The Undying Lantern

The Undying Lantern is the current working title for the game. I don’t want to name it Haunt, that would be too misleading. As a central mechanic and major story point for the game is the lantern, it seems appropriate to name the game after it. But I’ll keep thinking about it until I really feel I’ve nailed the right title.

As I expand the mechanics of the game I slowly find that I am running out of controller space. It’s important that the controls make sense for both PC and consoles. I do my best to test both tools. With some refining and thinning down of code (in blueprint), I was able to get the swing and the grapple down to one button. Similar to the whip, hold for swing, and a quick press for a grapple. It works wonderfully and feels more natural. This is to prepare for more interesting interactions as I intend for the whip to do more to bosses than just damage. I added a widget to the swing points as well for clarity, so now it will light up and show a red circle.

I’ve been tinkering with the colors as well. I do want vibrant colors, but not ones that clash or strain the eyes too much. I’ve toned down the colors a little and made them more natural for now. Perhaps the crazy colors can come in a later stage. I can’t even think about stages beyond this one for now.

Next on the agenda was adding a new resource I’m calling Lantern Light. It appears a second yellow bar below the health. It will be used for several actions such as healing, blocking, and special attacks. For now I started with the healing since it’s the simplest one. It consumes Lantern Light to heal you, and the action makes you vulnerable and slow (taken from the soulsborne games). The Light will regenerate if you hit an enemy with melee or if an enemy hits you. Gideon from the Paragon assets was a great add to the project because he has some nice effects that match the current color scheme of the light tools. Pretty straight forward for now, but it will be more complicated when I add the blocking mechanic. Lots to think about in terms of how effective and useful it will be.