Inbetween!

We are in-between jobs for now, so we've finally had a little time to spend on developing Lemniscate.

One of the biggest problems we're facing (especially me, Geril, as I'm a graphic artist) is the dark, grey-scale aesthetic of the game. If you've seen posts from us from before we've announced Lemniscate, you might have noticed that we like vivid colors and flexible characters. We can't really do that in Lemniscate, it'd go against the game's theme. The graphics are so literally grey that I only use a single texture file for BaseColor, AO, Roughness and Metallic (on different channels).

The other problem we've run into is with the adventure aspect. As with point-and-click games, things that are obvious for the developers aren't necessary so plain to see for the players. We might think that it's logical to wash off the stench of waste water by standing in the shower while the water is running, but this might feel illogical in a video game environment where you open air vents with crowbars.

We are trying to solve both of these problems with the Inbetween. The Inbetween is, as the name describes, a dimension in between dimensions. Here, the player can find clues on how to progress in the game. In this dimension, we're also letting all our closeted frustration with the dark spaceship out: lots of weird shapes, unnecessary colors, tons of particle effects.
We're trying to make the place seem otherworldly. The player character sees these forms and colors because his brain can't decode what he's seeing. He's only able to move inside a bubble there, a bubble that is unaffected by time.

The clues are going to be cryptic and visual, without any text. For example, if you have to blow a fuse to get to the content of a closet, you're going to see a red poof in the distance, and a red shape a bit farther, that represents the contents of the closet. When you walk closer, you'll begin to see the surroundings of the closet. The important objects are going to appear in vivid colors, while the others are going to be darker, and only there to help the player recognize the part of the ship.
So, yeah, the cryptic game gets another cryptic layer. But at least this one's colorful.

You can get to the Inbetween in the final minutes before time resets. The 'reset' itself is a wave that goes through the ship, but a few minutes before that happens, there is a smaller wave coming to warn the player of the approaching reset. After the small wave, rifts appear in the dimension  in certain parts of the ship. These rifts can only be seen from up close. From afar, you only see barely visible blue sparks. The locations of the portals are worth memorizing, they won't always be at the same place, but they don't appear at random, either.

We'll continue to work on the game and will post more updates in the coming weeks.