Happy New Year Knights!
Welcome to the totally awesome “The Lighthouse: Year in Review” update! We hope everyone had a great holiday!
We have been very fortunate and it has been a truly humbling year for our studio. We wanted to take a look back and reflect on what we have achieved and discuss what we have planed for the future. Oh, and yes, let’s get this out of the way now- The Lighthouse [Part1] will be coming out this year [More on that later]!
Before we kick things off, we also want to thank you all for your continued support during the development of The Lighthouse, we couldn’t be doing any of this without you Knights! We always talk about how kind everyone has been during our development and we think we have the greatest supporters.
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Conventions
People played and actually liked The Lighthouse!
2018 had lots of eager players ACTUALLY enjoying the BETA! A triumph for any indie studio is to package a game and have it go out for people to play and provide valuable feedback. This is because after yapping on and on about “how we’re making a game,” and “trust us, we’re working on it,” people are actually playing it on their computers. It’s a threshold that we were happy to cross because it means things are really happening on the development side and the game is improving because people are playing it and telling us what works and what doesn’t.
Then, shortly after, we demo’d that same BETA at GDC and things went even better! Like, way better than we could have expected!
GDC
We were lucky enough that most of the team was able to make it to GDC. We had lot's of family help. Richard flew all the way from Canada and Ari, Laylee, Daniah and Mimi took a long road trip to San Francisco. Not many of you know this, but this was also the first time a good chunk of the team had met in-person, because we're all working remotely.
We had our own booth in the GDC Play area.
We also were able to show off the game at the IGF Pavilion thanks to ID@Xbox.
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GDC gave us the opportunity to have hundreds of developers and students test out the first 30 minutes of the game. We received wonderful feedback and this helped us add additional accessibility features to the game that we think has improved it significantly.
Dreamhack Austin
We applied for a booth at Dreamhack Austin and we were very fortunate to be able to get a booth in the Indie Playground.
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We were also nominated for the Best Let's Play award and WE WON!
Dreamhack gave us the opportunity to test out all of the changes we made after GDC. Players got to play the first 30 minutes of the game and we received really positive feedback. We also did a 15 minute presentation on the Development of The Lighthouse on the Indie Playground stage. We drew a modest crowd, as our game was a little bit different than Fortnite and PUBG and people wanted to know what the fuss was about.
E3
We didn’t have a booth at E3 but Laylee and Ari went to E3 to test out all of the upcoming games and also network with the development community. We had a great time at E3 and got to test out some really great upcoming titles.
Development Updates
The original game targeted an October 2017 release date. The Kickstarter helped us reach an initial goal with stretch goals that increased the content of the game by almost 2x! This year saw a massive overhaul in production and new content which we believe explains more of the game story, and engages the player longer. It's also the reason why the game's release date had been pushed back as much as it did. We also had a lot of placeholder assets that we knew we wanted to replace. The work required to create custom "EVERYTHING" was a bit of an undertaking, but I'm sure you'll agree was worth the effort even though the game got delayed.
Art
In 2018 we did some significant updates to the art and environments in The Lighthouse. We think that these updates have improved the overall feel of the game.
The Prologue -
For those of you who beta tested the prologue you know that it consists of many different environments. This was a lot of work development-wise and we took a lot of time re-making these environments, you can see the changes from the initial kickstarter images til now. We were going for a more "Black & White" dreamy theme when dealing with the past, but it didn't look great. It took a great deal of time, but we're glad we changed it.
Head on over to Youtube to see the before and After Videos - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BIgVqEVok3U&list=PLbRvdDViMnhfJGdvzPJy2Kqz4fSRLLSdn
The Prologue sets up the entire game and gives a lot of backstory on James Irvine with many hints as to how it all "ends." We knew we had to get this right, as first-impressions are very important.
You can get immediately turned off from a game if it doesn’t immerse you into the story. Games like God of War (from a dev perspective) thrive by grabbing your attention and never letting go. This is why some of the best games you've ever played had the most engaging gameplay right when you turn it on.
We're not an action game, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't hook you in. There was also a lot of effort put into these scenes because if anything goes wrong, players might laugh- and none of the emotional weight behind James's "Hero's Journey" would mean much. A "Call to Adventure" needs to have the reader or gamer as invested as the main character. If the player doesn't care, then this is just another cookie-cutter avatar in a video-game.
The Lighthouse Cove -
We also decided to completely update The Cove from the ground up. We really liked the style of the original cove but we felt that the art style didn’t match the rest of the game so we re-did it and now we think it ties in with the rest of the art in the game seamlessly. We also added new tech that wasn't available before. It went from looking almost cartoony, to more grounded and natural. Watch til the end of the video to see our amazing "Wood Box" house from before!
Lighthouse Cove Before & After Video
Wescott Manor -
The Wescott manor is a very large portion of the game. Did you know that it was only a one story, FOUR room house when we first designed the levels? Well, 2018 was good to the Manor- It’s now FOUR stories including the basement and the attic and has many rooms, corridors, and secret areas. We knew that we had to get the manor right and so we re-built it from the ground up. This obviously added a lot of development time but in the end we think the changes are significant and will make for a better overall experience.
Because we were dealing with a finite space before, we were able to get away with loading in the map all by itself while keeping performance in check. But now that this house is so big and with different stories, we needed a way to optimize how levels loaded in and where, based on where you were. Lights are super expensive, and because a lot of lights are Movable (The Lighthouse Light), it was too costly to run in rooms that you are not in. Those kinds of technological hurdles are enormous, but we believe we have found a good solution to most of our problems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLVU_-lgenY
Character Art and Animations -
We always knew we had to re-do the character art and animations. In 2018 we completely re-made our characters and we are very happy with the outcome of Lily Beaumont and Lily Irvine. We were also able to build a make-shift, super lame, but totally needed mo-cap studio! Instead of using stock animations, we now have custom animations made by us, live, and in real-time! Andy Serkis would be proud! (Not really). But the improvements are so large, that it almost doesn't even look like the same game!
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Music
We had no music for The Lighthouse AT ALL when we first started out. We were going to use a lot of modified stock music to layer onto the game until one fateful day! As you all know we are very fortunate to have Mimi Page as our composer and voice of Lily Beaumont. Mimi created a beautiful
soundtrack for The Lighthouse that we were thrilled to release in 2018. We hope that all of you enjoyed the soundtrack and we can’t wait for you to hear how her beautiful music and sounds used in the game.
Voice Acting
We were our own voice actors when we first started out. We had a totally awesome sound studio in our closet recording on a ultra terrible Apple earbud and microphone. You could totally hear the drywall bouncing off the sounds, giving it a glorious "echo-y tin-can" like effect and reverb. We thought that- "Hey, if SuperGiantGames could do that with Bastion, then maybe we could too!" We were wrong.... But now we have some really amazing voice actors on the team and we’re happy to say in 2018 all of the voice acting for Part One of The Lighthouse has been recorded and completed! =D
Voice Actors -
Weston Heflin: voice of James Irvine
Maliya Evelina: voice of Lily Irvine
Brandon Fague: voice of Henry Johnson
Mimi Page: voice of Lily Beaumont
Accessibility - This is really important to us as a team and we added a significant amount of Accessibility features.
- Hint System
- Objective system
- Subtitles ON/OFF w/ Re-size of subtitles
- Custom re-binding options
- Sound options
- Graphic Options
- Localization
- Mouse and controller sensitivity
- Invert options
- Nausea settings (Camera Wobble)
- Legacy gamer settings (Toggle Crouch)
Steam integration -
Steam Achievements for both The Lighthouse VR Escape Room and for Part One of The Lighthouse have been implemented.
Inventory -
At GDC we noticed that a lot of players had to ask us how to use the inventory system. This brought us back to the drawing board and we completely re-did the inventory system. We wanted the controls and the gameplay to feel natural and we didn’t want players to feel like they’re being taken out of the experience with lots of tutorial pop-ups. So thats what we did, and at Dreamhack we were able to test the new inventory system. We didn’t have one player ask us how to use it. This was a huge improvement!
Beta Testing -
We completed Beta testing for the prologue in 2018. Thank you to all of the Beta Knights for helping us test this part of the game.
2018 Announcements
Part One and Two -
In 2018 we announced that we will be doing a Part One and Part Two of The Lighthouse. We wanted to make sure that we included all of the gameplay and story elements that we initially came up with and the best way to do this was to give you two games.
The Lighthouse VR Experience -
We also announced
The Lighthouse VR Escape Room.
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We have worked in VR for many years and we always intended for The Lighthouse to be a VR Experience. As we tested in VR we came up with an escape room experience that we think you will all enjoy. This experience will be available on Steam and at
Locksmith Escape Games in Sanford Florida within the coming months.
The Team
A question we get a lot is "How many people do you have working on The Lighthouse?" Well, currently we have 4 team members working full time on The Lighthouse. The other question is, "Why is it taking so long for the game to come out?" We hope you can see the amount of work that has been put into this game with such a small team.
Richard Vinci - Lead Environment Artist
Daniah Mandegary - Art Director
Laylee Bodaghee - Programmer and Designer
Ari Bodaghee - Programmer and Designer
Social Media
Our team New Year Resolution is to:
1] Release the game this year. Hooray!!
2] Be more active on our social media channels.
We sometimes get so caught up in development we forget to post updates, even if it's just a screenshot or a quick "here’s what we’re doing right now." So this year we are going be more vocal, and post more on all of our social channels. Here is where you can follow us if you’re not already following.
Twitter
Instagram
Facebook
Discord
The best way to get the latest development info is on these channels as we use our cell phones to connect with everyone quickly. On Kickstarter we will post our larger monthly/bi-monthly updates. We're unable to post small day-to-day updates/screenshots on Kickstarter.
The Future
Our first release this year will be The Lighthouse VR Escape Room. We plan on releasing this experience within the coming months.
Our second release this year will be The Lighthouse Part One. We plan on doing early access first with a full release shortly after. We believe we can start early access shortly after the release of The Lighthouse VR Escape Room.
The team is working hard to get these titles out to you and we really can’t wait for you all to play.
New Year
We hope that you and your families have a happy and healthy New Year and we are so thankful to have all of your support. We really couldn’t be doing this without you Knights.
Thank you,
The Shadow Knights Team
We are so incredibly proud of Weston and will be cheering him on December 20th.
You can stream the awards on Sovas.org December 20th at 6 PM EST.
Congratulations on winning a signed copy of "The Lighthouse Original Soundtrack!"
We want to thank everyone for participating in this contest- we appreciate the support and have more opportunities to earn special gifts and exclusive merchandise from our little studio. =D
- The SKS Team
One Year ago today The Lighthouse was successfully funded on Kickstarter! Thank you to all of the amazing Knights that have supported us, we couldn't be doing this without you! ❤️
Daniah has created a custom hand painted Lighthouse wallpaper for you all! You can download the wallpaper 