Light Leap - mobile platformer with light mechanics

Dev diaries
#1

Hello,

I’m currently working on a mobile platformer game, where the level is obscured by default and you collect small light orbs to let your character shine to beat the obstacles! It’s my first project that I want to complete and publish.

You can see the example gameplay on the video below.

It is still in very early phase of development, I don’t have menus, levels, just some building blocks of the game.

The hardest part so far was making the level black and let the player (or orbs) shine. I used a custom render script so it was really tough job for me, hobbyist coder.

I have also a rather innovative way to control player movement - by using two buttons in a portrait layout. Left button moves player left, right one right but two buttons together make the character jump! I liked this idea from the very beginning and I’m happy how it turned out to work.

Thanks (so far) go to @Pawel for this tutorial on light maps, to @benjames171 for Alpha Squirell in his collection of open source games made in Defold and to Kenney (www.kenney.nl) for the 1-bit platformer pack :smiley:
Thank you guys really, that helped me out, without your work I wouldn’t be able to accomplish this! :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

I plan to add some more of the traditional platformer mechanics, menus, sounds, build a level parser and switch to production mode where I’d create around 50 levels.

One thing I wonder about is, if to add more light related features (I have on my mind something like “black holes”, draining the light from the player) or to wait for the sequel :thinking: (yes, I’m thinking about the sequel already :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:).

And the publishing part, well… BIG UNKNOWN! Go solo or with a publisher? How small games like that one monetize the best? And what should be the marketing strategy? If you want to share any advice on this part you’d be more than welcome! :sweat_smile:

Anyway. Thank you for reading that far! Enjoy your day and have a fruitful gamedev time! :hugs:

EDIT: Added attribution to Kenney (how did I forget it?).

13 Likes
#2

Nice idea with controls, especially for mobile!

If you target for a small platformer - imho no need for a publisher (mainly because its extremely hard to get a publisher even for a big platformer nowadays), release first for free on itch or any other platform to get feedback and then maybe try to add monetization and release on mobile (as it perfectly suits mobile)

Marketing - share it everywhere (X, Bsky, YT, Mastodon, Reddit, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook - sorted in decreasing priority), describe your journey, but try to lure indie gamers the most, not devs, even though they spend a lot on games (like me :D)

For this game mobile looks like the best fit :wink: But it’s all totally up to you, which way would you like to go - free, free with (rewarded) ads, free with cosmetic microtransactions, free-ish with whole metagame, premium and to which platform too - mobile, web, pc, consoles. Great you chose Defold, because you are not limited in this :smiley:

If you aim big, think for a hook for your game that will distinguish it immediately :wink:

3 Likes
#3

Thank you for the advice Pawel. I still need to digest everything you wrote. I wanted to go premium the most for it’s simplicity of execution and honesty of contract with the player, but yeah all the options still open I think. I was expecting something like you said with publishers :pensive: Going solo seems like a lot of work of the kind I don’t like, but hey, I want some people to play this game after all :wink: At this moment I’m thinking that I’ll just do as you say :sweat_smile:

I’m gonna update this diary with future stuff to come, so to stay in touch with you fellows :grin:

2 Likes
#4

That’s really interesting! Congrats!

1 Like