We’ve been characteristically quiet for the past two years. So what’s new with Liquid Crystal?
Our latest project, a collaboration with Swedish game developer Cactus, is progressing with all the gusto of a racing tortoise. The design is best described as compact, with new ideas constantly being thrown at the player.
As soon as development wraps up, we’ll be revisiting Dancing Lights.
Dancing Lights has been released for the iTunes store worldwide. With its release comes the summary of what exactly I was trying to achieve:
Dancing Lights is a re-imagining of childhood discovery. Behind its abstract shapes and basic rules is a world of limitless depth, morphing into different forms based on your thoughts and mood. Will the experience be relaxing, tense, intriguing, or something completely different? Simply touch a light and see where it takes you.
February 2010
David Anton
App Store Link: iTunes | Dancing Lights
I’m proud to be able to finally announce Liquid Crystal’s first game. Dancing Lights is a puzzle game coming to the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch. It’s under review at the moment, and should be released before the end of February. Now for a little history behind the project…
Back in 2005, Nintendo president, Satoru Iwata, made a comment about, “a game that’s played by sound and touching light.” It was during a time where he demanded that the industry change and try to create new types of games. I thought about this for several weeks years and formed the basis of Dancing Lights, a game designed around the concept of discovery.
I challenged everything from the notion of score to the need for detailed instructions. I wanted to create an experience which mimicked my first interactions with a videogame. I had no instructions, nor did I care about a number. Only two things mattered: the response I got from ‘touching’ the game and the sheer joy of discovery. Soon you’ll be able to experience this for yourself.
Links
Dancing Lights
Exploration is less about physical travel, and more about the mind. It is not only about discovery, but the emotions involved. While our natural instinct is to link a scene to exploration, Shigeru Miyamoto (Super Mario, Legend of Zelda) gives an example of exploration coming from within,
“Imagine the Spirit—the state of mind—of a kid when he enters a cave alone. Going in, he must feel the cold air around him. He must discover a branch off to one side and decide whether to explore or not. Sometimes he loses his way. If you go to the cave now, as an adult, it might be silly, trivial, a small cave. But as a child, in spite of being banned to go, you could not resist the temptation. It was not a small moment then. This feeling must be realized in the game.”
So as designers, we must reevaulate what we see, and learn to understand what brings out these raw emotions. Think of words to describe the scene. For the aforementioned cave, we could say it is forbidden, unfamiliar, cold, dangerous, dim, and isolated. What other words does the cave description bring to mind?
