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Lantern Ensemble VR Interview - The peace of relaxing creation & letting go

We caught up to Lantern VR developer Jude Dai to talk about the peace of painting your own water lantern and letting it go in a peaceful sea of creation.

TJ Denzer

December 2, 2019 4:20 PM

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There is very little as peaceful and cathartic as the experience that Lantern VR presents. In this experience, players take up a water lantern and calligraphy brush and paint their very own lantern, filling the canvases of the lantern as they see fit. Once the lantern is finished, players gently place the lantern down in the water and let it go. It drifts away in the calm waters of a persistent ongoing environment where it joins the lanterns of other players who have painted their own creations.

We caught up to Lantern Ensemble’s Producer Jude Dai to talk fully about what went into the meditative experience of Lantern VR. Dai wanted players to take on a quiet, relaxing experience in this dark environment of water and light in which they would slowly feel out their freedoms and then develop their ideas in real-time. You can see what we mean in the interview video below.

“The water lantern has four different faces,” Dai explained. “So you have four canvases to start. It really helps with the creative process because in the first canvas, you are prototyping ideas in your head and you are putting it on the canvas… The first layer [of Lantern VR] is to help the artist to generate an idea in a very therapeutic environment so that their creative idea can flow.”

Dai finds just as much importance in the finishing of a lantern, its release into the wild, and the feeling of collective environment as your lantern joins other players’ lanterns in the water. Dai is aiming for Lantern VR’s launch on most VR platforms in Spring 2020. HTC Vive and Oculus will take priority and PSVR may be down the line. You can follow the development of Lantern VR on Lantern Ensemble’s website.

Be sure to check out the full video above and don’t forget to subscribe to the Shacknews and GamerHubTV YouTube channels for more exclusive interviews and videos as well.

TJ Denzer

Senior News Editor

TJ Denzer is a player and writer with a passion for games that has dominated a lifetime. He found his way to the Shacknews roster in late 2019 and has worked his way to Senior News Editor since. Between news coverage, he also aides notably in livestream projects like the indie game-focused Indie-licious, the Shacknews Stimulus Games, and the Shacknews Dump. You can reach him at tj.denzer@shacknews.com and also find him on Twitter @JohnnyChugs.