Negative Light

Inverse vampires are bizarre creatures – they can only be seen in reflections, and they disintegrate in darkness – and you’re trapped in a mansion with hundreds of them. Try to stay alive as long as possible.

Features

• Fend off enemies using an enormous wall mirror and a shadow-casting negative flashlight
• Unique atmosphere that’s equal parts silly and creepy
• Persistent high scores record the time survived and the number of inverse vampires defeated

Behind the Scenes

Negative Light was originally conceived for GBCJam #8, under the working title Reverse Vampires (because all good things are based on Simpsons references). The jam’s theme was “Reflection,” which I took very literally and made into a game that’s spent staring at a mirror. A computer crash during the jam caused me to lose a ton of progress, however, so I ended up developing it on my own time and adding more polish than a game jam title would have.

The game was also intended to help me learn Unreal, but after the crash, I switched to Unity and C#. I did, however, learn not to incorporate esoteric concepts like animated mesh particle emitters and subtractive light sources while also trying to learn a new engine.

The audio and base art assets were found from a handful of sources credited on the title screen, although most of the assets were at least slightly altered by me.