CPSC 4160 / By Torchlight
Will Gray
Game Description
By Torchlight is a 2D side-scrolling puzzle platformer set deep within a dark, foreboding forest. The game follows a lone Scout who has become lost at night and must navigate the woods by igniting mysterious bonfires scattered throughout the environment. The world is shrouded in darkness, limiting visibility and challenging players to use light strategically as they search for a way out.
The core objective of By Torchlight is to survive the night by lighting every bonfire and ultimately escape the woods. Players must carefully traverse increasingly complex platforming challenges and make sense of environmental puzzles, while avoiding prowling enemy shadows. With each bonfire lit, the Scout gains a clearer view of the world, gradually unlocking new areas and revealing pathways forward.
Progress in the game comes from mastering its blend of movement, puzzle-solving, and light-based mechanics. Avoiding enemies, overcoming obstacles, and successfully illuminating all bonfires reward players with a growing sense of accomplishment as they push deeper into the treacherous darkness and inch closer to freedom.
Game Mechanics
The gameplay centers on navigating a dark, atmospheric forest filled with platforming challenges, limited visibility, and lurking dangers. Players control the Scout as they traverse twisting pathways, ascend platforms, and search for bonfires scattered throughout the environment, each serving as a beacon against the surrounding darkness.
Key mechanics revolve around precise movement. Players can climb ladders to reach elevated areas and perform jumps to navigate gaps and obstacles. Lighting bonfires expands the playable area by brightening sections of the map, allowing deeper exploration and progress.
The game also features hostile shadow entities that stalk the player through the darkness. These enemies relentlessly pursue them; contact results in death and game over.
Technical Description
By Torchlight was developed in Python using the Pygame library, a versatile library well-suited for 2D game development. The game’s lighting system relies on layered alpha blending and shaped overlays to simulate darkness and illumination, creating a dynamic visibility radius around the Scout.
Core gameplay systems—including movement, platforming, enemy behavior, and environmental interaction—are supported by a custom collision-detection framework. This system manages the Scout’s contact with platforms, bonfires, and shadow enemies, enabling smooth navigation through the world while ensuring that enemy encounters and bonfire interactions are handled consistently and accurately.
Although built with lightweight tools, By Torchlight demonstrates how careful use of Pygame’s rendering capabilities can produce a visually expressive experience. Its combination of real-time lighting, layered effects, and responsive controls showcases the potential of 2D engine techniques on a modest technical foundation.
Controls
Players use the A and D keys—or the left and right arrow keys—to move horizontally through the darkened forest, while the W or Up key allows the Scout to climb ladders and reach elevated platforms. The player can press the spacebar to perform jumps essential for navigating gaps and obstacles
Game Limitations
Future Work
Future iterations of By Torchlight could enhance immersion through improved lighting techniques, dynamic shadows, and more polished character animations. Expanding the shadow enemies with smarter, more adaptive AI would create tenser and more unpredictable encounters. Additional environmental interactions, new areas of the forest to explore, and refined audio effects could further enrich the atmosphere and overall gameplay experience.
Game objective
Game Screenshots
Although By Torchlight creates a strong atmosphere through its lighting and visual design, its 2D Pygame framework imposes several constraints. The simulated lighting—built using alpha masks and overlays—offers limited realism compared to more advanced engines, resulting in simplified shadow and illumination effects. Performance limits also restrict how many visual elements and enemies can appear on screen at once. Additionally, the shadow enemies use relatively simple AI focused on basic pursuit behaviors rather than complex or adaptive decision-making. These limitations reflect the lightweight tools used in development but still support the game’s focused, atmospheric experience.