Welcome back to our Developer Blog! This entry will focus on one of Lemnis Gate's most crucial game mechanics: Ghost Mode.
What is it?
Ghost Mode is activated when your hero is killed while playing a turn. Contrary to other shooters, death is not final in Lemnis Gate. If you get taken-down, you still play the entirety of your 25-second turn.
As a ghost, you can run, shoot, and jump just like a regular character. Still, you can't interact with the world in a meaningful way, as your ghost won't apply damage to enemies or be able to take objectives.
Since Lemnis Gate is set inside a time loop, preventing your previous character's death makes every move they made like a ghost become real. It works as if they never died in the first place.
Pretty cool, right? Implementing such a parallel timeline mechanic didn't come without its challenges. To start, all ghosts had to be ineffective towards the game's scoring system. To solve this, ghosts and their respective deployable gadgets are sent to another plane (Spooky!) where they can see but not touch the real world.
Finally, communicating the mode's existence was also a challenge. It's a gamer's natural reaction to let go of the controller or disconnect themselves from the action when they die. We designed specific UI elements to provide robust feedback in combination with some Fullscreen post effects to help indicate the player's transition into Ghost Mode and encourage them to keep on playing.
As a new mechanic, Ghost Mode takes some time to get used to, but we're excited to see how our players can master time using it.