Illuminated thoughts

Just some quick notes with reference to the amalgamation of my Chiaroscuro and Zac's Lantern game.

After the pitch we had a quick discussion about the two ideas, the key point being of course that they approach the same idea (the rather obvious duality of light and darkness), but from opposite ends - while his character emanates light, mine draws in darkness.

There didn't seem to be a way to comfortably reconcile these two concepts in the already quite well-defined character of Zac's lantern guy, so this is where the idea developed of having two characters with distinct abilities who have to help each other through the environment. As evident in Zac, Amjad and Cameron's blogs, they are rapidly progressing and solidifying the concept - I particularly like the idea they have developed of the dark character taking a slightly less human/solid form and being able to climb and jump to areas Lantern Guy can't, and it opens up more scope for puzzle elements than were available to either of the characters individually.

I do think it would be nice to keep the lantern as a linking motif between the characters - possibly as something they have to pass back and forth and use in different ways in order to solve puzzles (in the hands of Lantern guy, it emanates light, whereas in the hands of the dark character it draws in the darkness). On a different tack, if the two characters are made completely distinct, it might be worth keeping our minds open to the possibility of the game working as a two-player co-op experience, but I don't think it really needs to be considered for the purposes of the prototype.

As it stands, I am perfectly happy to step back from the design and development of the Lantern game at this stage unless my input is specifically requested. I think these guys are doing a stellar job and taking the gameplay in an interesting direction.