heart to represent the heart breaking.

Question: What’s the best way to tell this story, and present the puzzles?
Solution: Greatly influenced by anime and manga, I decided to create this story in the form of a comic. Each story arc would encompass a series of panels containing pieces of the narrative, the diary, and a puzzle. Since the main character is an artist, the player's drawings on the touch screen are akin to her finishing her drawings.