#projectlumenasks

[project-lumen]

》》 The LUMEN M-AHA-sterpost 《《

It was a-BAM time.

Hi hello there, fellow Life Series enjoyers! Arto, Pinkish and Kori here, live from our Game-Making Void bringing to you our comprehensive list of resources in one post for easier access and navigation!

Here you'll find our current status, some important links to other posts, as well as an overview of our tags and a handy F.A.Q. section :3

Without further ado, thank you so much, all info is under the cut!

》Status《

Date Format: [DD/MM/YY]

Current mission: APPLICATION ROUND 2 OVER AND DONE! CONTINUING TO WORK ON THIRD LIFE DEMO.

》Other Socials《

Bluesky

Youtube Channel

Our public Discord!

A Secret :3

》Links《

First announcement: Applications

Meet the team!

Second announcement: Our official art guide

Essential info

Arto's lore scraps

》Tags!《

#projectLUMENasks : For every single one of the questions we have answered so far!

》F.A.Q.《

What is this?

Project LUMEN is an effort to bring the Life Series to life in a brand new way, in videogame form! A RPG of sorts with battle mechanics, interaction with npcs, our own unique spin in Watcher Lore, changing art styles and multiple endings with a bunch of mechanics we need to keep secret for now but we know you all will enjoy, at least we hope so.

Cool, how can I contribute?

We want LUMEN to be a game by the community for the community, a tribute to all the wonderful artists, writers and creatives of all kinds. And it is a HUGE project, as such, all help is appreciated. We plan to open applications from time to time to recruit people as passionate as us into our little team. But everyone can lend a hand if they so desire, all ideas, all likes, all reblogs, all comments, all art, is truly, genuinely appreciated. Project LUMEN is completely non-profit, a passion project turned group effort that we are willing to pour our heart into, and we want to be as transparent as possible with it.

How will development of the game itself go?

As for specifications, Kori is the one in charge of the coding department, we are going to use Unity and C# to program everything, Arto will manage music and Pinkish will be in charge of the Martyn and Ren section. But once we review our first batch of applications, we will contact our chosen ones with more details, either for character sprites, script or any other miscellaneous things. We will all be working together as a team, each contributing as much as they so desire.

We will then take to developing our early alpha build including our very first couple of chapters, and release it for playtesting, then we will take all the feedback and make the pertinent changes. We will improve the game and continue developing until we have an almost finished beta build that we will then publish for testing. Take all the criticism again to finally reveal our finished product. Releasing first on itch io and then hopefully ported into Newgrounds for mobile compatibility.

Is there a release date?

As of now, we'd rather not promise anything. But we are actively working on development, and we hope to, at the very least, have a playable alpha demo at the end of this year.

[project-lumen]

what’s the application count looking like so far?

Hihihi, thanks for the question!

Let's talk numbers.

We, as of writing this answer, currently are 4-5 days into application period. And have received the total amount of 31 unique applications, there are:

-16 writer applications

-16 artist applications

Of which: 5 want to be UI artists and 13 want to be background artists

"Oh but, Kori," I hear you say, "didn't you predict the application count to be in the hundreds??"

Yes I did, however I forgot to account for the fact that we are not looking for character artists anymore, and they made the bulk of the first application round (~80% (~24% wanting solely to be character artists, the rest applied for other positions too), according to my notes). But I think we are not doing too shabby!

For comparison, at this time during the first app round we had received around 50 apps, 16 of them wanting to be background artists (all of them wanting to be character artists too) and 13 wanted to be writers (7 of them applying only for that position, the rest applied for artist as well). 26 unique applications for either writer or background artists (most of them wanted to be character artists).

We are still only 1/4 of the way of the app period tho, so finger crossed we can get some more applicants before we make our decision! ^^

-The Numbers Expert

[project-lumen]

can we get a teaser or snippet? 👀

Maybeeeeeee

👀

-Kori

They keep watching.

The tides keep rising.

Time keeps ticking.

Death keeps claiming.

Just as it has always been.

A burnt bird

Flies through the dusk

An angel of fire

Guilt in his thoughts

The weight of the world

Lays on his back

His wings are broken

He will never touch the sky

And we watch

And we watch

His husk, bound in regret

A monster, gone but not dead

At least not yet

[project-lumen]

Hey, will the people who didn't get picked also get a message?

Alright hi hi hi hello folks, today we'll be giving y'all an answer combo, since most questions are related to the application reviewing process and we believe it is easier to answer them all in one go!

All answers under the cut bc this might be a bit lengthy

Let's get right to it, with this anon's question and another pretty similar to it

Unfortunately, due to the number of applications received, contacting everyone would take way too long :[

But to thank everyone for applying we will be adding a special surprise in the actual game, just you wait <3

And the Big News™️ will have to wait until the announcement (sorry!), sooooooo stay tuned :3

Officially? No one just yet

But if you are curious about numbers (and stats!) I recommend you to check out this post :>

It is sure going :,]

We are getting through everyone, I reckon we have gone through at least 1/3 of the applications and started a list with everyone who is for sure getting accepted. We were all kinda busy on the weekend, but hopefully, we will be able to fulfill our promise of getting the announcement out by the end of this next week o7

- Kori

PS: I have no idea why my Tumblr is in Spanish, could have sworn it was in English TwT

[project-lumen]

Do you have any art of the WC? If so, where can we find it?

(I don’t know if I’ve just been missing it)

Hi hello hello! Here's our beta Watcher Child by our dearest Arto!!

[project-lumen]

hi gang, this doesn't immediately concern me bcz im no artist, but,

How do you plan on managing people's different artstyles? Are you planning to get people with similar stylmes, or assigning a character to the artist (so that the "style" seems to just be a quirk of the character in itself)?

The devil works hard but you guys work harder. Continue like that, I'll be sure to stalk your account many-a-times! =D

Well hello there Scott Hi-hey-hello, Teri!

Each character will have a different artstyle across all the seasons. For example, I'm drawing Grian and Scar for every season. The styles will be the fandom's little touch to the art! We were thinking of having one unified artstyle, but decided against that :]

- GTWScar Arto!

[project-lumen]

How many people applied? And how many positions are there on the team? What is the statistic of people applying versus people getting accepted?

Hello hola! Thanks for your question, did some math, and here's a breakdown of it all! I am very happy, I love math :3

We received 78 responses globally, after clearing them up we have 62 total (voided two of them due to them already being in (aka Arto and Pinkish), then deleted duplicates and all those who didnt include a flower-), that left us with the following:

11 applicants wanted to solely be a writer

6 artists and writers

17 only character artists

9 decided to sign up for the whole package

18 offered to be character or background artists

And 1 background artist only

...of which we then have decided to pull in 15 character artists, 2-4 for backgrounds, 3-5 writers, making for a team of roughly 24 folks, 27 with us, making your chances of getting accepted 24/62, 12/31- a 39% chance.

Now, for each position:

- Writers: 5 out of 26 chances, 19%

- Character artists: 15 out of 49, 31%

- Background artists: 1 out of 7, 14% chance

HOWEVER

The numbers might seem dire, and we are saddened we cannot include all of you, but we'd rather keep the team relatively small to be able to manage the project better, we will do our best with the decision and thank you so much for your all's interest and reception :]

- Your Local Nerd and Math Lover

Extra Kori Math Because I'm Bored: If you're one of the people who applied for all positions, that lands you in a 22876/35672 (817/1274) chance of being accepted, a pretty solid 64%, good number, I won't lie.

[project-lumen]

As Guys who have vaugely considered making a life series visual novel, im so excited for this it already looks so cool :D

Hi-hey-hello!! oh my god thats AMAZING!! From Arto, its so funny you say that because at school I was talking to a friend who applied for lumen too talking about how she'd KILL for a life series book!!!

- Arto

[project-lumen]

Would you ever consider having alternate endings for the game?

Like depending on how much the watcher interferes would you consider it tweaking even just the storyline and such?

Hi hello there!

Yep, we do plan on having alternate endings, all depending on the choices you make and how much you mess with the environment! A good ending, a bad ending, the true ending and most likely more!!

The different endings will also be influenced by a very, very special event in the game we are all extremely excited to reveal, just you wait >:3

-Kori

[project-lumen]

How does the application process go on your side of things? Or what are you looking for when considering people?

Anyways, I’m super excited to see how this goes!

Quoting Mumbo:

"The process is actually quite simple."

When considering people, we are looking for passion and willingness to work together as a team. We are searching for those who can contribute to our silly game solely fueled by their love for the Life Series, whether it be with ideas, designs, lore, art or music!

We have a good ol' spreadsheet with the form responses, classified by the work each person wishes to do, we will decide based on that, for art apps we will assign each one a Lifer depending on who's their favorite (will contact them with offers to draw other Lifer if there are repeats) and will choose based on reason for joining and familiarity with the Series, for writing apps we will decide mostly based on their familiarity with the Life Series and reason for joining and most likely will accept most, if not all those who offered to help in other areas :]

Thank you for the questions, and we are all very excited to share this project with you all! I am truly flattered by the reception we are having!

-The professional yapper (aka Kori)

note: please do not let me answer any other asks or I'll be sent to the air jail/lh

[project-lumen]

Hello, this is an incredible project and I'm so excited for it. Where will people be able to play this game, will is be in browser or elsewhere? Sorry if this is answered elsewhere but I only found this now,

Hey hi! Welcome, welcome! And thanks for the question :D

The coding team is still figuring out logistics and those things, but their current plan is to put the game up for free download on itch,io as an executable file you can run, then try to see if it is possible to put the game on browser for easier and quicker access, and depending on how silly they feel, they might even try their hand at porting it to mobile devices.

I am so excited to finally get coding

-Kor kor

[project-lumen]

What if you aren’t sure how much you can contribute (like if you have real life stuff going on, or just don’t have a lot of time)

Or, by the application form, if you could be a background or a character design, but you aren’t sure which one?

Or if your art style doesn’t fit with the theme?

Or if you’re an aspiring writer/artist, but not a professional one (not one of the best that is to say)?

Hi hello hello, thank you for the ask, those are important questions to answer, so, here we go :]

Project LUMEN is a passion project, and all members of the team have stuff going on irl, as such, we do not expect you to dedicate all day every day to the project, just as many contributions as you desire or are able to help us with. Just remember, this is all for fun! Think of it more as a group project haha

The background/character artist thing is supposed to be more about general art, and we will contact the folks as we decide to give them further instructions. Background artist is more about general backgrounds, like menus and UI. And character artists will each be in charge of drawing a Lifer's talking sprites, using their very own style and methods. As such, we will not request them to adapt to the game's chosen artstyle unless they want to help with other art such as overworld/battle animations, UI or items, as we wish to keep the game varied, but not inconsistent.

And as for art or writing experience, we are not looking for that and your level of expertise will not impact our decisions, we are just looking for people who are willing to aid us with this, any and all contributions are truly appreciated, whether it be just ideas, script snippets, dialogues, art, or something else. This is by no means meant to be a serious project with strict deadlines or anything of the sort, this is solely fueled by our love for the Life Series and is a tribute to the wonderful community surrounding it and their passion and talent.

-Kori + Arto

[project-lumen]

Heyy project lumen team, figured I’d ask here instead of the discord because I ask enough questions there already T^T

Because according to the newsletter the wonderful team working on this project has 18 character artists, does this mean that that role is full and there’ll most likely be no more character artist applications?

If that’s the case somewhere along the way I must have misunderstood how you’re going about character art and that is entirely my fault. ;w;

Even if character art isn’t available I may still fill out an application to be a background artist, who knows. Hope you guys would potentially consider me even if backgrounds aren’t my area of expertise :>

Hi hi! Thanks for the question, and no worries, we love answering them! >:3

As of now, character artist positions are full. We already have people taking care of each of the Lifer's talking sprites [these will appear along text boxes and some cutscenes!]. However, there is always the possibility we need extra assets for loading screens, or other menus, and, personally, I'd love to open applications for those too, to have lots of different art styles and let as many people as possible take part in the project, one can only hope.

Long story short, only time will tell, but as of this application round, character artist positions are all full.

Hope I answered your question! Thank you for considering applying! :>

-Kori

[project-lumen]

are there age limits / age requirements?

as in do you have to be older than a certain age?

As per Tumblr's T.O.S., you must be at least 13 or older to use the platform, so we will be using that as our minimum!

And as long as you are younger than 99 years, you should be good to go :]

(Sorry to you all eldritch immortal folks :[ )

- Definitely not Kori

[project-lumen]

Will there be desert Duo/rancher duo angst or anything wholesome

We have both angst and wholesomeness in store! Including but not limited to Renchanting, Desert Duo, Ranchers, the 3Gs, and pretty much all duos/teams, there's something special for all of them :3

[project-lumen]

Just wanted to say good luck to everybody applying!!!! (this will include myself ;] ) I hope everyone else is as excited about project lumen as I am!!111!!!11 and hope everyone's applications go well! :3

Goodluck to the project lumen team who are the unfortunate souls who'll have to go through all the applications, you'll need it >;] /silly

(if you let me in you can have my soul /silly /hj)

Good luck to everyone!!!! Keep up the hype!!!!

Also how dare you think we aren't buzzing from excitement as well. I'm personally absolutely thrilled about apps and to go through the background artist ones :3

And sorry. We already ate your soul. Yeah. It was very yummy. Looks like you have no bargaining power. You have to apply normally now :( sorry :(

-Pie <3