Illuminight

Survive the Illuminight to fight another day!

For the GMTK Gamejam 2023 - “Roles Reversed”

ILLUMINIGHT is a minimalist 2.5d action game where you defeat shadowy ILLUMINATS and bring them to rest, turning them into light wells. 

Both you and the shadows MORPH depending on whether it’s NIGHT or DAY, force the roles of HUNTER and PREY to constantly switch!

By night, the player  is HUNTED by the creatures. Use cover to survive! However during the day you are STATIONARY but can eliminate the shadows and transform them into cover for the night phase!

 Controls:

• Day: Mouse and click to move, run for your life!
• Night: Mouse to aim, click to shoot!

The game is constantly cycling between a day an night cycle. When day becomes night, everything in the game changes in some way, both visually and mechanically.  

• Enemies are vulnerable day and home in and shoot at the player at night.
• Defeated enemies are turrets you can posses and shoot from in the day, but are shields against enemy fire at night.
• At day the player character is stationary and can shoot, but can move and is vulnerable at night.

*how it fits “ROLES REVERSED”

In Illuminight we created strong duality of roles through theming and game mechanics: Light vs Dark, Hunter vs Prey, Static vs Movement. These roles would constantly switch according to the game state, however the player can gain defensive advantages by playing well during their offensive phases.

- Unfortunately the game is incomplete. We ran out of time! Characters to not properly change their states during the two phases. 

- Characters are not being represented by their proper assets either.

Intended Experience:

- The player should be in a delicate balance of being predatory during the day, but defensive during the night leveraging their advantages from killing and transforming enemies into blockades and terrain. Meanwhile, the player should be moving forwards in the map to reach a final boss at the end of the map. Defeating that boss should cause the entire game to invert, letting the player repeat the experience except from the perspective of a shadow creature! Roles reversed.

Credits 

Design + Art:

• Jai Bunnag
• Cas Whistler

Development + Design:

• Tesh Samuels
• Will Durrant