Lanternbearer: Elegy of Light

It’s pretty likely that if you’re reading this, you’ve never heard of this game before, so let's start with an introduction!

Lanternbearer is a 2D precision platformer where you play as an old wizard who goes on a quest to restore light to the world. To achieve your goal, you must find and defeat three other wizards who have been hoarding light (and magic) for themselves and reclaim it from them by any means necessary. 

While most of the gameplay is fairly typical platforming fare, the game also features a unique light mechanic. In the world of Lanternbearer, objects only exist if they are illuminated in some way (either producing their own light or being shone on by something else) and so the player, equipped with a lantern, has the power to make things appear or disappear by simply turning their light on and off. Using this, we can create a lot of unique challenges and complications (though we try to stay away from anything too puzzle-like).

For the final game, we plan to have three different worlds (one for each wizard), each with their own mechanics and eccentricities. As of now we’re done with a good chunk of the game’s content and almost all of our necessary systems and we hope to have the entire first world done by the middle of August. While we’re a team of entirely college students, we plan to continue working on the game in our free time after summer ends and hope to complete it in the next few years.

I’ve decided to start writing about my and my team’s progress on the game, not only as a reference and record-keeping tool for us, but also so anyone interested in the game or game development in general can follow along and see what we’re working on. 

Speaking of which - I’d like to introduce the team! 

Frog (any/all) - This is me! I’m our level designer and occasional math monkey.

Skurb (he/him) - Our artist and narrative lead

Pancake (she/her) - Our lead programmer

Kat (she/her) - Our sound designer and composer