Midli

Midli is currently live on Kickstarter! Help us reach our funding goal!

DinoByte Labs is a small indie studio based in London, and this is our first self-published game. You can see more on our website for Midli, or follow us on:

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If the Kickstarter goes our way, we intend to release this game in November this year on iOS and Android, with a potential PC port down the line if the funding allows it.

Midli is a laid-back Breakout inspired adventure, with a relaxing, yet dark atmosphere, where you collect the soul fragments of lingering spirits, to uncover their stories and help them move on.

Play as Heli, a mysterious girl who guides the fates of the spirits stuck in Midli, as she discovers a story of her own.

At DinoByte Labs we’ve been gamers for over 20 years, and we love looking at how we can take the classic games we loved, and add a modern twist. Our favorite games today have depth and great stories, so when we started working on Midli we wanted to combine unique and dynamic mechanics, with captivating art and sound design, and a compelling choice driven narrative.

Midli is developed for initial release iOS and Android mobile devices, with the potential for a PC release if we hit our stretch goals.

Features:  

• Enjoy a deeper mobile gaming experience
• Change the story depending on how you play
• Discover multiple endings!
• Get to know a diverse cast of characters, each with their own story
• Explore a dark, yet relaxing atmosphere
• Experience the story of Midli through animated cutscenes
• Encounter several unique and interesting enemies
• Play with environmental obstacles like rain and darkness, time manipulation and much more!
• 45 levels, spanning 5 aesthetically and mechanically different worlds – with more worlds depending on stretch goal funding!

 

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Midli follows the journey of Heli, a girl tasked with helping those who struggle to move on from her world.

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We were inspired by “Guardian: The Lonely and Great God”, a Korean TV drama written by Kim Eun-sook. It tells a series of short character based stories parallel to the main plot, each one only a few minutes long, yet they quickly get you caring for the characters and what they’re going through. This became the basis for how we designed our narrative, and how we present the characters Heli meets through the game.

What you learn about those characters will change based on whether you collect their light or dark fragments. You can even influence the outcomes of their stories, as it will be up to you to determine their fates, either by ‘forgiving’ or ‘forgetting’ them. Ultimately this will even change how Heli’s story ends.

You will get to know our cast of lost spirits through their own unique short stories spanning aesthetically and mechanically different worlds, each as diverse as the characters themselves.

• Yuri Park, a youthful girl in her 20s, struggles with the uncertainty of her future
• Erik Haraldsson, a husband and father, is unable to express his emotions and affection
• Josephine Lewis, a family matriarch, regrets missing out on the life she dreamed of
• Nicolas Santiago, a remorseful troublemaker, fears others see him as darkly as he sees himself

 

A core part of our design for Midli was always centered around the mood and atmosphere. The story deals with some darker themes, and we wanted our art to reflect this. However, it was important to us that our game felt otherworldly and calm, not scary or creepy.

Louise, our producer, has a lot of experience with anxiety and panic attacks, and one of the main things that help her feel at ease are soothing sounds, such as wind chimes, which coincidentally and appropriately have a lot of associations with spirits.

To create the mood we wanted for Midli, we added a lot more of these atmospheric sounds such as rain, whispers, bells and wind instruments. Coupled with our art style and ambient lighting, this really helped Midli have that otherworldly feeling we were going for.

Part of why we aspired to perfect this mood and aesthetic, is because we feel visual storytelling can be as important as the narrative itself, so our art and atmosphere is all formed with specific themes and symbolism in mind relating to the story of Midli and it’s cast.

 

When we were designing our mechanics, we thought a lot about how we could translate parts of our atmosphere into gameplay. If it was raining, shouldn’t that affect how fast the Heli flies, and could we use light to guide or darkness to obscure? 

We used these elements to inspire our design, and we’ve worked really hard to make Midli interactive and dynamic, allowing you to play with time manipulation, spiderweb slingshots and much, much more!  

Spirits are not meant to linger in Midli for too long, but during our world building, we liked the idea of having these dark creatures who were permanently stuck there. We designed the Forgotten Shadows based on this, ghostly beings who come in various shapes and sizes, each one adding something different to the gameplay.

 

We are a pretty small team of 3 based in London. While we all have experience making games for others, Midli is really our first chance at creating and publishing something entirely on our own, based solely on our vision.

So far we have self-funded (yes, from our own pockets!), both the making of our prototype and our first demo, but we really need YOUR help in order to bring Midli to the players. 

• Louise Leolin – Games Producer (Game design, user research and experience design, aesthetic design, marketing and game assets)
• Christian Lovdal – Games Director (Game design, story writing and programming)
• James Pendry – Lead Artist (Concept and promotional art, animations and CG cutscenes)