Exploring Child Of Light With Patrick Plourde & Jeffrey Yohalem

The last time we saw the work of Child of Light’s Creative Director, Patrick Plourde and Scriptwriter, Jeffrey Yohalem, they were sending teenagers off to tropical islands to be kidnapped by Vaas, in Far Cry 3. Child of Light is not like that; not at all.

It is instead a beautifully styled 2D JRPG, which makes fantastic use of Ubisoft’s Ubi Art engine, made famous by Rayman Origins and Legends. It’s a fantastic example of a giant corporation like Ubisoft allowing their developers the freedom to create projects which aren’t necessarily going to be the biggest hits, but bring fresh games and experiences to the portfolio.

You play as Aurora, a young girl who is consumed by a sickness, wakes up in a mysterious fantasy world and must struggle to return home. She finds herself with the ability to fly, thanks to some fairy wings which have sprouted from her back, but also finds a companion in the form of Igniculus the firefly.

As I struggle to start recording audio – I had literally walked 5 or 6 paces from my hands on, and found both Patrick and Jeffrey hanging around and waiting for people to ask questions – Jeffrey answered my question about this big leap from writing Far Cry to Child of Light.

Unfortunately, I didn’t catch the first section on tape – the hall was quite loud, too, but I’ve done my best to transcribe – but he related that from his point of view, there’s maybe not too many differences. Both games see a classic coming of age story, just set within very different worlds, and with very different characters.

“Aurora, a young daughter of a duke from 1895 Austria, going through that journey to becoming an adult.

“At the same time, the JRPG system in the game, tells that story; the levelling. So the idea is that you can take all the writing out of the game, and you can still experience that moment of growth and live it.”

In addition to the lovely art style, which sees Aurora’s bright red hair defy gravity, floating around her head as she moves, and lends a wonderful hand drawn style juxtaposed with watercolours, the characterisation is equally charming.

She comes to a village filled with crows, with but a solitary man named Finn to talk to. As he mistakenly calls her Princess, she whips off her crown, a look of annoyance on her face and impetuously points out the “faux” written on the inside.

Moments later, she’s happily decided on a new mission, to descend into the town’s well and rid it of whatever turned the easily scared Finn’s fellow villagers to crows. It’s a dialogue which does show an element of that immaturity early in the game, but also has something else quite noticeable about it.

“It’s actually in rhyme like The Rime of the Ancient Mariner or the Jabberwocky,” revealed Jeffrey. “Basically it’s an ABCB rhyme scheme, so the second line rhymes with the fourth line, and in the final game we’re going to have it so that it’s four line stanzas and each one will light up, so you’ll be able to see the rhyme.

“So that was a very different experience! Writing a script like Far Cry 3 was like painting, where, you know as a writer, you get very excited when you’re writing something good and you’re like ‘Ah! I nailed that line!’ as you’re going through.

“This was more like a mosaic or tile work, or a crossword puzzle, where you’re putting scenes together and it become a puzzle to solve this scene and then you stand back and look at it, at the end. So it’s a very controlled experience.”

What’s quite interesting here is that there’s no voice acting. Instead, a piano-heavy musical score leads the way, with flowing variations depending on whether you’re battling, in dungeons or just travelling.

“Some of it is narrated, a bit like Sands of Time, little sprinklings of narration, but the rest is just text on screen,” explained Patrick. “One of the things we wanted was to have the flow of the music, and if you have dialogue, then this could kind of clash. I feel like the games on PS1, where they couldn’t afford voice over, and they let your imagination open up.”

Jeffrey cut in, saying, “We were inspired a lot by opera, the kind of flow you get from watching that. That kind of ambience and staging…”

As Aurora descends into the well, and the art style stands out once more, the JRPG gameplay comes to the fore. There are no random encounters here, but rather visible and avoidable enemies, if you should choose to. Running into them will cause a battle to commence, but you can use Igniculus to blind an enemy blocking your path, and sweep past.

In battle, the two sides line up, and the timing meter runs along the bottom of the screen, with each combatant’s stats determining how fast they get to the casting stage. However, be careful which ability you pick, because the casting itself can slow you down, and let an enemy character’s move overtake yours.

Igniculus comes into play here, too, able to blind enemies and make them skip their attack, or collect health and mana points from little incidental spots in the level. It’s actually a nice element to enable co-operative play, with a second player able to control Igniculus.

“The co-op is from Mario Galaxy,” stated Patrick, confirming my suspicions. “The idea there was good, but there was a frustration that they’re not really participating, it’s like your just doing your own star stuff.

“There’s a point where, as a parent, you’re going to play the second character. It’s like your child says, ‘No, I want to play the main character! I can read that!’ so then it needs to be fun to be the firefly and involving for the parent.”

Igniculus can roam quite freely around the screen, and has an involved role in solving puzzles and interacting with the world. He might burn brighter and cast shadows from objects, or be able to trigger a switch that disables a tricky trap.

“The point is the notion that they can open up vaults and exploit that with certain stuff hidden,” says Patrick. “I can do all of that when I’m alone, because I can switch characters, but it’s so much better for two players.

“It’s just a different flow and experience, and I think solo players are going to have that old experience. You want to feel like you’re having an impact and a different perspective.”

As I came to a final boss, I was resoundingly defeated by the huge tentacled beast. It took out Finn and Aurora in quick succession, and Igniculus couldn’t help us. With a short demo, I’d not been able to explore every nook and cranny of the dungeon or level up Aurora and Finn anywhere near enough, and kit them out with stat-boosting crystals.

It feels like there will be quite an extensive game here, and I asked how Ubi Art was helping his come to fruition.

“Our team is even smaller than Rayman Legends, but [Ubi Art lets us do many things],” explained Patrick. “The first thing is that the work of the artist goes straight in the game.”

“When you’re making Assassin’s Creed, and there’s all this beautiful concept art you want to hang on your wall, it’s never coming into the game, and is used as inspiration for 3D modellers and level artists. What we can do with Ubi Art is that the concept artists are doing the art straight for the game. For them it’s really liberating and creates our unique style.”

“Then the other thing is that we’re able to have a full sized game. With a JRPG we need 50 enemies and just to have the main characters in 3D it would take a week to rig, two weeks to model, and when you start multiplying that by the rest of the characters, I think that scope of game needs a much larger team.

“We have a guy that draws the art for the character in the morning, and by the afternoon it’s in the game. It’s so quick, and then it’s just a matter of making sure it’s the correct look, fits the universe, has the right animation. So we can do a lot of stuff, and everybody has the feeling of having a bigger impact.”

Thanks to Jeffrey and Patrick for taking the time to talk to us about Child of Light. The game is set for release on current and next generation platforms via digital distribution next year.