Luceira

Destruction

Fabula's Tales take the form of physical objects of darkness that obscure and block off. Tales must be interpreted which absorbs that darkness into the player, fueling their Creativity, whilst unveiling the truth of what was underneath.

Creation

Creativity fills in the gaps of and recontextualizes reality. By using Creativity the player can create physical objects out of the darkness of Tales. The following are some examples of things the player can create from darkness: - Bridges - Levers - Boxes - Doors

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Voces Lucis is a concept for a puzzle-roguelite video game about the eponymous group of beings who have lost themselves within the Mindscape. Spero—the newest of the Voces—must delve into runaway trains of thought in order to save their companions and help them remember who they are.

It takes inspiration from Blue Prince, Deltarune, and AI: The Somnium Files, with a sprinkle of The Amazing Digital Circus in there for good measure.

Destruction

Fabula's Tales take the form of physical objects of darkness that obscure and block off. Tales must be interpreted which absorbs that darkness into the player, fueling their Creativity, whilst unveiling the truth of what was underneath.

Creation

Creativity fills in the gaps of and recontextualizes reality. By using Creativity the player can create physical objects out of the darkness of Tales. The following are some examples of things the player can create from darkness: - Bridges - Levers - Boxes - Doors

—

Voces Lucis is a concept for a puzzle-roguelite video game about the eponymous group of beings who have lost themselves within the Mindscape. Spero—the newest of the Voces—must delve into runaway trains of thought in order to save their companions and help them remember who they are.

It takes inspiration from Blue Prince, Deltarune, and AI: The Somnium Files, with a sprinkle of The Amazing Digital Circus in there for good measure.

Trains of Thought are the main gameplay loop of the game. The player meditates on a runaway thought that transports them to a series of connected puzzle rooms. There are several colours of puzzle room that correspond with each Vox and their Ideal (the puzzle mechanic that they grant the player) and the player needs to solve the puzzles and progress as far as they can in an attempt to reunite the Voces and repair the bonds between them.

Puzzle rooms are self-contained pre-determined puzzles with very little—if any—randomization, allowing skill and knowledge to contribute to better runs. Think of them like small escape rooms. However to retain replayability and depth the idea would be to have multiple *choices* in each room for how you want to solve the puzzle. For example, a block pushing puzzle that you can solve quickly and move on, or you can use extra Actions to unblock a side area with a reward in it. Or different paths to take that alter the next room. Stuff like that.

For each run, the player has a limited number of Actions they can take. Actions includes interacting with objects, making dialogue choices, using abilities, and pretty much everything else you can do in the game. There are limited ways to regain Actions, so using them wisely is required to make it as far as you can, once you run out of Actions, that run ends. The idea is that once you understand each puzzle room you can get through them in the shortest number of actions and progress further than the last time.

After a run you return to a hub space known as the Helix, a strange facility with no exit, named such due to the spiraling staircases that curl around either side of the central area. Within the Helix you can hang out with the Voces, check up on and progress their Memories (questlines), and review your previous runs. Memories are the main method of meta-progression, granting you mechanics and allowing you to expand on them through progression of the story.

There are also tons of secrets hidden throughout the Mindscape that allow you to utilize knowledge and abilities you have gained in new ways in rooms you've already been in.

The goal of the game is to defeat Malum and repair the damage it has done to the Mindscape. The game starts out in flat colours with minimal detail, but as you rescue each Vox and progress their memories colour and detail return to the realm, the best representation I can give of this right now is the player character. At the start of the game, they look like this:

Then, after the intro to the game, they gain some depth and detailing:

And with each Vox rescued, they become more detailed. The restoration of each colour adds that aspect to their design.

For the player character: - Hair = Yellow - Eyes = Blue - Sweater = Green - Pants = Black

This same layered depth applies to all characters and objects in the game, which may or may not be absolute hell for me to make but I'm up to the challenge with how enjoyable these sprites have been to make so far.

Each character is associated with an "Ideal" and a colour. For example, the player character is associated with Hope, which is associated with the colour Red, hence the basis of their design being red.

This post is already long enough so I think I'll make another post at another time talking more about the mechanics and characters and stuff. It'll all be posted under the Voces Lucis tag like this post so it's easy to find if you wanna look through everything.

If you think this idea is cool or something you'd wanna play then let me know! Who knows I might actually end up making it.