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Today on the Child of Light developer blog we reached out to Cœur de pirate to talk about writing the music for Child of Light.

1.       How is writing a score different from writing an album?

We have to think with themes, general imagery, and other aspects that are different than just a primary emotion or a story. Plus, composing only instrumental tracks was a different game for sure.

  2.       How does the music reflect Aurora’s transition into adulthood?

  I was so inspired by her growing up, it definitely shows in the music progression, how it goes to very soothing tunes to more intense, epic compositions.

  3.       What inspirations did you draw on to score Lemuria?

Obviously a bit of Danny Elfman but lots came from what I liked from children's tv shows. I love opening theme songs, they always have the greatest arrangements and progressions...

  4.       Are you a gamer? What are some of your favourite gaming experiences? 

Haha, I kind of am, more of a Japanese RPG gamer. I love when games keep the same story over and over again but change the elements...so at least you know what to expect (a little bit)

  5.       How much of the game was finished before you were called in to do the score?

Actually I was there from the beginning! They had the general feeling but nothing was set in stone. 

  6.       Was it cool being part of a Montreal-centric project? 

Definitely. I am very proud of my city, very proud that we have all of these resources here, it's about time we use them.

  7.       How did you come up with the different themes for the various characters and levels? 

Today we interviewed Brie Code Lead Programmer for Child of Light.  We talked about working on a small team and diversity and female protagonists. 

1.            What were some of the unique challenges that came up during the production of Child of Light?

  At Ubisoft Montreal we know a lot about making big games with big teams. Before starting Child of Light, I was thinking it would be a bit of a break! But while it was refreshing and different to work on a smaller team, it turned out it was definitely not easier. Everything we knew about making games was not necessarily true anymore.

  On big teams you can become highly specialized in your work. For example, during most of my career I’ve been coding AI systems. I’ve spent years and years on AI systems. But on a smaller team, everyone is a generalist. So we all got to learn A LOT. It has been a super rewarding experience to learn about all the different parts of the pipeline, all the different parts of the game engine. And especially to be able to get closer to the hardware and learn more about all the different consoles we develop for. We’ve got an AI programmer doing all the networking, and a gameplay programmer owning the sound engine. And this “everyone does a bit of everything” ethos stretched beyond the programming team. For example, our writer would run parts of the story by me, and one of our designers was doing very technical scripting. It’s been a really varied and fun experience.

  2.            How do you think the diversity of the Child of Light team helped the production?

  You can find a lot to read about how diverse teams can outperform even more qualified teams, and it is not difficult to see why. Diverse teams bring a variety of personalities, backgrounds, and ideas. They tend to communicate more since there is no assumption of shared knowledge or previously-established social rituals to uphold. They also tend to bring multiple approaches to problem solving …or even to defining what problems to solve. And this last point is the most interesting to me.

  I think it's a really good time to look to diverse teams for innovation. It’s no secret that the game industry suffers from a lack of diversity, and this shows in what the industry produces. We make games about guns and about the same protagonist over and over, from game to game to game. But what other games could we create?

  3.            What do you think about the burgeoning community of innovative game developers?

  I love what is going on in the indie community and what they are doing to explore new gameplay, new stories, new ways to convey meaning. All my favorite games right now are indie games. And tech-wise, it is a really exciting time also. Partly because the tech has sort of stagnated, we have to look at innovating no longer just on realism but on everything else. And at the same time, so many people who aren’t gamers now have tablets or smartphones. Something I’ve seen recently is a remarkable number of my non-gamer friends inheriting previous-gen consoles, and wondering what to play. (They love Journey.)

So I think we can innovate, and we can expand our audience, if our development teams include not only hardcore gamers but also casual gamers, gamers who used to game but don’t anymore, and especially people who love culture and media but don’t game (yet). And I think we have a good mix like this on Child of Light. We’re mostly hardcore industry veterans, some of us are more casual gamers, we come from all over the world, and we have a good balance of gender and sexualities and ages. With all these different perspectives, we’ve had some great debates and we’ve learned a lot from each other. And I hope we’ve made a game that can appeal to a wide range of people, from seasoned Squaresoft fans to my friends who have just discovered Journey.

  4.            How do you feel about making a game with a female protagonist?

I think representation in media is very important. I remember one day while I was finishing Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, I was rushing through the metro, and I saw this life-size poster with the Brotherhood flanking Ezio. A teenage girl walked up in front of me, slowly, looking at the poster, and then she walked straight up to the female Assassin and reached out and touched her face and just stood there for a while looking.

  I have at times debated whether this is the right industry for me. I’ve been attached to the computer since I was tiny and grew up loving games and loving programming. And this industry is an industry full of growth and opportunity and passion. And my colleagues are some of the hardest working and most friendly and intelligent people I have ever met. But at times I get lonely. It can be lonely to be the only woman or one of very few women on the team, or to be the only one with my own girly taste in film or books or whatever. But seeing that girl standing there, it made it all worth it, because I realized that it is worth pushing for more diversity within the industry and for a diversity of characters within the games we make.

  That girl reminded me what it was like to be young and looking for role models and how powerful it can be to see yourself represented in the media that surrounds you. My favorite games growing up were Colonel’s Bequest and Zak McKracken. Later it was Starcraft, then the Longest Journey and Morrowind, and more recently it’s been Skyrim and Gone Home. Most of my favorite games have compelling characters, often compelling female characters, and I think that is not a coincidence.

  For many years most films have had mostly male characters because it is assumed that while women will see a movie with a male protagonist, men won’t see a movie with a female protagonist. And so female-led movies won’t make money. But I think this last year may have disproved this. It’s exciting and you can look it up: In the top 100 grossing films of 2013, female-led movies grossed on average more than male-led movies. As well, it was found this year in an analysis of movies since 1990 that movies that pass the Bechdel test have netted higher than movies that don’t.

  Can we prove the same with games? I want to.

  And so it has been such a pleasure and an honour and a dream come true to work on Child of Light. I love the character of Aurora. She’s brave and tough and relatable and girly and cute and rises against adversity. She’s an interesting character.

Today we interviewed concept artist Serge Meirinho about designing characters for Child of Light.   

1. Can you tell us what your background is and what you’ve worked on before Child of Light?

  I’ve worked 10 years in the video game industry, 2 years working on cartoons, and 6 more years as a comic book writer and illustrator. I won an International Manga Award for my comic book “Natty”, published by Dargaud. It’s adapted into Chinese this year!

Art Director, concept Artist, Writer… more or less I’ve always drawn or written stories and I love it!

  2. What was your favorite thing about working on Child of Light?

  The best part is that I was given a lot of liberties when it came to my characters. Thomas (the art director), Jeffrey (the writer), and Patrick (the creative director) really trusted me to create a coherent group of visual personalities, and it was really refreshing. It helped that we have very similar tastes and artistic backgrounds! Working on the game was a lot of fun and I think that fun was translated to the characters.

The other really cool thing is that the drawings are directly integrated into the game for cut-scenes. We get to create our 2D art and watch the animator’s bring it to life!

 I also worked with Thomas on the stained glass cinematics, inspired by Disney’s “The Beauty and The Beast” introduction, and it reminded me of working on comic books a lot, which I liked too.

   3.What was challenging about working on Child of Light?

  It’s not that easy to create strong female characters that are not, excuse the expression, “men with boobs”. It was a real concern for the team that we didn’t fall in the trap of the “damsel in distress” trope. Brianna challenged me on this specific subject. She wanted to be sure we had real characters and not just stereotypes.

  In the beginning, Aurora’s look was a classic fairy in her teens. Afterwards Vivian tested a 12 years old version, but her personality wasn’t clear enough.  Then I tried young adult version, like a really kick-ass Tinker Bell, but she ended up feeling like a typical ‘female warrior’ type.

  We felt a little lost in our quest to find Aurora, so I revisited Patrick’s original pitch: a painting from the Swedish illustrator John Bauer, depicting a fragile girl in the woods.  I drew a few iterations of a little girl (the one on a hill near an altar), Thomas added a cool pose and an oversized sword and bam! There she was!  After that I drew the image of Aurora at three different ages. What confirmed our choice is that the women of the team liked her without any “yes, but”. After each trailer, we saw all the fan art from the web and we felt like we weren’t alone to love our main character. Thank you all for the beautiful drawings you’ve sent us! We love each and every one of them!

  4. Where did the idea for Aurora growing up come from?

We had already toyed with the idea of seeing Aurora at various stages of her life. When you add in the RPG elements and levelling mechanics, it almost seems natural to have her age with each level she gains. Apart from being a visual metaphor both for video games and fairy tales, it’s simple, clear and unusual!

5.Who are your favorite characters? 

In fairy tales, you’re not involved with the main character if you don’t have empathy for him or her. The hero has to be noble and courageous, with a loving heart, a naive spirit and a strong drive for justice. But the story will be quite bland if the villain doesn't add salt, pepper and mustard to it!

  That being said, my favorite characters are Aurora and Umbra. The first because I love the idea of a little girl in a dress, afraid of nothing and fighting with a giant sword, and the second because the Queen is so mean and mad and determined to spoil everything. And it’s cool that Jeffrey, the writer, didn't write in a prince for Aurora to fall for.

I’m also fond of Oengus, the big furry beast who reminds me of “Ludo” from the Jim Henson’s “Labyrinth”, Robert because I like his geeky personality (and his quest for love is cute) and Genofeva. She reminds me of a cartoon character I really liked when I was a child: “Themis” from “Ulysse 31”.

This week we sat down with Art Director Thomas Rollus to talk about the creation process for Aurora.  We'll show some images of Aurora at different stages of development to give some insight on how she came to be the character she is today. 

The first iteration of Aurora was inspired by the women from the beginning of the 20th century: “Art deco” tomboy style. She was between 14 and 16 years old, mischievous, curious and without fear. She has short hair to go with her style but also for technical reasons.  Until our programmers found a solution, we thought Aurora was going to need short hair. If you look at the environment you can see that it was more detailed. This look proved to be problematic since it made it difficult for the player to understand what was going on in the game. So in the end we opted to go with a simpler watercolor feel.

  Following a presentation to the management, we received feedback saying they’d like to see a more unique and iconic look for Aurora. We have tried different styles from the basic cartoon to the more realistic but in the end we chose a fierce version of Aurora with flowing, colorful hair and an over-sized sword.

    During our design process we grew further and further removed from our original idea. We went from a child to a teenage Aurora and distanced ourselves from the fairy tale settings.  One Monday morning Pat pointed out how far we drifted. We decided to go back to our original idea and Serge and Vivian and I made rapid sketches. We quickly settled one of my drawings. So this became the first drawing of the final version of Aurora. The key elements are all there; the flowing hair, crown and sword we thought that the idea of her carrying an adult sword and wearing the crown make her more loveable and determined to succeed because she needed to fight the weight of her own weapons.

Today we have Aurelie Debant who will tell us about Aurora's powers and spells as she embarks on her journey through Lemuria.

1. How does crafting help Aurora on her journey?

It brings numerous advantages to her in combat. She can gain the power to paralyze and do more physical or magical damage to her opponents, or boost her defenses. But, in order to create these objects, the player will have to explore the realm of Lemuria and win fights to reclaim precious oculi. Pairing up the oculi will give the player a strong edge in combat!

  2. How many crafting combination are there in the game?

  There are more than 30 crafting recipes. The player can place their oculi in 3 different places: sword, armor or talisman and the effects will be different depending on their position,. You can mix and match to find the perfect combination. If you add in all of the different characters that join Aurora during the course of the game, it adds up to more than 600 combinations available.

  The type of oculi found in the game will differ from player to player. We encourage talking to your friends who play the game and swap oculi to create a combination that works for you. 

  3. What kind of attacks/powers does Aurora have at her disposal?

  Aurora is a well-balanced character who can use physical attacks as well as strong spells. Being the Child of Light, she’s the only one who can manipulate light spells which are really efficient against “dark” type enemies. She also has a counter-attack at her disposal that will really help her against stronger enemies. Not to mention her excellent sword!

    4. Who are the sidekicks that join Aurora?

  Each character is really different and their reasons to join Aurora on her quest are also pretty diverse. Just to name a few, we have Finn the elementary mage with powerful spells, Norah who masters time and Òengus the fighter who can protect his allies by taking damage for them. All of the sidekicks have their own features and it will be in the player’s best interest to recruit them by accomplishing their side-quests during Aurora’s adventures.

    5 - What kinds of enemies will Aurora have to battle?

Cette semaine sur le blogue des concepteurs de Child of Light, notre entrevue avec le Concepteur de niveaux Senior Pascal Thériault. Voici ce qu’il a à nous dévoiler sur les idées qui ont forgé Child of Light.

1. Qui es-tu et qu’elles ont été tes taches sur le jeu?

  Je travaille depuis maintenant 8 ans pour Ubisoft en tant que concepteur de niveaux sur différents jeux d’action aventure, dont notamment Prince of Persia ainsi que tous les opus d’Assassin’s Creed. Mon expérience passée était davantage liée soit au côté technique, où j’ai pu œuvrer en tant que scripteur, soit au côté design, davantage relié à l’aspect narratif. J’ai donc joué un rôle de concepteur de mission et même d’assistant directeur de conception de missions. 

Étant arrivé dans les derniers mois de la production de Child of Light, le monde de Lemuria avait déjà été défini et planifié dans son ensemble. Par contre, un point important demeurait en suspend et ce point allait permettre de favoriser la rejouabilité en plus de donner vie au monde de Lémuria. L’objectif : offrir au joueur quelques quêtes optionnelles qui mettraient en scène différents personnages qui font de ce monde un endroit cohérent et attachant.

J’ai donc pu réaliser ou adapter certains environnements et certaines séquences de jeu en bâtissant la charpente de la géométrie. Une fois l’implémentation de ces missions terminées, j’ai pu aider les autres membres de l’équipes Level Design à compléter l’intégration des cinématiques, à valider les collisions ou encore le placement d’ingrédients dans le monde et même à balancer et synchroniser les pièges physiques.

  2.Quels genres de pièges peut-on retrouver dans Chilf of Light?

Les pièges dans Child of Light sont surtout pensés en fonction du fait qu’Aurora a la possibilité de voler, de foncer rapidement dans une direction et de faire du surplace, un peu comme un hélicoptère. Plus concrètement, le joueur retrouvera certains pics ou encore de grandes roues de moulins qui seront activés selon une rythmique définie, proposant au joueur un défi de synchronisation en plus d’un défi d’habileté de manipulation.

 Dans un certain sens, l’environnement parfois austère fait également parti des types de pièges puisque l’on y retrouvera certaines surfaces dangereuses, comme des roseaux, des clôtures pointues ou encore de la lave et des boules de feu. Chaque partie du monde de Lémuria propose une direction artistique unique qui nourrit et défini également le type d’élément dangereux et de pièges qui sont utilisé.

 Finalement, afin d’augmenter et de balancer la difficulté de manière progressive dans le jeu, nous ajoutons à ces pièges quelques endroits où le joueur aura à naviguer avec ou contre le courant formé par de forts vents ou encore des chutes d’eau, ce qui ajoute une autre couche de complexité au séquences de pièges.

 3. Comment avez-vous rendu l’exploration plus amusante?

L’exploration occupe une grande place dans le jeu puisque nous voulions vraiment que le joueur puisse découvrir librement des endroits et des personnages par lui-même tout en étant constamment motivé par le fait de vivre une nouvelle expérience ou de trouver davantage de trésors cachés. Pour ce qui est de la navigation, le mot clé ici est la diversité mais également une bonne balance en termes de types d’objectifs.

 Nous avons donc subdivisé le monde en diverses sections qui représentent chacune une forme différente de défi permettant au joueur de vivre une expérience variée. Certaines portions du monde sont créées en mettant parfois l’emphase sur le chronométrage, d’autres fois les sections proposent des défis de manipulation logiques tandis qu’à d’autres endroits l’emphase sera mise sur la coopération avec Igniculus. Finalement, le joueur aura également à résoudre certains puzzles, offrant donc des pauses dans la rythmique puisque le joueur aura à s’arrêter pour réfléchir et exécuter les bonnes actions en ordre ou en désordre afin de lui permettre de continuer à progresser dans son exploration.

 Le nombre de récompenses et trésors à trouver vient également jouer un rôle crucial dans l’exploration et la navigation puisque le joueur sera perpétuellement à la recherche d’ingrédients lui permettant de renforcer les attributs de ses personnages. Le système de crafting étant au cœur de l’expérience de jeu, le joueur est donc amené à rechercher le plus d’Oculi possible afin de les combiner pour en créer de plus puissants. Lémuria regorge donc d’une très grande quantité de ces Oculis, de potions et de trésors qui sont éparpillés à divers endroits, parfois très visibles, parfois cachés dans des endroits secrets.

 Enfin, l’aspect coopératif n’est pas à négliger non plus dans la navigation puisque l’interaction y est constamment présente avec notre second personnage principal, Igniculus. Selon le résultat de nos playtests jusqu’à maintenant, l’exploration constitue l’une des activités les plus appréciées par nos joueurs.

4. Quels sont les repercussions de la cooperation dans l’exploration?

Malgré sa petite taille, Igniculus la luciole sera d’une grande aide pour Aurora. Le joueur pourra contrôler Igniculus par lui-même ou encore à l’aide d’un second joueur qui pourra participer à l’action en simultané. La coopération amenée par ce personnage est reflétée sous tous les aspects du jeux, ce qui permettra d’aider le joueur principal au combat en ralentissant des ennemis ou en redonnant de l’énergie aux membres de l’équipe, durant les puzzle en utilisant sa luminosité, puis finalement dans l’exploration.

On this week’s post for the child of light dev blog we interviewed seinor level designer Pascal Theriault!  Check out what he had to say about level design for child of light

1.            What’s your background at Ubisoft and what have you been doing on Child of Light?

  I’ve been working at Ubisoft for nearly eight years as a level designer for different games like Prince of Persia and Assassin’s Creed. Since being added to the Child of Light team, I’ve been working on creating new characters to make the world of Lemuria feel more alive and real. I’ve mostly been working on pumping up the graphical elements, special effects and animations.

2.            What kinds of traps are there in Child of Light?

Traps in Child of Light have to take into account Aurora's abilities: she can fly, dash in any given direction and hover like a helicopter. So most of the traps are mechanical and the player will have to face a rhythmic challenge as well as a manipulation challenge. Traps are also combined with other gameplay elements, so sometimes you can disable them with Igniculus, or alter their direction in order to clear the way. 

Sometimes, the environment itself is made of traps, so you get dangerous surfaces like bramble branches, thorn fences, lava or fireballs. Every part of Lemuria offers a unique artistic direction, which brings a whole set of traps with it. For example, the player will have to deal with narrowing walls, magic crystals that shoot lightning, or pits full of poison. 

Finally, in order to increase the difficulty during the course of the game, we sometimes add strong water or air currents to the area, which up the difficulty of the trap or the level.

  3.            How do you bring fun into navigation?

Exploration plays a huge part in the game; we wanted the player to be motivated to discover the world and its characters and treasures. Navigation-wise, the keyword was 'diversity'.

We've subdivided the world into different sections which represent specific challenges for the player. Some of them are created with timing in mind, using a lot of traps to slow the player down. Others are more logic-based, to make the player stop and think. Other challenges will put the emphasis on the cooperation between Aurora and Igniculus. Some of the game environments are labyrinthine and others more about combat.

The number of rewards to unlock and treasures to find is a crucial part of exploration and navigation since the player will constantly be on the look-out for new ingredients to create potions or items. The crafting system is at the heart of the game, so the player will have to find more “oculis”. They are the building blocks of the game. Oculi, items, potions and treasures are scattered throughout Lemuria, sometimes visible, sometimes hidden in secret places.

4.            How does Co-Op effect the navigation in game?

  Despite his size, Igniculus the firefly will be a huge help to Aurora. The player will be able to control Igniculus by themselves if playing alone, or have a second player control him in co-op mode. Igniculus can slow down enemies, heal party members, light up dark parts of levels or even unlock treasures.

Combat isn't triggered randomly; the player will have to choose whether to begin a battle. In some locations, where the path is pretty narrow, Igniculus can temporarily blind enemies, allowing Aurora to pass by them without a fight. Similarly, if the player does want to fight but Aurora is injured, Igniculus will be able to heal her and recharge her magical energy, making her ready for combat.