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Gathered by the Light Hero
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GatheredbytheLight

A hand-crafted pixel-art 2D platformer about a young moth on a perilous journey through a dark forest to find a mysterious light. Built as a college capstone project.

StatusCompleted
EngineUnity
PlatformWeb / PC

Mission Briefing

Overview

Gathered by the Light is a hand-crafted 2D pixel-art platformer made in Unity. You play as a young moth separated from their parents, drawn through a dark, spider-infested forest toward a mysterious light. It is a small, heartfelt game built as a university capstone project — the kind of focused, complete experience that taught our team the fundamentals of game design, level building, and interactive storytelling before the studio took on larger titles. Every sprite, tileset, and animation was drawn pixel by pixel, giving the forest a tactile, storybook atmosphere.

5
Comic Slides
10+
Levels
1
Boss Fight
Game Visual

How to Play

The game is a side-scrolling platformer driven by precise movement and a physics-based grappling hook that lets the moth swing through the forest canopy and reach otherwise impossible ledges. You navigate hazards across parallax-scrolling levels, use checkpoints to recover from mistakes, and follow gentle on-screen hints that teach the controls as you go. The journey builds toward a multi-phase spider boss fight — the climactic test of everything the levels have taught you. A short pixel-art comic opens the game and sets the emotional stakes of the moth's search.

Platforms & Where to Play

Gathered by the Light was completed as a capstone project rather than published as a commercial release, so it is not currently available on a store. We keep it on the site as part of our portfolio: a window into the studio's origins in game design and the craft we carry into every project we build today.

Development Story

Gathered by the Light is where our story as game makers really began. As a university capstone, it forced us to take a game from concept to a finished, playable whole — writing a small narrative, hand-drawing every asset in a pixel editor, building levels in Unity, and implementing systems like the grappling hook and a proper boss encounter. The constraints of a student project made us ruthless about scope, and the lessons from finishing it — about polish, pacing, and telling a story through movement — still shape how our studio approaches game development.

Features

Intel & Features

Key operational capabilities and game mechanics.

Grappling Hook Mechanic

Swing through the forest canopy with a physics-based grappling hook system.

Spider Boss Fight

Face a terrifying spider boss in an intense multi-phase battle.

Hand-Drawn Pixel Art

Every sprite, tileset, and animation crafted pixel by pixel in Aseprite.

Comic Intro Sequence

A cinematic pixel-art comic that sets the stage for the moth's journey.

The Story

A cinematic pixel-art comic prologue

Story slide 1
01 / 05
Story slide 2
02 / 05
Story slide 3
03 / 05
Story slide 4
04 / 05
Story slide 5
05 / 05

Characters

The cast of Gathered by the Light

Moth (Hero)
Moth (Hero)
Father
Father
Mother
Mother
Spider Boss
Spider Boss

Design Journey

Game mechanics and interactive elements crafted during development

Grappling Hook

Grappling Hook

Checkpoint

Checkpoint

Jump Hint

Jump Hint

Movement

Movement

Watch Trailer