Ongoing - UE5 Personal Project

adventure platformer game (WIP)

Lumo

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Lumo

Lumo is an adventure platformer game revolving around bringing colour back to a desaturated world. The game is currently in solo development. The game will feature stunning, stylized visuals, challenging puzzles, and a relaxed experience for players. The project built in Unreal Engine 5 coupled with other relevant software such as Blender and Adobe Suite.

Cel-Shading visual style

For the aesthetic style of the game, I wanted to use a cel-shader that separates and gradient of lighting values to various bands. This style of shading conveys a more friendly and approachable vibe to the player, and I believe it opens up to more interesting techniques to expand upon.

Custom Skybox

I hand painted pieces of clouds digitally on my iPad and brought them into UE5 to create a custom stylized skybox based on the engine's original skybox material script. This allowed me to manipulate the sky to fit the game's aesthetic theme and visual style. The skybox features moving clouds and adjustable colour based on sun position.

Level design

The tutorial level was designed to be basic, linear, without too many complex twists and turns, but at the same time show a glimpse of what the game has to offer.

The level has two key points that teaches the player two fundamental mechanics to the game, interacting and jumping.

The first key point doubles as a reveal at the crest of a hill to give the player a peek of the rest of the level, as well as inspire a sense of direction.

The second key point features a boulder to jump onto, teaching the player how to jump. This point also reveals to the player that they next have to make a choice at a split road, one of which has an extra checkpoint for interaction.

The end of the level (WIP) will transition towards the next level as the player approaches the borders of a forest.

note: The level design is a WIP.

Read on to see my process.

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Environment Design

While the level design is not complete, I embarked on some environment design to get the basics going. This included setting up a basic landscape material, landscape grass, rocks, trees (WIP), etc.

Keeping up with the theme and visual style that I wanted to establish, I hand painted some grass and used them as textures on individual blades modelled in Blender.

Making use of UE5's runtime virtual texture and vertex painting, I was able to blend materials together to create a seamless transition between the dirt, rock, grass materials and grass blades.

I have also used basic normal maps found online, but intend to hand paint them in the future to create a unique effect.

note: The environment design is a WIP.

Environment design of tutorial (plains) level

Interaction

Press 'E' to Interact would be the most fundamental input other than movement controls in the game. In this WIP level, I have created two instances where the player will interact with an object in the world to realise its results.

note: The interaction system is a WIP.

Interaction at two of the tutorial points

Character Design

Lumo is a light sprite, creatures that bear a glimmer of light from the light spirits. They cannot create their own light, and will die if they lose it.

I designed Lumo to be in ragged clothes to convey a sense of their solitude as the last remaining light sprite.

Their blue hair, eyes, and other features on their clothing is still a work in progress.

note: The character design is a WIP.