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?).

15 Likes
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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
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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:

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That’s really interesting! Congrats!

1 Like
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Hello there again,

After over two months, I have this demo for you! Enjoy! :laughing: (controls: Q - left, P - right, Q + P - jump)

So I managed to implement all of the main features that I was thinking of for this game. Three kinds of enemies, moving platforms, jumping pads, black holes and portal that opens after collecting the key. Also two new lands and some beautification tiles but that was a breeze.

The hardest times I had with getting to know that the Mobile Development App testing takes much longer to load the resources and that after attaching the debugger the dt in update function can be as high as 0.5 sec (which was the cause for my player to fall through the ground…). These were the biggest interruptions. There was also one, when I couldn’t accept that camera projection in Defold is scaled by the display scale factor. The workaround is not too tough and the API is coming but I was like… “oh, why it can’t be done some other way…!” :upside_down_face:

So the development was fine in general, thrilling in its moments I would say.

If you enjoy the demo please let me know! It will let me stay motivated. :grin: If you found some bugs or want to give feedback, you’re welcome as well.

May you have a fruitful and full of joy day!

2 Likes
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Very nice idea! I found these controls very hard. Why not just use the usual A-D-Space or simply Arrow keys and Space?

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I agree on both!

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I also agree on the controls.

This isn’t my genre but I am pretty sure it is normal practice to do very gradual tutorialisation, introducing one mechanic at a time.

For example, we’d have:
Level 1 - single flat platform, just get to the end (explains the goal)
Level 2 - similar, but have some (safe) darkness in between (introduces the light mechanic)
Level 3 - add a jump
Level 4 - add spikes
Level 5 - add enemies
etc

As it stands, I am capable of jumping down to grab the first light orb, but then I either get bonked by the enemy or impaled on the spikes :laughing: And I have no idea what to do!

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Actually I’m aware that these controls are harder. But I wanted this for two reasons, there’s little challenge in the levels themselves and I wanted to release for mobile which asks for less buttons.

@Alex_8BitSkull Yes, I wanted to do tutorialisation like that in the future. Buy so far, I have only this one level that I was using to test and show-off each of the game’s mechanics. Actually I have decided to share a demo in the last moment and didn’t do a lot of work to make your experience better, I thought that developers will pick it up with more ease actually :stuck_out_tongue: But looks like I was wrong on that one.

Thanks a lot for playing and sharing the feedback!!! :smiley:

1 Like
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It’s a tale as old as time! I’ll paraphrase something I wrote on the Defold Discord the other day because it applies here:

You have the advantage of:

  • Emotional investment (it’s your game!)
  • Full knowledge of all the rules (you wrote them)
  • Extensive practice (you have tested it over and over)

Players have all the opposite:

  • No emotional investment (one game in a list of many)
  • No knowledge of the rules (reading or playing a tutorial still doesn’t impart the subtle knowledge of hitbox sizes and movement mechanics etc etc)
  • No practice (this is the first time they play the game)

Things that seem obvious to you are very much not so for a fresh pair of eyes.

That said you should be proud of the game you have made so far. It’s got nice graphics, an interesting concept, etc.

2 Likes
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Yes, that’s true. I have to watch out not to make a game only for myself.

1 Like