YahHeard

Illuminate

Light reveals the world.

  • Active Development
  • Game
  • Exploration
  • Works offline

An exploration game in the dark: steer a small light through hidden worlds, reveal the paths around you, and avoid the shadows that hunt it.

View screenshots (4)Technical details
Illuminate gameplay: a single light in total darkness revealing a few glowing floor tiles around it, with 3 percent of the world revealed and pulse, beacon, dash and flood abilities below
The world exists only where your light reaches.

Screenshots

Captured from the Windows desktop build, running in a phone-shaped window. The Android build could not start on this site's test emulator, which has no graphics hardware.

14

  • The world exists only where your light reaches.
  • Paths stay revealed behind you as you explore.
  • The title screen: a quiet journey into the unknown.
  • Six worlds, each concealing a larger shape to reveal.

What Illuminate is

Illuminate begins in darkness. You steer a light with a drag, and the world appears only where it shines — floors, routes and memories that fade again once you pass. Pulse reveals nearby paths for a moment and stuns shadows; Beacon leaves one of three temporary lights behind; Dash escapes contact; Flood spends energy for a wider radius and protection. Six authored worlds shaped as a circuit, a heart, a clock, a city, a constellation and a sanctuary unlock in sequence, with an enemy-free Explore mode and challenges including a daily maze, an invisible maze, memory floors and escalating endless mazes. Ambience and effects are synthesised originals, saves are checksummed and replaced atomically with a backup, and the game asks for nothing beyond optional vibration.

What it does

  • A world that exists only where your light reaches
  • Pulse, Beacon, Dash and Flood abilities
  • Six authored worlds, each with its own shape
  • An enemy-free Explore mode
  • Daily, invisible, memory and endless maze challenges
  • Original synthesised ambience

Getting Illuminate

Illuminate is still in development and is not distributed yet. It is roughly 80% of the way to a first public release.

At a glance

Status
Active Development
Version
1.0.0
Runs on
Android, Windows (Android 8.0+)
Offline use
Works offline
Package
com.illuminate.light
Engine
Unity 6000.6.2f1
Last updated

Privacy

No account, tracking or Internet access. Saves stay on the device.

Full privacy information for Illuminate →

Permissions

Vibration
Optional haptic feedback, which can be switched off.

Support

Questions, bugs or ideas for Illuminate?

Illuminate support →

Technical details

Built with

  • Unity
  • C#
  • IL2CPP
  • OpenGL ES 3
  • ScriptableObjects
  • Synthesised audio

How it is put together

  • World maps are authored or seeded floor graphs, each validated by breadth-first search so every level can be finished.
  • A batched mesh with timed colour updates and pooled light markers draws the reveal without per-tile objects.
  • Saves use a versioned checksum envelope, a flushed temporary file, atomic replacement and a backup fallback.

Development workflow

Built through ChatGPT.

Timeline

  1. Version 1.0.0

    Playable build and verified APK; physical-device acceptance pending.

Accessibility in the app

  • An enemy-free Explore mode for every world
  • Relative drag or touch-to-guide steering
  • Keyboard controls on desktop builds

  • Driftlings

    Move the world. Save the swarm.

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