The Indie Game Magazine May 2015 | Issue 49 | Page 8

GAME WATCH

LOST EMBER

I

A Wolf in Need Deserves Huffs, Indeed

t’s that time of the month again. You know, that time where we
dig into the latest project update of a work-in-progress indie
game. (That’s what you thought I meant though, right?) For the
moment, we’re keeping tabs on Lost Ember, an action adventure
game mixed with puzzle elements that is currently in development
at Mooneye Studios. Over the past few months, we’ve watched
the art style change rather dramatically, as the team brought on
additional members to help find the right visual aesthetic to match
the game’s narrative tone.
When we last left our heroes – I’ve always wanted to use that intro
– Mooneye had a number of goals in place to accomplish for this
month. The first was to figure out the complete plot and story beats
for episode 1 of Lost Ember. According to one of the team’s more
recent hires, Community Manager Marco Apel, it sounds like everything went according to plan. “We were able to finalize the complete

by Vinny Parisi

storyboard for the first episode,” he reported to me. “Having that
done, we started creating new assets and Matthias [Oberprieler,
3D artist] has started to build the first level.” Unfortunately, the
team isn’t quite ready to reveal any specifics in terms of story, so
for now we’ll all just have to imagine what a wolf would be doing
lurking around the ruins of a fallen civilization, solving puzzles that
begin restoring the city to its former glory.
Another goal for this month was to program the ‘switch’ mechanic. If
you’ve been following Game Watch over the past couple of months,
you already know that the wolf will encounter other animals along
his journey, and players will get the chance to assume direct control
of a handful of animals for puzzle solving purposes. (One of which
is a parrot with the ability to fly.) When asked about how development of this feature was going, Apel mentioned that, “We are
making some good progress, but there is still work to do.” I haven’t

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