Rayman Lum'o'Grams

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Rayman Lum'o'Grams is a puzzle fangame for PCs running Microsoft Windows currently in development by Rayman Universe, or RUNI.

The game belongs to the Picross/Nonograms genre and uses both its own and assets of most 2D Rayman projects, with the exception of UbiArt games. The game was first announced at Rayman Alive 2022 as part of the RUNI Showcase segment presenting Rayman Universe projects. The game was first announced at Rayman Alive 2022 as part of the RUNI Showcase segment presenting Rayman Universe projects, which featured a concept trailer. The project's World Premiere took place at Rayman Alive 2023, revealing most of the details of the game. The first public demo version has been announced for early 2024.

Nikita Cherkashin, founder of Rayman Universe, is the main developer, Danil Mamaev, who previously worked on the Rayman Garden PLUS fangame soundtrack, is the composer and sound designer, Nikita Mukhin is the playtester, and Millie is the voice actor of the game introduction. The project is being developed on the Clickteam Fusion 2.5 engine, while the game itself will be available for download on Game Jolt.

Plot

Rayman Lum'o'Grams' plot is based on the official description of The Muse of Poets, a scrapped character from Rayman 2: The Great Escape, previously mentioned only in the official strategy guide, but never appeared in any game in the series. The narrative begins with the character's backstory, after which the events of the game take place in the present.

During the game, Rayman will visit fragments of his memories of the events of past games, in which he will restore The Glade of Dreams by recovering images of its creatures.

The Beginning

The plot starts with the story of the origin of The Glade of Dreams, according to which many centuries ago, The Great Protoon appeared in the center of the universe, surrounded by a swarm of Lums, whose power was truly unlimited. The Gods found out about their hidden power and began to compete for the right to control it. The Lums got tired of the conquerors and decided to create their own Gods, who with the help of Protoon will build their own land - The Glade of Dreams. The first God they created was Polokus, who possessed the power of true generosity, mercy and purity. The second goddess was The Muse of Poets, his wife. While Polokus was beautiful in his soul, the charm of The Muse of Poets was expressed in her appearance and grace. Because of this, the creatures they created were not perfect in both sides. Because of his generosity, Polokus loved them for what they are, finding positive sides in their imperfection. But The Muse did not think so. The unevenness of her children hurt her perfectionist nature. She claimed that they were spoiled by Polokus. She wished she could "fix" them. The Muse of Poets only had to wait for the birth of Teensies, their most anticipated children, whose settlements would be all over The Glade of Dreams. However, the impact of Polokus turned out to be especially strong on Teensies' appearance, which is why they came out nondescript but good-natured, which was the last straw for The Muse of Poets. "What a freak!", Muse of Poets screamed when she saw one of them. At this moment, the goddess' rage reached its peak and she was no longer able to put up with the impact of Polokus' qualities on their children. She tried to destroy them, but the Angels they created to protect The Glade from other Gods stopped her. Muse of Poets could not live with her own failure, gave up everything and went to the Dark Legacy, the dark forests of The Glade, forever. Since then, no one has seen The Muse of Poets, she was considered missing, while Polokus was left alone forever until he went into a deep sleep. Meanwhile, The Muse of Poets was secretly studying the nature of the Lums and their structure. After centuries of research she managed to learn how to change creatures created with them. From now on, The Muse of Poets can "fix" everything that she with her husband has created many years ago, leaving nothing in their children but a perfect appearance.

Main Story

The Muse of Poets returns, and her plan is simple - to capture the images of all living things and rewrite them, striving for her ideals. The goddess enchanted The Glade of Dreams and turned it into The Elbowroom, a place where she can change anything as she wants. That's where Rayman finds himself in the company of two new sidekicks - Originators, with whom he has to save his home and find out the truth about The Glade creators and Protoon children. To do this, Rayman travels through fragments of his own memories, restoring images of the creatures that inhabited the locations he visited and once again fighting his worst enemies, whose minds were captured by Muse Syllables, servants of the Muse, whose goal is to defeat Rayman and his new friends.

Gameplay

The gameplay of Rayman Lum'o'Grams is heavily inspired by the Picross series published by Nintendo, based on the classic Japanese Nonograms, also known as Hanjie, Paint by Numbers, Griddlers, and Pic-a-Pix. The player's task at each level is to solve a series of picture logic puzzles in which cells in a grid must be colored or left blank according to numbers at the side of the grid to reveal a hidden pixel art-like picture. In this puzzle type, the numbers are a form of discrete tomography that measures how many unbroken lines of filled-in squares there are in any given row or column. For example, a clue of "2 5 4" would mean there are sets of two, five, and four filled squares, in that order, with at least one blank square between successive sets.

One of the main innovations of the game, which distinguishes it from other games of this genre, are Muse Syllables acts, characterized in that in the process of solving the puzzle, one of the bosses from previous Rayman games tries to destroy the player's cursor. To complete such segments, the player is required not only to solve the problem, but also to evade enemy attacks, as well as sometimes interact with the environment and change their Originator.

Levels

Locations from previous Rayman games are presented here as levels. When their full list has not yet been announced, a list of games is known, the locations, styles and bosses of which will be included in the final game.

Main Styles

• The cancelled Rayman prototype for Super Nintendo
• Classic Rayman
• Rayman 2: The Great Escape (using Rayman 3 for Game Boy Advance and Rayman for Palm OS assets)
• Rayman for Game Boy Color
• Rayman Garden
• Rayman Golf
• Rayman Bowling
• Rayman 3 (using Rayman 3 for Game Boy Advance and Rayman Hoodlums Revenge assets)
• Rayman Raving Rabbids for Game Boy Advance
• Rayman Raving Rabbids for Mobile Phones
• Rayman IV: Sunshine of Trip (bootleg)

UbiArtist Styles

During the main story campaign, the player randomly opens puzzles of increased difficulty, the solution of which is also necessary to complete the game. They do not include Muse Syllables, the puzzles are presented in 15x15 format, and instead of Rayman, UbiArtist, a mascot of Ubisoft's UbiArt Framework, interacts with the player. Most of these puzzles are dedicated to Rayman Origins and Rayman Legends, but a third category was also presented - Rayman Universe, which includes puzzles with the main characters of both the main styles already presented and projects that did not make it to this list, such as Rayman: The Animated Series, Rayman M/Arena, Rayman and The Moldies and many others.

External links

• World Premiere Trailer
• Game Jolt Page
• Discussion Page
• Rayman Universe Discord Server
• Rayman Universe Twitter/X Page
• Rayman Universe VK Group
• Let's Put You Back Together Theme
• The Beginning Theme
• Rayman Raving Rabbids (Mobile) Theme Teaser
• RUNI Showcase 2022
• Concept Trailer