Til Morning's Light

*"Erica Page is an ordinary teenage girl, just trying to fit in. She’s also trapped in a mansion haunted by a 200 year-old curse. You know, the normal stuff. Help her explore the huge, creepy, and not exactly empty mansion, revealing its darkest secrets and hopefully a way out. There are clues to decipher, tools to collect, and puzzles to solve. If all else fails, Erica can beat the goo out of supernatural nasties with an arsenal of clubs, knives, and swords. Oh, did we forget to tell you? Erica has to escape by dawn, or she’ll become the next ghost in the mansion!"*

—WayForward's Overview.

**Til Morning's Light** is an spooky-adventure-puzzle single player video game released on May 21st, 2015. It was developed by WayForward Technologies and published by Amazon Game Studios. Originally, Til Morning's Light was set to be a Fire Phone-exclusive but Amazon decided to broaden it's market and the game was also released for Android and iOS.

The game was announced officially on October 14th, 2014, along with it's audiobook prequel titled "Til Morning's Light: The Private Blog of Erica Page" available for free at Audible.com.

## Gameplay

### Goal and Chapters

The main objective of the game is to find a way out of the Haunted Mansion, by solving brain racking Puzzles , exploring over 100 rooms of the house, and defeating enemies and Bosses. The game is divided into five Chapters. At the end of every Chapter, a Boss must be defeated in order to get a Key that will unlock a door to the next chapter.

Chapter 1  explores the west side of the Mansion, through various dark rooms, hallways and gardens, Erica must solve her first puzzles and face the basic enemies: the Chomper, the Leecher and the Gooper. At the end of Chapter 1, Erica must defeat Victor, a scientist who's in charge of making all the Creatures for the house.

Chapter 2 explores the east side of Floor 1and the deep caverns of Floor 0. New enemies are found on this Chapter: the Dasher and the Pincher. The woman who lures new guests to the house is Constance, she's the boss of Chapter 2.

In Chapter 3 , Erica enters to the East side of Floor 2, 3 and a part of Floor 4. Two new enemies are introduced on this Chapter: the Charger and the Buster. Erica meets Lucian, the Boss of Chapter 3, he is the friendly and insane mechanic in charge of repairing and building the Puzzles that can be found all around the house.

Chapter 4  takes place at the west side of Floor 2, 3 and the rest of Floor 4. The Creeper, the strongest and last enemy of the game is found on this Chapter. The Boss of Chapter 4 is Isobelle, the witch. The woman of "The Master of the House" responsible for putting a curse on the Mansion and trapping all the ghosts inside of it.

Chapter 5 is the ending of the game. Erica must face and defeat the Final Boss, Nathaniel Crowes "The Master of the House" in order to leave the house and find what happened to her BFF, Angie.

### Controls

Til Morning's Light uses the touchscreen of the device to use onscreen menus or inputs, and perform more complex actions, such as move Erica, interact with objects and fight enemies. All these controls are explained during the game.

#### Amazon Fire Phone Experience

Til Morning's Light on the Amazon Fire Phone uses the Dynamic Perspective feature to give the player a 3D effect on all over the house. The game won't stay on a single camera angle angle, the perspective will change depending on the player's tilt to the device. Movement and on-screen inputs will remain the same as on Android and iOS.

On the Fire Phone's homescreen, the game will tell the user on which Chapter he/she is, collected Lost Spirits quantity and there is also an "Erica's Journal" input which will take the player to Erica's Journal section on the Main Menu of Til Morning's Light.

### Movement

To move Erica, touch the sceen and drag in the direction desired. The player can also tap the screen to run Erica to an specific location.

#### Interactive Objects

When the show up, the player can touch the green interactive icons on doors, crates, drawers, weapons or other objects to use them.

#### Inventory

In the game, the Inventory can be found on the top right corner of the screen in form of a backpack. Inside, the player can find Keys, Items, Health Pickups, Clues, and Puzzle Related Objects.

##### Inventory Categories

**Clues:** Security Codes, Photographs, Clues and Journal Entries can be found here.

**Keys:** All the Keys Erica collects in The Mansion  are in this category.

**Items:** All the Items purchased in The Shop can be found on this category of the inventory.

**Health:** Inside this category, the player can find all the Health Pickups Erica collects or purchases in The Shop.

**Puzzle Related Objects:** Lever Handles, Gears, Dolls, Statues, Chemicals, Dead Animals and more Puzzle Related Objects can be found in this category.

#### Map

The game has an easy-to-use map system that helps the player to find itself in the house, find weapons, shops and puzzles. It also shows locked rooms and unexplored areas of the house as black areas in the map.

Puzzles: Clues, Crates and Nooks

Clues will appear oftenly throghout the game, the player can examinate them by tapping on them in the inventory.

Crates are used to be put on top of Pressure Plates. The player can push or pull them in four directions: forwards, backwards, left and right.

Nooks are giant holes in the floor or in the wall that contain Puzzles Related Items or Clues. Tap on them to see their content. On the Amazon Fire Phone, the nooks can be explored by using the Dynamic Perspective Feature of the Fire Phone.

#### Combat

The combat in Til Morning’s Light employs a variety of 2D rhythm-based inputs the player must react to as they appear and animate onscreen. Each input the player successfully completes causes Erica to attack the enemy she’s battling, and each input missed (or keyed in too early or too late) causes the enemy to attack Erica, in an almost back-and-forth RPG style.

#### Combat Patterns

**Note:**Because Til Morning's Light was originally set to be a Fire Phone exclusive, the gameplay experience is optimized for the front facing camera system of the Fire Phone.

### Collecting Coins and The Shop

Throughout the game, Erica is collecting Currency Pickups (Coins and Gems), all of these can be spent to buy many different Items in The Shop with the little Shopkeeper she bumps into occasionally.

### The Journal

On the game's Main Menu, there is an special category called "Journal". This is in fact Angie's Notebook turned into an small guide with images and descriptions of the various Items , Keys , Weapons, Creatures, Journal Entries and Characters of Til Morning's Light. At the beginning of the game, the Journal will be completely empty, the player will unlock the things on the Journal as it progress in the game.

## Plot

*Main Article: Til Morning's Light Story*

The events of Til Morning's Light take place on a Haunted Mansion set in the fictional town of Leisterville, New England. It follows the game's protagonist, a teenage girl named Erica Page, as she tries to find her missing friend Angie, who could have enter to an old mansion on their hometown.. and never come out. So Erica decides to enter the mansion hopping to find Angie or clues about her whereabouts, soon, Erica realizes her search trip has changed and become a race against time. Now, Erica must find a way out of the house before morning, if she doesn't escape, Erica will become the next ghost of the Mansion trapped there for all eternity.

## Characters

*Main Article: Characters*

Til Morning's light has a total of 17 characters:

## Development

Around the summer of 2013, Amazon called WayForward, more specifically, Amazon Game Studios, a brand new game division within one of the largest companies on the planet. Amazon to work with WayForward and asked them what original concepts WayForward would be interested in for an opportunity like this.

WayForward’s creative director Matt Bozon and director Adam Tierney immediately thought of the same concept. Somewhere in the dusty, virtual bins of unrealized WayForward games was Til Morning’s Light, a horror game concept Adam written about five years earlier, with concept art by Skullgirls lead animator Mariel Cartwright. The game followed a cute, slightly-punk teenage girl named Erica trapped in a haunted house by mean-spirited classmates, who must survive monsters and ghosts for 12 hours until she can emerge the next morning -- hence the title. Amazon Game Studios liked the concept, and after some discussions and additional documentation, the two studios partnered to begin production on the game in the fall of 2013. The year that followed was an exciting, inspiring, and exhausting development experience.

### **Soundtrack**

Til Morning's Light Original Soundtrack was composed by Jake Kaufman, game's ending song **"Through the Masquerade"** was performed by Jessie Seely, music and lyrics by Jake Kaufman.

## Reception

Til Morning's Light earned generally positive reviews upon release, also it was named as one of the best games in the App Store of 2015.

*“The scale of Til Morning's Light is bigger than just about anything else on a smartphone: not only is the world huge, but the dialogue is fully voice acted, and the graphics look fantastic.”* – The Verge

*“Far and away, my favorite ride at any of Disney’s theme parks is The Haunted Mansion … To that end, I can offer no higher compliment to developer WayForward’s Til Morning’s Light than to say that, at its best, it feels like a private invitation to The Haunted Mansion from the ghost host himself.”* - Gamezebo

*"Even Til Morning’s Light is widely focused on a casual market with easy puzzles and accessible gameplay is a complete experience that we can recommend. We enjoyed to explore the interesting haunted mansion in a game that reminded us our first contact with Resident Evil and Luigi’s Mansion. Til Morning’s Light deserves a sequel."*  - Atomix

*"Til Morning’s Light is the latest title in Amazon Game Studios premium game initiative, joining previously-released Tales From Deep Space and Lost Within as a game that trades a premium mobile price—$6.99—for a more traditional gaming experience completely devoid of microtranasctions. It’s got a level of polish that’s far beyond that of average mobile titles for iOS or Fire devices, attempting to raise the bar in a market whose customers seem more than happy having said bar repeatedly dropped on their heads. I’d love to see more games like it on mobile."* - Kotaku

## Gallery

Amazon app iconiOS app iconAndroid app iconGame logoCover at WayForward's WebsiteTil Morning's Light Wallpaper from Amazon Game Stuidos

## Trivia

* Til Morning's Light is the first game made by Amazon Game Studios and WayForward collaboration.

## References

1. http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/250901/The\_spookiest\_postmortem\_WayForwards\_Til\_Mornings\_Light.php The spookiest postmortem: WayForward's *Til Morning's Light.*
2. https://wayforward.com/games/til-mornings-light/ Til Morning's Light.
3. http://www.metacritic.com/game/ios/til-mornings-light/critic-reviews
4. http://kotaku.com/til-mornings-light-explores-the-softer-side-of-adventur-1706574872
5. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4280632/ Full Cast and Crew.

## External Links

* Til Morning's Light Amazon Game Studios Website
* Til Morning's Light WayForward Website
* Til Morning's Light iTunes Preview

## See Also

* Til Morning's Light: The Private Blog of Erica Page
* Characters
* Bosses
* Weapons
* Items
* Journal Entry
* Creatures
* Keys
* Puzzles