LENS | Demo & Steam Greenlight [WIP]

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Hello there, fellow Unity Developers!

Lens is a dark atmospheric platformer, where you have four different powers by using different Lenses. Each power comes with a rule. Will you be able to use your Lenses?

The story takes place in an mystic, dark atmospheric world, with a variety of different environments! After going out of Ira, the village Neil and his fellow group members lives in, in order to find food, the group gets attacked by a group of wolves. Managing to escape the attack with a few injuries, Neil carries his extremely wounded brother to a cave in order to find time to go back to Ira and call for help. Unfortunately, the wounds of Neil's brother gets worse until it takes his life. Neil promises to his dying brother to find the other group members and get back to the village.
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★ DEMO IS NOW AVAILABLE! ★
Download 3.3 DEMO now! (Fully ported to Unity 5)

PS: The DEMO of Lens is not representing the final product, but only an example and quick showcase of what the game will be like to play! There'll be much more stuff to do in the initial release. Also, it's out there for debugging purposes, so if you ever encounter any bugs or anything similar, please report them by mailing vspygaming@live.com
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The official TRAILER

Please don't forget to check out the following:


Youtube | Website | Twitter
Donations

Please note:
By donating, you're contributing to the development of the game, which means that the game will definitely become better by each 1$ earned as it'll bring motivation to me and every penny will go towards the development, publishing etc. of the game! Donating means that you're helping me, and the game significantly which is appreciated!

On further questions, thoughts, bug reports, opinions and such - please either comment here, PM me on here or send me mail at vspygaming@live.com
Thank you for your time ​

 

Please let me know if you've got any suggestions, feedback, constructive criticism or just wanna say hi!

 

Don't forget that advertising my game would be alot appreciated and would help me achieve my goals for the sales of this game

 

I enjoyed limbo. Looks very much a clone at this stage.

might wanna figure out a way to make his eyes not sunshaft

 

The gameplay is completely different, just like The Swapper. It's really similar to Limbo visually as well, but the gameplay is completely different. The environment of Lens is different as well if you pay attention to the background.
Yes, I'm going to try and fix that. Thank you for mentioning!

Edit: do you have any suggestions of how I can make it look more 'non-alike' Limbo? I mean, visually the game may be looking like Limbo but environmental and gameplay mechanical it's utterly different. But please let me know anything you have in mind!

 

Looks great, the hook mechanism is nicely done.

 

Thank you very much for your kind words! I really appreciate
Oh yeah, I did work alot on that one. Thanks, glad to know that people likes it as well!

 

Some improvement has been made to:
• Water
• Light shafts
• Bloom
...and the physics of the game has been slightly more dynamic

Thanks for all the comments, hope you guys keep spreading this thread!

 

More improvements and trailer coming soon!
Please let me know if you've got any suggestion or feedback

 

Due to school beginning again aside of my trainings, the development is taking a bit more time. But the game is going full speed and it's going very well right now

 

Trailer for the game is coming soon, first I will work on the level design a bit more to show the key features and context about the game.

 

I do not know if I should upload it to Steam Greenlight!

 

New website is coming soon as well!

 

Tons of update to the map! More screenshots are coming later on!

 

Im not sure you could make it look less limbo'y tbh... I would say change the eye color, but that probably wont suit the aesthetic of the game. I would just carry on as is. If the gameplay is different youre probably all good. It will be compared to limbo of course

 

Thank you alot for your kind response and feedback I appreciate!
I'll try and apply some changes visually. But the gameplay is very different, I can assure you! Thanks once more, and I hope it gets compared and recognized by Limbo community because it's the game that inspires Lens

 

Slight changes has been made to the visuals

 

Soon the trailer is ready!

 

Was forced to restore my PC to factory settings - luckily I had a backup file of my game files... Phew....

 

Looking good, keep it up

 

Hi! Thgank you so much for your kind comment I'll definitely keep up as I see how supportive you guys are

 

IT's very close to a trailer now

 

New concept art coming soon!

 

Added wolves and its AI system, there were tons of bugs but it's working properly now (they are enemies by the way). Lots of other death traps etc. are coming soon!

 

OFFICIAL REVEAL TRAILER

 

Please let me know any feedback you've got!

 

looks good. maybe get rid of the blank video at the end.

 

Thank you! I wanted to keep I thought it was nice how the sound kept playing after the video ended. I wanted to keep that part because I thought that it would look better. TThank you for your feedback, I'll consider about this next time

 

Pictures of UI etc. coming soon!

 

Thank you all for the support so far! Please share this with anyone you'd like to in order to help me extremely much <3

 

Pro tip: get rid of the blank part at the end.
You don't want to have bank spaces anywhere in your trailer, trust me on this.

The game is pretty nice, though the hard part will be to make the entire gameplay flow well.

 

Thank you very much for your tip, I'll try and get rid of it straight away IF it does not work right now, then I won't at least include it in my future videos. Thanks alot!

Thank you so much, I'm glad you like it. With flow, did you mean optimization part of the game or literally the gameplay itself with how it will play out etc?

 

Literally the gameplay

 

COuld you please describe it more so I can improvve? Thank you for the feedback

 

A demo will be available soon for the game. Please let me know any feedback you've got so I can improve the game as much as possible before the Demo!

 

If you mean the grappling hook, it goes pretty smooth and well with the rest of the gameplay so far

 

Through gameplay I mean how the game feels and plays. Controls, story, game flow etc. Created a good game of this type is pretty hard, that's why you don't see too many projects started.

 

You are very right actually! It's really difficult to hold the gameplay mechanics and manage them to fit in with a realistic story, yet keeping the game as a puzzle mystery horror game. But I am trying my best to optimize after my feelings, meaning that I focus alot now on the gameplay mechanics. Most platformers, whilst the level designing is going on, developers usually focuses on making it a bit more dynamic etc. I'm trying to make it fit in with the story and try to leave clues and stuff like that, and I try to make it a "non-walk-to-the-right" simulator Thank you very much for your feedback, please keep telling me stuff that pops up in your head, I really appreciate your comments!

 

WE'RE NOW ON INDIEDB!
Please vote for my Game and follow it on IndieDB, that'd be greatly appreciated
http://www.indiedb.com/games/the-lens

 

Continuing the work now as I've been clearing up most of my school work!

 

The actual Lens has been reworked and now has different effects, to be revealed soon! Old post deleted due to false information compared to the new one

 

Lots and lots of work has been put on the powers presented in the game, and lots of bugs have been fixed!
It may almost be time for a DEMO version of the game to be released to the public - including a new gameplay trailer!

 

A new plot twist:
There are several Lenses which grants different powers. The main character that you're playing as, Neil, has one Lens that grants the power of Motion, a.k.a telekinesis. Motion lets the user to control the movement of a limited size object, and move it around freely. This power can be used only on non-live objects, meaning that living creatures such as humans and other animals in the game won't be affected by this power. However, you can "motion-control" other objects to distract, hurt and maybe even kill other enemies in your way!

 

Using Motion in-game:


Also, I added a small blur effect which blurs out the edges of the camera. You can realize this by looking at the huge plant at your left side. Also made the eyes go red when using a Lens!

 

New trailer will be ready next week I hope!

 

There were some bugs with the Motion power, which now has been fixed. More objects that can be controlled by Motion has been added!

 

Been reworking, or not actually really reworking but more like focusing on the lightning of the game.
Here is a comparison:
OLD


NEW


Basically,
I've made it a bit darker, more like black instead of gray-ish, at least the ground. Also worked a bit with global illumination, where else "better shadowing" would be a better word for it. Please let me know what you think about the change(s).

Edit: Also made the light shafts reflect better and more from long distance on big objects like the ruin in the background. In the old pace, the eyes of the character were reflecting as light shaft too, which made it look bad. So now, it's been fixed and the light shaft is not going to disturb your eyes anymore, hopefully!

 

More improvement to the lightning and optimization has been done! Demo is getting closer and closer!

 

Original Soundtrack / OST video is being uploaded to Youtube!
Meanwhile, I got two new screenshots on the main topic!

 

Full Soundtrack is now available!