So... I'm working on a game.

[Zulk RS]

You can post non-Doom related stuff in Creative Works right?
Well... I'm working on a visual novel and I think it's time I posted about it.
Here are some screenshots.











Please note, that I'm the only person working on it and I literally have 0 $ budget because of age and location reasons.

[Voros]

What about your friends? Don't they help you?

Maybe I can. Where exactly do you live?

Screens looks cool. What's the story?

[Zulk RS]

Voros said:

What about your friends? Don't they help you?

Maybe I can. Where exactly do you live?

Screens looks cool. What's the story?

I'll be happy if you can help and will answer some of these questions via PM.

As for the story, I'm still working out the details but the gist of it is:
An Earthquake happens and some people, the guys in the screenshot find themselves in a strange location when it subsides. They then try to escape.
It's sort like the story of Corpse Party and it's a horror Visual Novel. Since I'm not exactly a good artist, I'm trying to deliver the scares in a similar way to how ghost stories do.

As for game-play, there aren't really any puzzle elements planned (but it may change in the future) and the story is supposed to change depending on what decisions the player takes. As such, there are going to be a ton of choices with some of them resulting in getting locked to a particular ending while others either change the direction of the story or makes slight changes to it. And there are also some which are inconsequential.

[Jayextee]

There's no delicate way to say this, I'm sorry, but it might be worth waiting until your drawing skills improve before embarking on such an endeavour. Part of the appeal of visual novels is art that reflects the emotion, tone, and feeling of a scene -- not amateurish flat anime-style mannequins with nigh-identical faces and expressions.

That's not to poo-poo your hard work. Just hit the sketchbooks hard for about a year then come back to it.

[Zulk RS]

Jayextee said:

There's no delicate way to say this, I'm sorry, but it might be worth waiting until your drawing skills improve before embarking on such an endeavour. Part of the appeal of visual novels is art that reflects the emotion, tone, and feeling of a scene -- not amateurish flat anime-style mannequins with nigh-identical faces and expressions.

That's not to poo-poo your hard work. Just hit the sketchbooks hard for about a year then come back to it.

Nah it's cool. I totally agree with what you said there. Problem is, for various real world issues like tests and college and the like, time is not on my side.

[Jayextee]

Nah that's cool. Don't rule out completing the functionality of the game and later going back when you have time to improve the art assets; or even an arty friend who shares your vision.

Don't mean to totally dissuade you, it's great that you're making a thing. Just the first impressions aren't as strong as they could be. :)

[Zulk RS]

Jayextee said:

Nah that's cool. Don't rule out completing the functionality of the game and later going back when you have time to improve the art assets; or even an arty friend who shares your vision.

Don't mean to totally dissuade you, it's great that you're making a thing. Just the first impressions aren't as strong as they could be. :)

Hmm... Of Course! Why didn't I think of that?!
I for some odd reason, forgot that I can just finish the game with the current degree of shit art and then edit the assets after the it's finished.

Thanks!

[untilitdies]

As someone who worked on their own visual novel for the better half of a year; put this on hold. Work on developing your skills and assets first. I understand that everyone learns and improves at a different rate; my art was god awful three years ago, and it's not exactly a masterpiece at this point, but at the end of the game, people aren't going to want to look at the content you're currently producing. Additionally, if you want a visual novel to do well, especially in this current day and age, you have to have a BIG pull to your story. You can put your heart and soul, your blood, your sweat, and your tears into a game, and have it still do terrible (just look at Daikatana!). My visual novel had RPG Elements to it, and I was hardly able to garner any attention over the span of a year, because that role had already been fulfilled by games like Long Live the Queen. I also see you're using Ren'py (which I used). Those games, are, unfortunately, a dime a dozen. We're at a point in the gaming environment where almost everything's been done before.

Here's the advice that won't sound as shitty; DO work. Just not solo work. Look into joining a team that's working on something you're interesting. Do little stuff for gaming communities (perhaps level editing for a certain 90s game on a certain forum?). Make friends, and later on, you'll get connections. Once you've got some work under your belt, and your skills have improved over time, the product you put out in a few years will be much, much better than what you have now, and more people will (hopefully!) be interested in it. Sometimes you really DO have to walk before you run.

[Zulk RS]

@untilitdies
Great advice there! Funnily enough, that's exactly WHY I'm working on it at the moment (Although, working alone wasn't exactly part of the plan). I actually want to do this as a profession (not an Indie developer. I want to work for a gaming company in the future, when I've got more skills, experience and education) but as of right now, I have zero experience and expertise in everything. Which is why I thought that the best way to learn how to make a game and gain experience in making games will be to go ahead and make a game.

I chose Ren'Py because I found it the easiest to work with (for me anyway). To be honest, I want to make good games but this isn't going to be one of them. Also, your game sounds interesting. How long is it? If it's finished, can I play it?

[Scypek2]

Maybe if you don't have time or skill to make very detailed and well-made graphics, you could come up with a style that doesn't require much effort but still looks good.

Stuff like xkcd, or Antichamber (and many games with experimental style, but those two are fairly popular and those are the names that I remember right now) could be considered underdetailed, but there's a consistent aesthetic style there.

Your current graphics would probably look better if the dialogue boxes and text also looked like something drawn in MS Paint. But instead they're an elegant, smooth, unfitting thing that smells of default-ness.

[Jayextee]

Working to a unified aesthetic, be it 'MSPaint' or otherwise, isn't such a bad idea. I bring up as an example An Untitled Story, a charming MetroidVania which looks like this:



This was made some years ago by a fellow named Matt Thorson. Who? The guy who more recently made Towerfall Ascension, a game which has made it to PlayStations 4 and Vita:



...of course, there are things inbetween such as the Jumper series of platform games (which are similar to Meat Boy but predate it). From tiny acorns grow huge trees, etc.

But I digress. Point is, to reiterate Scypek some, if your game looks more consistent in its aesthetic then it can be forgiven for some less-than-stellar graphics here and there.

[Zulk RS]

I've seen this just now and I think it's a really awesome idea. I'm definitely gonna take your advice (both Jayextee and Scypek2) and will focus on a more consistent aesthetic. I was thinking of changing the menus but not the dialogue boxes.

Thanks really appreciate it. I will also remember this for any future game I work on. And as for practice, I thought Ren'Py was easy enough to come to terms with so that's why I started with a Visual Novel.

Again, really appreciate this advice.

[Doominator2]

Like other people have said, the art work is very rough.

Are you doing this project solo? If so it always helps to have other people working with you on your project, if you have the money you can try hiring an artist with your graphics.

And for your future projects it wouldnt hurt to group up some friends who are dedicated to working on a game with you.

[MusicallyInspired]

I made this little thing called Faceman. It was an ASCII console game where 20 gems would randomly appear on the screen and you're a little face and you have 100 moves to collect them all. You have the arrow keys to move one step or the Home/End/Pgup/Pgdn keys to move to the extreme edges of the game world area in one step, or 'C' to go back to the center. It also logged your highscore in the current playthrough so you could try to outdo yourself. I plan on fleshing it out a bit with some more interesting features and putting some real graphics in it but I've got a lot to work out.

[Jayextee]

Is this thread now about sharing games we made? :P

Actually going to keep this on-topic because although I'm an artist and can draw reasonably well, I used simple aesthetics for two of my games that anybody could do, if I'm honest.



SLaVE, although not released yet, was actually supposed to be a quick 'weekend project' to familiarise myself with EDGE/3DGE and as such I drew every sprite in the same afternoon. Never going far above 8-pixel tall sprites (with the intention of scaling them, as seen above), the idea would be to capture the limited colours and chunky pixels of old arcade titles; notably Blaster and Robotron 2084. By limiting myself to what I call the 'MSPaint colours' (to read: only ever mix with 0 or a full 255 value on any of the RGB channels) and running with just those, I set myself a consistent (albeit garish) palette to work to. Basically a swatch -- and ask any designer worth their salt about the importance of those.

Now, although the game will eventually have 3D models based on these sprites, the aesthetic remains; and the only 'hole' in that is via the lighting, which I purposely made a chunky square (like the enemy sprites) so again it kinda works.



For N.E.O - Near Earth Objects, I worked with the following self-imposed limitations:

- Colours are only ever cyan, magenta, white, or 50% values of these, on black.
- Sprites all drawn in thick, straight lines with GIMP's brush tool.
- Backgrounds are single-colour dithered pixels.

Maybe not the best-looking game ever, but screen-blurring and pixel filtering made the edges less-rough. And has a unique enough look that sets it apart from something like Geometry Wars or Super Stardust; whilst remaining reasonably true to its obvious inspiration Asteroids. Inspired by that old 'CGA' aesthetic of cyan/magenta/white, but not slavish enough so that inbetween shades aren't possible with pixel blurring and translucency. What I said about swatches rings true here, too -- for although colour is an important tool in an artist's repertoire, limiting the palette can help form a unified and consistent look.

---

To OP. If you can't do the prettiest graphics ever for your game, maybe think about intentional ways you can limit them. Small colour palettes, low resolution, or outright stylisation can all help; and may make your art seem 'better' somehow. I know that, when actually drawing my own art, I tend to thicken my lines and use an angular style that makes any anatomical mistakes seem more or less intentional and actually part of the drawing (OMG ARTIST SEEKRITS RIGHT HERE).

With your style here? Right off the bat I notice those weird anime-styled eyes. They look dead and without emotion or presence; however, if you drew these things at 1/2 or even 1/4 the resolution, the chunky pixels may obfuscate the uncanniness a tad. On top of that, maybe draw the entire thing in greyscale and focus more on shading and contrasting details? (As an aside, you could make this your games 'thing' and solely colour the characters' irises in their eyes? A bit 'done', but still...)

Or Picasso that shit and never worry about having anything realistic again? Sounds weird, but if your writing is up to par it won't even matter how they look; check out the reception to indie star Thomas Was Alone for proof of this -- it's just a collection of coloured rectangles!

Just, whatever you do, make it all look purposeful, intentional, and cohesive. If you go the low-resolution route, use a pixel font for dialogue text (as an example). If you go low-colour, don't be throwing in coloured text that breaks that. Etc, etc.

Of course, most importantly, don't feel you have to take every piece of advice in this thread. Just what works for you and what is compatible with your vision.

[Arctangent]

Jayextee said:

Working to a unified aesthetic, be it 'MSPaint' or otherwise, isn't such a bad idea. I bring up as an example An Untitled Story, a charming MetroidVania which looks like this:

It may look like it's made with MSPaint, yes, but it doesn't horrifying torpedo people that all live in an apartment deep within the uncanny valley.

It actually, y'know, uses designs that work with the limitations of the art style. I mean, you start out as an oval, and everything's cartoony and simplistic. It's certainly not the best-looking game around, but it doesn't try to do what it can't actually manage.

So I'd definitely say that this art needs more than just a consistent aesthetic. It could use an aesthetic that doesn't suffer from the lack of art skills, and the ... kind of anime aesthetic really is not one of those.

[everennui]

I like these guy's ideas. Just quit until you're a better artist. :p

I'm kidding of course. You'll get better. Finish what you've started - you'll learn a lot in the process.

[Jayextee]

everennui said:

Finish what you've started - you'll learn a lot in the process.

Actually the truest thing here. An amateurish-but-finished game is worth a hundred good-looking prototypes.

[Zulk RS]

Jayextee said:

Actually the truest thing here. An amateurish-but-finished game is worth a hundred good-looking prototypes.

My thoughts exactly.

Also, due to some issues with the scanner I was using, this game's art assets and the game as a whole has been put on hold by force. So yeah... So much for finishing this by the end of August.

[scifista42]

Jayextee said:

Is this thread now about sharing games we made? :P

If so, I made this a year ago. :)

[Dragonfly]

In a similar fashion to Scifista's post, here's a unique puzzle-platformer game I made with one other person for a Ludum Dare competition, where we had to make a game with the theme "Beneath The Surface" in 72 hours. You control two players but with only one set of controls. Good luck!

Play it here!

Ludum Dare post.

[Jayextee]

At this rate I think we're going to need a thread just for sharing games. I mean, I love seeing all this personally but feel bad if we're going to hijack Zulk's thread to do it.

[Zulk RS]

Jayextee said:

At this rate I think we're going to need a thread just for sharing games. I mean, I love seeing all this personally but feel bad if we're going to hijack Zulk's thread to do it.

I don't mind. With the scanner still on the fritz, my game is essentially just some "Missing Character" Sprites on a "Missing Image" Background with dialogue. So It's not like there will be some major progress anytime soon. Guess I've got more time to work on Doom Maps then.