2.2K views Apr 2009
At an indie game conference, a developer demonstrates Shadow Physics, a platformer where players move through projected shadows and shift lights to solve puzzles.
0:01 Okay, I'm at the Indie Game Developers Conference, and with me today is a special guest. 0:04 How about you introduce yourself? 0:06 Yeah, I'm Scott Anderson. I'm working on a game called Shadow Physics, where you play a 2D platformer similar to Mario, and uh, the shadows projected by a 3D world. 0:15 So here's the guy. So you see he's walking around on the shadows, not on the actual objects, and he's projecting on the wall. 0:21 Okay. 0:21 You can walk kind of on the side of the wall, 0:25 on the back of the wall. 0:27 Cool. 0:27 Uh, and a bunch of interesting gameplay mechanics came out of that basic idea, like if you push the shadow of an object, the 3D object itself rolls. 0:36 Okay. 0:42 And you use that to solve this puzzle here. 0:46 Oh, nice. That's tight, dude. 0:50 And then we have some other mechanics, like the interesting thing about 0:56 being in a world created by shadows is that if you move the light that, you know, the shadows are being casted from, you're changing the entire world underneath the guy. 1:06 So we have puzzles where you can manipulate the world 1:11 to get the guy to a different place. 1:14 Sure. 1:20 So how do you go about manipulating the objects? Is that hard to do, considering that you're also controlling the character, or? 1:27 Yeah, it's a little hard to do, um, and so right now it's basically left click, and it's really hard to play on a trackpad, but it's basically left click and then 1:35 Sure. 1:35 drag to move the light around, and then the character controls are very simple, platformer controls, just arrow keys and space to jump. 1:43 Um, we're work- we're still working on the control stuff, especially the camera stuff, as you see, it's a little awkward. 1:48 Okay. 1:48 Right now it's just a free camera. We're looking at other alternative camera means so you can say kind of hands off with the camera. 1:54 Sure. 1:55 Uh. 1:56 So how close are you then to completion? 1:58 I'd say at least a year or two off. 2:00 Oh wow, okay. 2:01 Um, it- the game is still very early. We're still exploring a lot of mechanics. 2:05 Sure. 2:06 Um, here's another example of things that come out of the system. 2:09 There's multiple lights, so there's a light here and a light here. 2:12 Sure. 2:12 Um, and that projects two shadows, so you can kind of, from a single set of objects, 2:18 Okay. 2:18 you kind of jump over here and platform over here. 2:21 Okay. 2:22 And, um, what else, uh, I mean, any other gameplay mechanics or interesting, uh, emerging properties that came out of this 2:31 rule set? 2:33 Yeah, um, here's one more where we have enemies that are just exist as shadow objects like you. 2:38 Okay. 2:39 So you get hit by the guy, and you can actually crush these guys too, just like you get crushed yourself by shadows. 2:44 Sure. 2:44 I don't have a good example of that right now, unfortunately, but 2:47 Okay. 2:48 Hopefully we'll have that soon. Um, here's another light manipulation puzzle where 2:52 Oh, nice. 2:52 you basically create stairs by moving the light. 2:54 Oh, tight. 2:59 Um, and there's other mechanics that we still haven't explored yet. 3:02 Sure. 3:02 Like the one example is to, uh, use bright light to white out shadows so you can, like, fall through things or fall slower. 3:09 Another example is to use different colored lights, and the different colored lights would have different physical properties. 3:14 Okay. 3:15 The character, so maybe gravity is reversed, or maybe one in one is like, like, for example, blue light, you swim in blue light instead of just falling in scroll. 3:22 Okay. 3:25 Um, that's pretty much the game. 3:27 Cool. 
