UI/UX Design, UI Programming, Technical Art, Pixel Art Animation.

Lux Ex – Cyber Initiation

Lux Ex – Cyber Initiation is an unreleased shoot'em up developed by Ilex Games as a sequel to Lux Ex – Legacy, for PC. It's theme is deeply esoteric and full of symbolism, where occultism and cyber meets.

In this project I was mainly responsible for designing and implementing the user flow and interface, however I've also worked on 3D backgrounds and animating pixel art bullets.

UI Reel

UI Design

The theme of the game was highly esoteric and the Creative Director had deep knowledge in Occultism, so the game is accurate and heavy on occult symbolism. For the main menu and the level selection, we used as a reference both the Mysterium Cosmographicum by Johannes Kepler and the Tree of Life from Kabbalah.

The Mysterium Cosmographicum models the solar system (and the cosmos) by inscribing platonic solids inside one another and calculating orbits by spheres generated on each solid's point of contact.

With that reference we built the main menu as representation of the Macro cosmos.

The Kabbalah is a occult knowledge from mystical Judaism and is used on a variety of magickal traditions. Tree of Life It is a representation on both the external and internal universes, laying out different 'worlds', to keep it simple.

In the level selection the Tree of Life is a representation of the work of the mage navigating in the cosmos, where each level is a 'world', and the player unlocks it's way to higher levels of consciousness by beating them and completing the tree.

As the themed involved the player character navigating on different realms of consciousness using a digital device, we went with the neon cyber 3D route for the menus, contrasting with the 2D Pixel Art gameplay, as if they were in separate dimensions.

In game screens followed that aesthetic, such as "Level Clear" and "Game Over" Screens.

The 3D models made for the previous screens were re-utilized in the Levels backgrounds' composition. A convenient solution that opened up the possibility to use the platonic solids associated with the elements of each 'world'. The scrolling inscriptions are animated via shader and only the Creative Director will remember what they mean.

Under the guidance of our Art Director I've painted and animated the sprites of enemies projectiles using Aseprite. It's dark interior and light border ensures that they can be distinguished on all backgrounds' color variations.

For this sequel I've adapted the previous game logo, bringing a new font and minor adjustments.

Conclusion

This one was a really fun project to work on, the occult theme is one that deeply interests me, the autonomy to be experimental and push the limits of what I could do at that time. I learned a lot about Unity in that implementation and about patience with blender, which is definitely not a strong point of mine.

A shout out to the companions I shared this project with at Ilex Games!