A Former Hollywood FX Artist Shares His Journey of Making Lucen, a Beautiful Adventure Game

Since the first devlog debuted on YouTube in October last year, Lucen has been making waves with its charming, ethereal tone. The official discover trailer that dropped last week escalated the excitement, attracting a great deal of attention on Reddit. That video was tailored to attract tending, showing unsatisfactory the gorgeous earthly concern, a little bit of gameplay, and just a hint of the mysteries to be found. Geographic expedition beckoned. Lucen is a grand fantasy escapade, but solo developer Kristian Kebbe has infused it with his personal experiences.

"With this story, I'm trying to focus happening this idea of having to allow a place of comfort, where you feel safe, and move in the unknown," Kebbe said. "When I began once again mentation more about this when I was departure my speculate, it felt a bit relevant to me that it was about going away my comfort zone and expiration into the unknown without anyone property my hand, I guess. Not just in leaving my job but in worldwide in life, that once you go out into the world to work and sort of pave your own way, on that point's no united there showing you what to DO. I want to evoke that feeling of you're all alone and you've got to cook the best of your circumstances."

In Lucen, swarthiness falls ended a village, and the eponymous character sets out for the first base time in his life to bushel the light. The public beyond is unfamiliar and on the hook. The character has to navigate this strange, rotted environment to find the Old Gods, WHO are "sort of maleficent. You're non sure what their motivations are because you've only detected stories about them." The grapheme can only guess how they will react to him.

Likewise, beginning exploitation on Lucen was a hazard for Kebbe. Armed with hope, an idea, and distaste for the crunch culture of his daytime job as an FX artist, he quit to try his hand at game development.

"I just got to the point where I decided I wanted to make it a shot doing something on my own because I figured if I'm going to crunch, I want to crunch connected my own project. While I'm still relatively young, I wishing to just give information technology a nip. If it doesn't work, I can always go back, only if it does then it'll be a great deal of fun. So, I just decided I'll take the leap: I'll give it a class more or less and see where I flummox."

Approximately of the ideas behindLucen were first formed over a decade past in what Kebbe imagined as his "dream game." The concept has naturally evolved since then, as directly a core gameplay focus is "light or absence of light" and Lovecraftian "Hoary Gods" were introduced. But there is nostalgia for Kebbe in returning to an idea who dreamed up so hanker ago, at a time in his life when games were wholly new and exciting. It was a way of tapping bet on into the creativity of childhood after having followed several different pleasing avenues during the intervening years.

"I was doing photography for a while and a little bit of graphic art intent, just freelance stuff," said Kebbe. "I hadn't found my ground in what I wanted to coif. I dabbled in 3D on and off as a hobby and it wasn't until I found film effects that I realized I wanted to concentre my vigor on learning computer graphics."

Particularly, "the carrefour of technical and artistic" elements within visual personal effects caught his attention, directive him to an online school called CGSpectrum, which enabled him to break into the industry via Method Studios. Between there and Luma Pictures, helium had a mitt in some banging films of new times, though deuce particularly stand unsuccessful in his memory:

"One of my favorites was Christopher Robin," said Kebbe. "IT was the ordinal picture show I worked on, sol IT'll ever stay with me. I did a lot of the honey that Winnie the Pooh was stepping happening, so when he's walking down a hall and he's got the sticky honey connected his feet, I did that — and that shooter specifically was the starting time guess I ever so did, so that'll stick with me a deal. My other front-runner project was Spiderman: Far From Home. It was a real logistical nightmare because we had quite a small team up, but we had to do this entire sequence where Molten Man had lava and smoke and blast and embers on him in every shot."

Through those experiences, he gained a wealth of technical skills and knowledge that he has been able-bodied to deploy in maturation of Lucen. Thus far even armed with these things, the transition has been difficult.

Press attention from 80 Level helped to elevate Lucen's profile initially, and Kebbe's ain efforts with his free-spoken devlogs and open, frequent communicating have continued to build a community. However, he acknowledges a scramble in reconciliation all of that: "Wearing complete the hats is quite hard, so doing all the evolution side of things while also managing the social media and community stuff and making devlogs and covering all of the avenues has been a bite difficult to sort of bounce around while still being productive."

Since the rootage of 2020, Kebbe's devlog updates have slowed, with his intention beingness to better engage his growing fanbase. Ensuring each update is plump with novel content is one consideration, while holding off from spoiling the debut trailer was another. A third reason was preparation for a Kickstarter campaign, primitively targeting a March 29 launch, only it is now postponed so as to not ask people for assistance when they themselves mightiness be struggling in light of the world's underway social science situation.

However, he has not been totally without assistance in adapting to sprightliness as an indie developer. German language composer Lukas Piel is crafting the score for Lucen, and Kebbe is part of a Facebook chemical group for indies. Helium is also full of kudos for the secret plan development community in and around his local urban center of Melbourne, Australia. He singles out Mike Blackney (working on Dead Static Drive), Simon Packer (working on Environ of Pain), Craig Ritchie (functioning on Broken Roadstead), and Meredith Hall (from state governing torso Film Victoria) for their advice with development, marketing, networking, and more than. Their support has enabled Kebbe to better navigate his interactions with expected publishers forLucen besides.

Kebbe is aiming to have a demo ready by June, with a possible public showing at PAX Australia in belated 2022 and a intended release late next year.

At the moment, development continues for Kebbe as he adds flesh to the bones of Lucen. Fans are already enraptured with the idea of exploring the gorgeous macrocosm atomic number 2 has created, but Kebbe emphasizes that any wandering will be at the player's discretion.

He has non yet decided on the inclusion of sidequests, locution or else that in the open world, "You'll Be exploring and determination some bosses and learning much about the lore of the environment and also finding these light orbs that will further augment your abilities with elemental effects." Those abilities name to both battle and exploration, and he provides some examples: "The way they augment your abilities is things suchlike creating biology effects, equivalent a vortex A you'rhenium fighting enemies that sucks them in, or arcing electrical energy 'tween nearby enemies, surgery even using an earth augmentation to destroy vines that are blocking a path."

However, light is always the direction of Kebbe's development decisions: "Light is a theme that plays through everything in the game, in terms of the taradiddle with Lucen's village becoming shrouded darkly and having to get over and ask the Old Gods to restore light to it. I thought that because IT's such a big theme in the game that IT should also affect the gameplay and live a piece of the gameplay as well."

All the same, report bequeath live the briny focus: "The story itself is quite linear and driven by Lucen and his actions. So, he leaves the village deliberate that helium has to attend the Old Gods, and each successive quest will prompt you in the direction that you want to retain."

Kebbe will likewise keep off going, busy absent along the game while navigating his untested animation as the creative mind behind an adventure that rivals Breathing tim of the Desert in its sheer beauty.

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/lucen-interview-kristian-kebbe/

Source: https://www.escapistmagazine.com/lucen-interview-kristian-kebbe/

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