Conscious Light is a game I developed in Godot 4.7. I entered it as a submission to The Juniper Dev Very Serious Game Jam.
It is a game about memory loss; navigating the places of your past and trying to reconnect them to move forward.
I made this game to take my first big step in game development. Up to this point, I had made three prototypes. They were basically just Godot projects where I had been trying to recreate gameplay from other games I liked. These are still currently prototypes, but I do eventually want to really flesh them out. A friend of mine sent me the link to Juniper Dev's video announcing the Game Jam. I had seen her content before and the timeframe given seemed very doable, 7 days to make a game and the theme was announced: "Spin to Win".
Admittedly, it threw a total curveball at me. "Spin to Win" was not a theme I was expecting at all, and I had no clue where to start. But nevertheless, from June 19th to June 26th, it was time to make a game. Thankfully, my boss was actually really encouraging about the possibility of me making a whole video game, and let me take a week of my vacation time to work on this.
Originally, the plan I had was to participate in the jam with this friend that suggested it in the first place, and we had some ideas we'd initially been spitballing. One was a caveman heist game where you'd try to escape a cave with a dinosaur egg. The other one we had was a "speedrun destroying a PC with viruses" simulator. We tried to make the latter idea work with "Spin to Win" by utilizing a randomization feature, determining what type of virus you had to install on this fake PC. But the whole idea fell through, and he unfortunately did not get to keep the time off from work he had asked for. Plus, these ideas just weren't hitting, it felt like we'd be forcing the "spinning" element in too much. We just thought of these ideas before the Jam even started, and I didn't feel like it was gonna work. For 2 days, it felt like I just lost time... but I ended up getting the idea that I needed.
One of my favorite platforming games is Tak 2: Staff of Dreams, and I'd been semi-interested in creating a 3D platformer. The first level of that game puts you in Tak's Dream, a large expanse with these floating islands made of goop and globs. I like replaying this level a lot. The music, sound effects, and visuals has always been something I've been drawn to.
Anyways, I pondered and stewed on it, trying to think of how to integrate spinning into it. I don't know exactly why it had been on my mind... but the topic of memory loss was stirring around in there. Alzheimer's, dementia, brain tumors... I have had family members that dealt with these troubles... particularly my great-grandmother(who will be referred to as Grandma as that's what I was taught to call her as a kid), who suffered from Alzheimer's. It is something that doesn't really make me scared but, I have a feeling that it will happen to me too. I inherited a lot of traits from the side my Grandma is on, and to me it is not outside the realm of possibility to end up dealing with that later in life. This, along with many other things, made this a very personal project for me.
So, I chose the final concept of the game. A first person, 3D platformer about delving into the character's old memories, navigating abstract environments, and trying to use things around you to piece the memories together again. To try to remember.
How it works is the player is placed on floating "Memory Islands", and by clicking on these memories with the Left Mouse Button the whole island will turn 90 degrees. You will have to turn the memories so that you can reach them by jumping or using nearby "unstable" objects to create platforms and bridge the open space. These two core mechanics, spinning and grabbing objects was the basis of the loop. And the loop is not all that deep lol. Although, I was surprised at how long it took some of my playtesters to see what they could do to progress.
I spent the first few days just trying to nail the main player code correctly. I did as much research as I could without wasting time, used Claude to debug any code that was broken because I was short on time and a one man team, and just tried to see if this concept would work. I ended up reusing a FPS player code that my friend had made for another project, one with movement similarities to Unreal Tournament and such, lots of momentum(big mistake that we'll get to later lmao). Finally when I felt like it was good enough and I had code that could be applied to the models I'd make in Blender for the memories, objects, etc., then I went full force into planning the story, what little story there was going to be...
The main thing I wanted was the condition to be ambigious. In the game I never explicitley state what is ACTUALLY happening to the character the player is inhabiting. The only things you know is what you can infer from the scenes you're put in, and the text I used throughout the game as internal dialogue. Because of that, I felt like I had to get the story right. I HAD to. I would have been incredibly disappointed if people were just straight up confused by it or didn't feel much when playing it. And I got a good idea for the final gut-punch at the end, I really wanted that to land. So I went full force into outlining the thing, making the models of the islands and locations, picking out the things I wanted to portray and what would be too complicated. And I feel this was one of my mistakes with the game.
Don't get me wrong, I feel like the story came out exactly as it should for the 5 day time-span it was made in. But the gameplay... suffered. That FPS controller I had... I didn't realize until watching playtests, how awful it was to control. I had unfortunately just gotten used to it and didn't notice how tough it really was. The main problem was, when you stopped holding forward(your W key) your momentum will not HALT. You will continue to move forward with the velocity which you had, carrying you forward during a jump... and creating very... very persnickety platforming... Fuck... that still sucks when I think about it. If I had just one more day to really fix that issue, or know how to make it better in general. It was really rough to come to that realization. And I felt so bad for the people that playtested it for me. Everyone was so patient, and I can't believe that they were. It meant a lot that they stuck with it. Ontop of that, those objects that you would grab and use to create platforms, they were done in a bit of a stiff way. The object would move with an animation tween(basically a smooth interpolated movement) to a fixed point attached to the player. All objects snapped to this one point, and larger objects like a tree log, obscured a large portion of the screen. Again, I had just gotten used to this quirk and found ways to play around it. Other objects were also just too damn small, which complimented that floaty movement system great!
Even despite me not doing much adjustment to the gameplay, I was still up until 3 in the morning doing level design. Debugging issues, getting the entire trajectory of the game in a single level, making a whole system for trigger_zones and such, I spent so much time doing that. All while in the back of my mind, I was so fearful that I would just not be able to finish it. Or if I did "finish it" and submit it, I'd be incredibly disappointed by it. The crunch was a hard feeling to wrestle with, and I was pushing myself so hard because I wanted it to be good, and because the story that was being told meant a lot to me. It got to the point where I was feeling anxious everytime I worked on the game, the type of anxiety where you are fearful of going on stage and reciting your lines. Performance jitters is what I call them, something I dealt with ever since doing theater in high school. It's difficult for me to eat properly because I just feel sick during these jitters, lol. It sucked. Ultimately it took my dad, who also playtested the game for me, to remind me something he asked me when the whole Game Jam started. He asked me "What would be a win for you?" I wasn't sure how to answer it, and it prompted him to then ask, "Would it be just submitting the game?" I thought about it and said yes. If I had just been able to submit it, then that would still feel good. I would have published a game.
That conversation just solidified it for me that I wanted to submit the game for the Jam. I knew it probably wasn't going to get much attention at all, there were at least 4,000 other submissions in the Jam at this point. But I could say that I did it, and I'd have experience launching my own game. So I narrowed down my list of things I knew had to be done for me to feel satisfied with it, and if there was something I couldn't get to then I'd cut it out. So I jumped straight to getting the ending right.
Now I know that my game is really short and the story isn't that much to write home about, but I am about to spoil and talk about the ending and what it means to me. If you'd like to play the game yourself, there's of course the link at the top of the page and another one right here if you want it. If you want to read the stuff about the ending, open the dropdown right below this. Or feel free to skip to the end of this post, there's some more tidbits and stuff I wanna share too that are not spoiler related.
Now, this is my personal interpretation of the ending. If you read this, please don't take it as "the canon/official way to interpret the game" cause I don't want to stifle what anyone thinks about it.
In the final sequence when you're in the room with all the people in wheelchairs, I made this place to represent a nursing home. Your character has the break down about what's happening to them, who they are, and how old they really are. Up to this point, you've seen memories of a time in their life when they were young. At least you can assume so. A campsite, a dance, a school or a college, things like that. So as this reality hits them all at once, the mind begins to panic. Thus when you turn around, the whole nursing home falls away and you have to jump across jagged fragments. The point of getting through this section is to get to one final memory, to cling to something, one final good memory. If you fail, then the character you're clinging to could spiral. They could wind up completely losing their identity, their life and experiences. It would all be gone. So, getting through that gate at the end is helping him reach that one final memory that he'll still be able to remember.
This memory is a date with the girl from the dance. A date in a park when it was just the two of them. A place that was calm, peaceful, where their minds were at rest. I don't know what the rest of the main character's life was like after that point, other than the nursing home. But even with this memory being this important to him, being the one he'd cling to, it doesn't necessarily mean that they spent the rest of their lives together. Yes, the dialogue does say "She was the love of my life.", but that might just be how he felt in that moment. Things could have changed and that is realistic. It doesn't matter to him though. This moment was important to them both, and chances are she feels the same way about it many years later too.
The girl, and the memory of the dance, are based around my own memory of a girl I knew in high school. Specifically the dance part was influenced by this girl. I'll simply call her Beth, the girl I knew in real life. I had a friend tell me that Beth got rejected by another guy when our "spring formal" rolled around, and she asked me if I would ask Beth to go with me. I tried to make it as special as I could, came up with a cheesy way to ask her, and we ended up going. It was awkward, I didn't know her well, but I think she still enjoyed it and I remember having a good time. Specifically, I remember sitting to the side of the room with her and talking. Not dancing at all. But Beth, that night, and that memory of her is important to me. We never dated, but I still think about her at times.
But that is the end goal of the game, and for however much time the protagonist has left in his life. Whether it's a few more years, months, or just another hour of his life. He'll be able to stay in this memory as the final thing he thinks of.
The song that plays during this memory is called "She's come back to me". It was a song I asked my friend DarpyTrax, or just Darpy, to write for me. I asked for it on the very first day I began(the 3rd day of the Jam after the other ideas didn't pan out). I knew exactly where I wanted to take the game, the type of feel I wanted that ending to have. And Darpy is an incredibly talented guy, he's made so many songs I wish I could share with you. I knew a piano track would be right up his alley, and I was so grateful that he jumped on it so fast. An hour later, he had it done. I was stunned. He made such an incredible piece of music, it fit just so well.
While I did want to have the music be a bit dynamic, have the first melody loop until you reached the girl in the memory, it proved to just ruin the timing too much and I couldn't get it right. So I kept the track as it was and just drew out the amount of time it took to walk to her, lmao. I love it though, I'm so happy with it.
Once I launched the scene, and walked through it... sat in the memory for a bit, I felt like I nailed it. It was exactly how I wanted it to be, how I'd be content with it. No matter the end result, the ending was right. Darpy, thank you so much for your help on this project, brother. It really did bring me back down to earth, and calmed my nerves before pushing it out to be seen. This song is my favorite part of this game.
This is technically not the only place the song appears in either. The ambience that plays throughout the main game was made with the beginning portion of the piano melody, reversed and manipulated with paulstretch and other effects. I wanted it to feel off, distant, and shakey. Like soundwaves outside the mind were creating this awful echoing noise that sometimes got louder and got quieter. I titled this track "the end", because either way... this is the end for the main character. His fate has sadly been dealt to him and there won't be anything left soon.
As the memories fall away as you progress, you could see those moments as... him forgetting. Forever. He'll never relive those moments ever again.
If you've read this section, and played the game(or not whatever you want), please let me know what you think. What was your first impression of the story? What could I have done better? Did something not make sense? What was your interpretation? I can be reached at dubmeister01@gmail.com, and my favorite class is the Spy- okay bit over. Seriously, please share your thoughts, I'd love to read them! Thank you very much, and take care, friend. :)
Conscious Light became a very personal project, and I was not expecting to work on a game like this for the Game Jam at all. I did know for quite some time that I was gonna make an existential, surreal game like this. And maybe I'll make another! I can tell you this, I would love to expand on Conscious Light. I think I can tell a stronger story, and really polish aspects of what I had. When that will happen, I don't know. I'm just proud of how it is now.
How about some bullet point trivia about it?
I hope you enjoyed reading about my experience making this game. It might be the closest thing to a "director's commentary" for now lol. I can't wait to release another game, and I know with each one I'll at least be getting 1% better at it. For Conscious Light being my first one, I'm pretty proud of that. Thank you for reading, and I hope you're doing well. Take care, friends.