Bright Memory: Infinite
A one-man army takes on the next generation
PC, Xbox Series X
Unsurprisingly, Xbox kicked off its first reveal of Xbox Series X with a game to showcase the console’s graphical grunt. Bright Memory: Infinite is an FPS that takes full advantage of Series X’s GPU and ray tracing capabilities, all shimmering water and dynamic weather effects, its gun-on-sword-on-axe duels running as sharply and smoothly as the framerate possibly allows. You’d be forgiven for thinking this is the work of a large, wellequipped team – even the game’s Infinite nomenclature suggests limitless size and scope. But this is an indie game, and the work of just a single developer.
FYQD Studio is 23-year-old Zeng Xiancheng, who began building the game in his spare time from his home in Liuzhou, China. Zeng launched the first episode of Bright Memory on Steam Early Access last year, netting 20,000 sales on the first day. The success allowed Zeng to quit his day job as a level designer for a Chinese studio, and shift development to a full-fat version of his project. And when Epic came calling with an Unreal Dev Grant, Zeng could hire voice actors, license music and employ production support, with the accessibility of Unreal Engine 4 key to his ability to build the bones of the game by himself.
“I am an art fan and have a very limited knowledge of programming,” admits Zeng. “The Unreal 4 engine Blueprint system, which can be used to speed up [prototyping] gameplay, helped me easily implement all the features in the game. Other engines required so much programming knowledge that I had to give up on them.” Zeng was determined to prove that beautiful-looking games should not be the preserve of only the larger studios with masses of staff, pushing himself to add RTX support to Bright Memory. Zeng was familiar with V-Ray rendering software, and had the artistic skills to make the best use of ray tracing. However, he found Unreal 4’s ray tracing capabilities caused framerates to drop dramatically; Nvidia helped Zeng to integrate DLSS (or Deep Learning Super Sampling) tech, allowing him to produce hi-res images without the cost to performance.
The effect is mesmerising. As paranormal investigator Shelia, we find ourselves transported to a lost continent replete with fantastical environments, from rain-lashed
You’d be forgiven for thinking this is the work of a large team, but this is an indie game
forests to windswept Chinese castles and crumbling subterranean temples. There’s an enjoyably subversive juxtaposition in the hi-tech loadout we find ourselves wielding and the hordes of fantasy enemies that stare us down or swarm us entirely – ancient samurai, lion-headed chimeras. “Bright Memory was born out of a whimsical fantasy,” explains Zeng. “I imagined what would happen if a sci-fi warrior fell 1,000 years into the past and
fought with ancient warriors. This inspired the creation of Bright Memory’s worldview, but since I didn’t know much about game design, I created a mechanism for playing Bright Memory by combining ideas from other FPS action games.” Indeed, Zeng’s thrown in the proverbial kitchen sink, including a Doom Eternal- like grapple mechanic, Devil May Crystyle melee combos involving light-swords, energy powers that lift and hold enemies, and even firstperson driving.
We can’t help but wonder what he’ll turn his hand to when let loose on next-gen – and, as a solo developer, the convenience of new consoles is an exciting prospect for him. “Next-generation consoles offer a number of performance advantages, such as developers not having to optimise framerates,” he says. “This means larger maps and higher load speeds – the biggest challenge is whether DXR technology can sustain 60 frames [per second] at 4K resolution.”
Indeed, size is rarely our concern; if anything, from first impressions of Bright Memory, we wonder whether Zeng couldn’t do with an editor to help him focus on the fundamentals a little more. Then again, as test-beds go, you don’t get much more experimental and efficient than this. The hope is that Zeng’s many enthusiastic ideas for Infinite will end up justifying their inclusion. They say ‘work smart, not hard’, after all – as development teams go they don’t get any smaller, and Infinite is an awfully big word.