Why Open-World was a Mistake 

🎮🎮🎮 Wishlist on Steam 🎮🎮🎮 store.steampowered.com/app/1949610/Luminous_Realms/ What do you guys think, was moving away from Open-World style gameplay a good idea?

Imo dropping the open world was a good idea, especially for a indie developer considering how much work you have to put in to make a good and sensible open world experience.

The best creativity always comes through limitations. Always happy to support, glad to see you're enjoying the dev process!

Linear games are the best ones in my book, but it used to be an unpopular opinion and I think that opinion is gaining some traction these days.

Seeing Dissidia and Crisis Core in the Art section made me so happy! Great job and good luck for the future! KH2 combat is so good but so hard to get right.

1:34 That is something that has been a dream of mine. KH1 is my favorite, story wise, but KH2 is my favorite combat wise. 😊 I've imagined KH1 with KH2 style combat ever since I got to play them on PC.

So glad you've added performance sliders! Hopefully now I'll be able to get in and try it.

It's crazy how you managed to recreate the basic feeling of a Kingdom Hearts Game in this early stage.

linear> open world, I dont want to waste my time on empty fields

Hey there! Another indie developer living in Japan here ;) For the style of your game, being linear instead of Open World will have much more benefits for your game imo. Looking forward how this game will turn out ^^

Yeah. Open world is a commitment that often seriously limits stylization. If you aren't a triple A, it's probably out of your purview.

Switching to linear is probably the better choice. Now you can focus on speeding up the combat and not having to worry about making tons of assets and over working yourself

you made a great decision bro i really loved the compact enclosed environment even in this gray box stage it looks very cool, best luck man

Nice to see you're still going strong. Open worlds are generally the biggest trap for gamedevs, as it's also just so much more extra content, as you can't just leave empty areas actually empty, they still all need to be filled up. Getting a non-linear story is also really hard without completely railroading the player, at which point you may as well have just stuck to a linear 3D platformer like you're doing now. Keep it up!

I don't mind dropping the open-world in favor of more compact limited exploration style like KH1. I think the best part of KH2FM outside of combat was exploring the Cavern of Remembrance, which really opens up as you get more growth abilities. Transferring that level design into an area that the player has a reason to come back to as they gain more abilities helps add replayability to an area you would otherwise build just to see the player run through only once. "Hub" areas are also a good way place to pour creativity while cutting down on having to craft a ton of levels to get the player from one area to another. You can also use big areas to test and reward players for understanding the mechanics of the game to reach otherwise inaccessible areas of the map with treasures.

I think the game itself looks good, but I think currently its identity is "that indie game that's like kingdom hearts". Not just because the gameplay is inspired by the series, that's fine, but lots of smaller features like the save points, pause menu, the way the target lock is implemented, etc, all seem to replicate kingdom hearts for the sake of replicating kingdom hearts. Not a critisim of your work, but I feel like there are some great indie games that are only known for being like another big game, than standing out on their own.

Linear worlds can work just as good in a RPG if there are gameplay elements that are compelling. For example Final Fantasy X and Final Fantasy XIII are both very linear games in the franchise, but one is universally loved while the other is hated. One of the core reasons is that FFX Sphere grid progression system allows different avenues for the player to enjoy the actual combat by building their characters different ways, while FFXIII level progression offers little to no variety plus has a level cap. In Kingdom hearts there are many different ways to play. You can over level, under level, optimize equipment, equip certain abilities, go to some worlds in different order, etc so even though its game progression was linear the core gameplay wasn't.

Honestly, I never really liked Open World and gotten sick of them recently even if I like the game (TOTK and Sonic Frontiers). So, hearing you step away from it and focusing on a more linear world design is great to hear. Considering Open World is a very massive undertake to do on one's own with so many variables to consider compared to a more tight, focused, and straight forward game like Linear style offers. It's very good to hear from you again. I remember seeing your project a while back and was stroked to hear someone make their own KH-style game. I wish more people made something like that. And you doing KH1 level design with KH2 combat style which I think is going to be great... which is what I wished KH3 was, but it went too massive and didn't like it. I hope you'll eventually make tutorials on how someone else can make their own KH-style game as well. Even trying to replicate the KH2 combat is very tricky it seems. I dream to make my own too, which has more of an anime-ish appearance to it with maybe Cel-Shaded in mind. Basically the gameplay loop I have for my dream is that it combines KH2 combat with Dragon Ball Z Karakot gameplay styles a bit. So using the Down D-Pad access Items, while using Left and Right changes Weapons. And my Protagonist has magical shape-shifting weapon so you switch to a different gameplay. Pressing the Triangle Button (PS controller) you can swap between Melee and Range weapons so you have 6 types of Weapons in total. Which he dual wields as I love dual-wielding and makes him stand out a little more. I want my game to be similar to KH2, but with its own twist and playing DBZ Kakarot further expanded on that idea. Not to mention that both Melee and Range have both Short and Long attack and this idea based on Zone of the Enders's gameplay. And using the R2 allows him to run at blazing speed which is drawn from Sonic Frontiers with the Boost mechanic. I do plan on a Flight mode so he can fight like a DBZ character with enemies in the air. As much as I didn't like KH3 there were good ideas in it like blocking in midair, using items in the air, Shotlock, and Airstep which I kinda want to add into my dream game. And with transformations too. I have many ideas which I'm writing down, but before I even attempt to make my dream game I want to first learn a game engine and make a few sample games to get into the swing of things. From your video you're using Unreal Engine, right? 4 or 5? I would love to try it out, but sadly it's attached to the Epic Game Story Launcher and I refuse to get that Launcher. Whether or not the stories I hear about it is true or not, I have Steam and I don't plan on having another Launcher especially when they take games that could be on PC elsewhere (wanted to get the KH series on Steam). Any engine similar to Unreal Engine? Also, do you use Blender for making the 3D models? Sorry for the ramble. Just seeing you make your dream game got my excited and wanted to share as well. I look forward to when Luminous Realms is done. It's looking great so far! Oh, right Discord server. I'll be joining soon enough.

Looking good. A bit of a shame that the open world had to be dropped, but for a budding indie developer maybe trying to basically make a game that's the best parts of kh 1, kh2 and making it open world maybe wasn't very realistic. I'm just glad development is still going on and getting updates

I support your decision! I believe you’re making good decisions to manage scope! It’s even better that you validated it through playtesting! Also. Digimon Adventure? Nice 👌

خطوة جيدة أنك تراجعت عن العالم المفتوح بحكم أنه مشروع مستقل ففكرة العالم المفتوح فقط بتزيد الحمل عليك وبيكون شبه مستحيل تخلص اللعبة الا لو ضحيت بلمحتوى وبلتوفيق لك اللعبة متفائل جدا بها

A matroid-vania style KH inspired game, with DIGIMON inspiration?!? That's so sick

Replaying KH1. I forgot had how small the maps were. Feels perfect for an indie project scale

Blending KH2's combat with KH1's platforming sounds like such a winning combination. The original series' decreased emphasis on platforming was such a missed opportunity. Lately, I've started to feel like _open world_ games aren't as satisfying as _open-ended_ games. Enclosed environments with specific platforming challenges -- but if you're clever and understand the mechanics, you can tackle those challenges in any order. Mario Sunshine was a brilliant example of this: you could load into world 1-2, but complete the challenge for 1-5 if you could find a way across the broken bridge. This is achieved by crisscrossing the paths for each objective on top of one another, often layered vertically.

This game will be awesome for sure 🤩 Keep working on

Damn if we get character models inspired by FF7, I'd be even more hooked than I already am. I actually had a conversation with people about how no one has tried to replicate KH2 combat. It's wild how much of a masterpiece that game is, emphasis on IS, yet somehow I don't see any while at the same time I see many Souls-like games. It's probably because Souls-games have a western aesthetic because I don't remember Code Vein being that great but every other one seemed like it got popular enough.

is looking better and better 😁

So KH1 platforming with KH2 battle system in a Final Fantasy based world. Sounds like the best game ever. Honestly never been a fan of open world games and never saw what all the hype was about. Small platforming levels generally have a uniqueness or theme to each and are quite distinguishable, unlike open-world where things get repetitive, become a pain to track, boring to travel to a specific place and in-between places always feel like generic filler.

When you're a kid playing games and your imagination is still big enough, linear levels feel like they are part of a bigger world thats possible to explore if you somehow can break out of the map. Of course knowing how games are made kills this idea.

I'm excited for your progress! Can't wait to try it out in the future.

Do you think about a single protagonist or a female version? I doubt you make character customization. Im interested about the story. As a screenwriter it’s my passion

let the game speak for itself, let the users taste the vision in glimpses, and they will flock to your patreon link without you having to beg for it

Open world games are one of those things that I love the idea of more than the implementation in most cases, both in playing and creating. It's incredibly easy to mess up. Introduce too much linearity to keep the experience consistently fun and you end up with players feeling railroaded and lacking in choice, while too little can leave large gaps between interesting places/events or emotional punches that mess with how well the plot lands and how enjoyable combat/exploration is. A few exceptions for me as a player would be games like Subnautica where fear of the unknown, hostile wildlife, and thalassophobia fill in the gaps where you could otherwise get bored by long traveling times/resource gathering and lose tension, or Baldur's Gate 3 where Larian worked so hard at creating a tight experience that they avoid some of the more common open world pitfalls. Overall though, these days I prefer linear games adding more open elements where they can work well more than open world games trying to add linearity back in - it's definitely the right choice for a Kingdom Hearts inspired game imho, KH was originally designed to be linear and so works best as a linear game. KH3 suffered in some ways for adapting it to open world design, eg by expanding their maps so much, making chest hunts (and the hidden Mickeys) much more grindy and tedious. From a dev perspective, it helps to avoid blowing out the scope and burning out (especially if you're doing things solo). That's already way too easy to do even without designing an open world :/

I definetly agree that for this kind of game, a more linear and compact world will work better. A lot of games these days seem to go for the open world approach, but as I think a lot of people already know at this stage, there's tons of examples where the open world doesn't actually add anything meaningful to the game and just becomes extra space to walk around in. I love to see this project coming along, it's the kind of thing that I dreamed of making back when I started studying. Nowadays I'm working full time, and I don't quite feel I have the time or drive to make a full 3D action game like this, but seeing projects like this doing thek inds of things I love but better than I can is truly awesome. Keep it up!

There's a seemingly forgotten style between open world and linear were you can explore the world in whatever order you want but it's not a completely open terrain map with objects on it, it's designed and modelled levels that "clip" together. Think about how the worlds of earlier pokemon games would look if you "clipped" all the screens together into a continuous world map but kept the same area layouts. It is a world. It is open for you to explore. But you can't explore off the paths leaving inaccessible areas. So we just add more paths to fill the gaps in. Now the whole world is open and explorable. It's not an open world, and doesn't suffer the gameplay problems of an open world, but it still has the benefits of an open world.

I do think that you should drop the save spots and have manual saving in the menu, sometimes you need to shut down a game quick and the save point is to far away.

or, you could even make all the smaller rooms, then make it similar to kh3, where they are big combined areas, but still make them with the level design that you want, so there isn’t too many loading screens.

Because friendship is such a large focus in the _Kingdom Hearts_ series, I've often thought about how I want the Bond LV from _Dream Drop Distance_ brought back, but in a much more relevant and ambitious way: With your party members being the main characters instead of monsters with no personality, where you gain Bond with them by playing minigames (like _Yakuza: Like a Dragon_ ,) by just hanging out (like the _Persona_ series,) or by having conversations with them in specific locations that flesh out their character (like the _Xenoblade Chronicles_ series.) This would act as a solution to one of the big complaints from many fans about the series, that "they talk a lot about being friends but we rarely see them doing the things friends do," while also adding purpose to playing minigames and sidequests. A system like this would likely be extremely difficult to implement. However, if I were making a game inspired by my favorite series, I would definitely want to include features that make up for shortcomings found in the series that inspired my game.

"The exploration and platforming of KH1 and the combat of KH2" oh okay so you're just making the BEST GAME EVER??

just 1 little gripe, I feel like this game can benefit from having a different type of text system than kh has. While its obviously not exactly the same, a more modern textbox ui would be pretty cool

KH2 peak design, glad you went back to it!

keep going!

This looks great! Keep at it!

it would actually be sick if you made regalia music for the soundtrack

When you mentioned a more compact linear world with some elements of metroidvania style backtracking my mind immediately went to Devil May Cry 3. DMC3 has a structure of "Missions" that you progress through linearly, but it all takes place in one single location which you can travel to any already-explored area of, regardless of mission. I'd recommend examining how DMC3 handles this structure and setting, it may yield some extra design ideas for the setting of your game and how the player will explore it

you should speed things up; i think it would make it better. currently, it feels slow and floaty. make it sharp, and solid

im thinking its an good idea, but if your gonna do it, better use the references of other KH games, like KH3 and DDD or even the missing link's trailer in part of clinming and swinming, and when your character final attack like the recoded final strikes?

I've just joined your patreon, best of luck man I hope the game you make turns out great.

As an indie don't feel obligated to do what's trendy. I like all designs on the spectrum of linear to open.

Just saw your reply to my comment that I had made on your last video. I'm honestly really excited to see the switch back to the more linear focus and have even re-added the game to my wishlist. Based off of purely watching this video though, I think it would be cool to see a some form of animation canceling added to the game and maybe a slight speed up in the combat animations. I'm super excited to see the final product and as a KH fan, you already know I'm willing to wait a decade or longer to get it lol

I started following you because of KH but I'm very very interested to see what Digimon inspirations you will end up using!

First time I’ve heard and seen of this project. Interesting indeed. You said kh2 combat and i was hooked 😂

You can compensate, make it semi openworld. If you tell a story and dont want to make it to messy you go from A to B to C , keeping the level liniar aswell to achieve that. If there is no story to tell you can make the map open. Example: KH1 you go from traverse town to alice in wonderland, traverse town could be open world, and alice in wonderland could be open world , but you have to finish traverse town before heading to alice in wonderland.

The real issue that I see with Open World structure is that, unless you have a giant pre-plan to work from, it's just a lot of empty space that does nothing to serve the players and gives a headache to developers. This ain't like "Shadow of the Colossus" where you have only bosses to fight and explore an empty land for speculative lore. If you want to do an open world, start from a linear story and levels and grow from there. Side Areas and compartments to help flesh out the level and then take is a little further into a giant- yet compact space. Look at what you have later with a more logical mind like the logistics about how certain shops run and deliver, the sewers, power plants, important buildings for the level or story. Heck, you don't even need to do a 1:1 world map if your doing an "open world", use ff7 as an example when the characters are on the overworld map and have the characters be giants and designated locations for level like structures like towns and caves and such. TBH your better off giving the illusion of an open world than actually doing one, as there is less to add and worry about.

This looks like an interesting game, and I can't wait to get my hand on it when it's finished. Hell, even just play testing would be cool. Keep up the great work

I mean, you could still have some larger, more open areas in between the more linear sections.

When you initially decided to do open world, I still wanted to follow your game and keep an eye on it as it grew, but I'll admit I was a bit disappointed because it started to feel more like a small homage to Breath of the Wild rather than a Kingdom Hearts inspired game. And I'm not saying the KH inspiration wouldn't have been there, but that's just how drastic that shift to open world, free climbing, and paragliding affected the overall feels even just from the little demos you showed off. Now this, THIS feels like Kingdom Hearts! This feels like we're back on track where we were pre-open world, and I'm honestly a lot more excited again after seeing this video! I was going to keep an open mind either way, but I'm happy that this is the direction Luminous Realms is taking now. Let me also add, KH1 world design was some of my favorite in the series, so while the combat here is more KH2 inspired, I love that the level design takes after KH1 😁

Do you need any additional artists? I only know 2d art, but I'd be happy to try and contribute what I can if asked.

You're doing some great work here. I really love what you've got so far! Dropping the open world concept was a good idea, I don't think it'd really fit this style of game anyways. It's likely that the actual Kingdom Hearts franchise will lean heavily in this direction, and I don't think the response to it will be very good, because of the simple lack of direction toward the original design focus of Kingdom Hearts, which is what drew us all to it in the first place.

In a weird way, a more "limiting" level design allows for a lot more level designs to shine through I think. I'm a big fan of levels that can be completed in multiple ways, I think that's the best of both worlds for what open world games are typically supposed to offer the player anyways, just on a smaller scale.

To be honest its still relatively simple to make a linear level but also make it seem open world. I myself am working on a similar Idea of a linear game with an open world feel.

KH1 level design with KH2 combat, sounds perfect! I'm personally glad that you decided to not go open world. I'm looking forward to being able to try it out!

Open world single player games are like a choose your own adventure book. Gimmicky and gone in no time. Linear tells a story infinitely better. Even visual novels with divergant paths are still linear.

I love the updates. My Opinion but one thing I love, is little things in kh1 that’s missing in kh2 like extinguishing the candles as a little secret chest or soras walk animation and the animation where he has his back against the wall and shimmy’s.

In the last video you made I thought that you were getting a little sidetracked by breath of the Wild by trying to implement those kind of game mechanics that would be required for an open-world environment but now I think you are 100% on the right track. The linear World design, the metrovania style of world-building, the Digimon enemy designs, the 3D platforming of Kingdom Hearts 1 and the complex combat of Kingdom Hearts 2 is perfect❤

This is trully a wonderfull work..!!🎉❤

You should increase the gravity, the jump looks really floaty

Ever thought about creating an open world that is based on instanced linear levels you make? This way you retain your creativity, but can create something large scale.

I like the sea of stars approach

Saw one of your bugs say that camera flickers when doing finishers, and got me thinking about how something to due with my springarm collider on Godot 4 was causing similar sounding issues. I'd recommend turning off all camera / springarm collisions when doing finishers to get an idea if that's your issue.

You do realize Breath of the Wild has closed off areas, right? That's the thing about open worlds; you have the open part of the world and then the "open" part of the world where you're in a more closed off area. Hell if you really wanted to you could take a Sly Cooper 2 and onward approach, hub world you explore is open while mission areas are closed/ limited. Of course if you make the world too open you run into issues, that's a given.

if I could give some feedback, the animation of your heor/main could get a lot better :P

Finally someone has mentioned my point ❤

Open World can work for an mmo or a live-service game that constantly recieves updates and new content (world of warcraft, for example)

I think the problem with open world is that a lot of Devs don't really know how to fill the world. So many open worlds don't really offer a lot of POI and feel empty. I don't care if a game has a world that is 10000m² big if it's uninteresting

To avoid mistakes like wasting resources and time on having to make big changes like this use a GDD or hire a Game Designer to ensure which is your game vision and pillars @YahyaDanboos if you don't have a clear vision you gonna waste time and resources for nothing, Game Designer and Director here

Did I heard metroidvania, u got me there ❤

What do you use for the planning? Looks neat!! I want to do something like that for my project ♥

Doing an open world game requires a lot of experience and manpower. It's a huge challenge (if you want to do a good one that is) and it will double or triple the time it makes to do your game. So I think you're doing the right choice yeah. Anyway, good luck, it's looking good

Good move. I will be much more interested in a linear/metroid style game.

It looks great, But I would prefer an auto save system it is better because save points can be missed for some players or some they just don't understand what is it, maybe just make an auto save when you reach some points in the level or in transition.

since KH has a lot of disney references, are you going to try and get rights for that? or a good idea for cross marketing would be contacting other indie game devs and putting their main characters in your game. that way you get models for the NPC and they get their OC to other audiences. Win Win IMO

I actually prefer semi-open world games most of the times. Not as limiting as a pure linear game, but not usually stuff full of endless NPC quests that are essentials doing the same thing over and over again.

Cool devlog, nice presentation of level design!

Just a heads up, I'm not sure if you're aware of this but I happen to find this RU-vid video, turns out the Camera in Kingdom Hearts isn't focused on Sora, but by an invisible spot/point that is offset from Sora's head: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-lhVte6yU4rM.html Figure I let you know cause the camera seems to be centered on the character, whereas the the offset camera focus can give breathing room on what the Main Character is observing through his/her surroundings.

I prefer the limited space than an open world. I feel like putting more focus on smaller rooms has more love than most open world maps that mostly consist of trees, water, and grass. For example, the open world in Genshin was very boring to me cuz it lacked personality. Star Rail's maps are smaller, but most rooms have a lot of distinct characteristics thus making it more memorable. Looking forward to seeing how your game turns out.

shame, a kingdom heart-esque open world game sounds amazing but if it helps make the game better and get it out sooner then I completely understand this decision

1:51 I'm surprised you didn't use a magnet aura system to pull in gems.

Just curious, did you make your own attack animations? Or are they all from mixamo? Loving this project so far!

I just stumbled upon this video with no context to your journey developing it, but I have to admit, the main character's design REALLY looks like just "Sora at home", especially with that big sword at the beginning. Others have said that you needed to do more with the gameplay to have it stand out, but I don't think this is necessarily true. I DO think however that you should work more on your visual identity - try to make your protagonist a bit more unique, with a weapon that maybe intentionally avoids any resamblance to the Keyblade. I'm gonna make a dumb suggestion but I recall watching Highschool DxD one time, and besides the magnificent "plot", one thing that really stood out to me was Issei's extremely cool demon gauntlet thingy, so maybe you could get some inspiration from that if you feel inclined (maybe (perhaps))

That’s cool I was thinking of doing Kingdom Hearts inspired game that feature Dreamworks characters called Imaginary Stars

YES!! YES, YES, YES, PLEEAAASSEEE! This is EXACTLY the kind of thing I've been wanting from a mainline KH game for a long while now! KH1's level design married with KH2's combat mechanics - its a match made in heaven💜💖💜 Color me excited and eager!

Good thing you dropped off the open world idea. Limitations does bring out creativity. This project looks promising, I'll keep my eye on it.

Final Fantasy AND Digimon influences? Looking forward to it xD

Good choice.

Digimon, huh? Does that mean that Faris is going to wear goggles on his head?

Do Linear. thats what KH fans are used to anyways. or just make a bigger level than normal, like twilgiht town or destiny island where you can explore around

Even the actual Kingdom Hearts devs realized that it is hard to make an open world story work, so they simply stuck to a linear story in the singular open world-world they made, allowing you to skip most of it if you don't want to play it.

Honestly, I'm glad you're not sticking with the open-world aspect. That was one thing that I really did not like with this

HE'S STILL ALIVE!