Candle, which Kickstarter campaign has just begun, is a dynamic graphic adventure. It inherits the spirit of classic cinematic adventures like Out of This World or Flashback, and the gameplay mechanics of classic platformer adventures likeAbe’s Oddysee and Abe’s Exoddus, or Heart of Darkness. However, we want it to go one step forward, and so we have brought together all the key features in those games to create a unique title focused on calm puzzle resolution but with a modern and dynamic control over the character.
The most important feature of the gameplay comes from a very specific ability of Teku, the main character: instead of a hand, he carries a candle that can be lit at certain spots, and he must do whatever he can to prevent it from being extinguished. The flame of the candle is key to solving many of the puzzles, as well as uncovering lots of secrets and clues.
But we didn’t want the gameplay to drive the entire desing of Candle. We love games that have a personal touch, games that do not only deliver a fresh and polished gameplay, but a different and interesting art style. This is why we came up with a risky and difficult idea: to create the entire graphics of the game in a traditional handmade way – not just faking it using the most common digital painting tools.
We paint the entire graphics of the game physically with watercolors and ink, and the we scan all that stuff in order to build the sprites of the environments, items, menus, etc. Also, the animations of every character and animal in the game are not digital, instead we draw and paint them frame-by-frame, then we scan every single image and build the spritesheets for the animations. Once we have all this working in Unity 4, we setup each level, each scene and each character and so we get a nice handmade look for the visuals. And so, everything lives within the game.
To support this art style, we are building the story in a different and distinctive way. We want it to have mature contents told as a child story, shrouded in innocence and ingenuity. We call it an“adult tale”, and we hope that all of you enjoy this vision.
KEY FEATURES
- Handmade visuals with true watercolors and ink. Frame-by-frame animations.
- Dynamic graphic adventure with platformer controls.
- Unique gameplay based on the use of light.
- Scenes and characters behave dynamically according to the state of the candle.
- Player inventiveness is key to keep the flame lit against environmental hazards.
- Classic-flavoured soundtrack.
- Complex puzzles based on player deductions after environment observations.
- Steamworks integration (gamepad, cloud saves, achievements) if we get greenlit.
Here the users can vote on Greenlight to help the game get into Steam. Teku Studio’s website also holds a collection of artworks and in-game screenshots to check. And the YouTube channel has a making-of video to check out the development process.
