Hey folks, I’m Nick, the creator and solo dev of a brand new IP called Luminids. Luminids is a cozy voxel colony sim made in Godot 4.6.
The idea is simple:
You guide a colony of tiny beings of light called Luminids.
You shape the land, help them build a home, manage their needs, and watch their little personalities emerge over time.
The game has two main views:
- Isometric/orthographic view for planning, building, and managing the settlement
- First-person view so you can step into the world and explore what you’ve created
Under the hood I’m using a lot of custom terrain, biome, lighting, AI, and settlement systems.
I’m still deep in development, but the Steam page is now live and I’d love to share it with the Godot community.
Would really appreciate any thoughts on the look, readability, vibe, or general direction.
Steam page: Luminids on Steam
Dev Log on the Luminid brains (an emotion first system): Dev Log 8: How Luminids Think - Designing an Emergent System - Luminids
Thanks for reading! I am greatly enjoying building in Godot and it’s fantastic to join this community for the first time.
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Environment style doesn’t match the characters style all that well. The ambience is too dark and textures feel too pronounced when compared to the bright and simple look of the balloon characters. There’s plenty of improvement room to make environments feel more cozy.
Good feedback thanks! Been making the Luminids a bit more matte overall and softening the lighting out. Still a year from early access or so. Originally wanted them more plush chibi like but didn’t match in the end. Wrestled with overbright vs under bright a lot so far too.
From the videos it looks like you’ve got a lot of different systems incorporated, but it’s hard to say anything about the gameplay without actually trying the game. Considering that you’re still a year away from early access, I don’t think there’s any reason to get into the visual side either, and as far as I know, there is no sound side as of yet 
Were I your producer, I would suggest focusing on the Luminids, and how they communicate their needs / moods / actions / etc to the player. They’re the stars (spheres?), and if you can create a system where simply watching Luminids live in an environment is fun, you’ve got a winner.
Since there are a lot of them, facial expressions won’t always be noticeable - you could have them glow / hover / animate / make noises / do special behavior according to their moods. That will communicate even when looking at a number of them, and each method is a way to add character to the spherical little scallywags
I assume the Luminids have types, because of the colors - that’s a good way to give them character too, like “guiding light” Luminids that support others, “holy light” Luminids with divine powers, “light speed” Luminids that move and work quickly, and so on.
I’m looking forward to trying it!
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Really appreciate the insight! Riffing on Creatures and Chao from back in the day. I’m working on getting that emergent civilisation vibe - somewhere between a God sim and a colony builder. Keen to keep them away from just being automatons that take command and more around emergent personalities.
Love the idea of individual animations and effect to illustrate personality - I made them in Blender and imported as .gltf
I’ve been working on Luminid designs relative to the biome they’re discovered in. Forest, snow, volcanic type ideas. Also want to have a consciousness growth system where they will evolve their thinking over time and grow with the player.
Been hard to capture good footage in the early parts of development (hard genre to get across in videos I find too), but building in public has had its benefits to getting the community journey started early.
If I was gonna craft more footage and upgrade my Steam trailers a bit more - what would you like to see?
Thanks again!
My pleasure
Systems like that are only worth what you can communicate to the player - if those systems are invisible, then the difference is only game mechanical (ie “higher level” Luminids do tasks better, but are otherwise identical to “lower level” ones to the player).
Ideally you want Luminids to stand out in meaningful ways, so the player can quickly identify them by type, age, or whatever else makes sense - maybe they grow bigger the longer they’ve been with the player, or they get an individual name once they’ve distinguished themselves? That way the player will grow more attached to them, and will expect more specialized behavior from them than vanilla Luminids.
I’d really just like to try the game, wherever it’s at. Videos are fine as promotional material, but they can’t really represent the gameplay… though if it’s not too complicated, I wouldn’t mind getting an overview of how Luminids interact. I was the developer-side producer on a whopping two Sims games (for dumbphone 
), so this is right up my alley
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Incredible you’ve worked on The Sims! Very cool!
Again really good feedback. Given me a lot to think on!
Definitely heard on testing - will be running a playtest very shortly in May. Sign up on Steam and hop by our discord and find me as Zilos - Luminids Discord - it’d be great to chat more together and also get your feedback during the play test. Need all the help I can get on this journey!
I’m not so fond of Discord (I don’t have the time to follow real-time conversations), but I’ve already requested access on Steam
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