mitDebo wrote:First, let me say that I'm extremely looking forward to Lone Survivor. A pixel horror game? Yes, please! I can't wait to just throw money at you.
With that out of the way, thank you for the compliments. I spent a lot of time on the controls and looking at how other games handled to make sure I had them right. I'm also glad you like the level design, but to be honest, I'm probably gonna redo those levels. I think there's improvements to be made - so, while they were originally intended to be the opening levels of the game, I use them more as a demo of how the game will play.
I'll admit, it saddens me a little to think of my game as generic. (I will say, though, that I welcome your criticism - it seems sincere and constructive, rather than the general hateful bile I've seen on places like tig and indiegames.com comments). I will admit, though, that you're right in that my game isn't really bringing anything new to the table. I don't know if there's anything new that I _could_ bring, though I'm still only so far into development. Would it be wrong of me to just simply be content in making the best grappling hook platformer that I can?
I'm most interested in your comment on the graphics, though. I don't really consider myself an artist, though maybe my art skills are better than some. In fact, I'm hoping that working on game development will force me to hone my art skills. I'll admit, I'm a little confused by your comment that there's a lot of gray. In those intro levels, it seems to me that it's mostly blue.
I can understand, however, the complaint about the lack of hue variation. Most of my art skills lay in drawing and doodling, so working with color has been a recent skill I've just begun to tackle. The screen shots I posted above are actually shown chronologically in the order they were made (albeit unintentionally). The first two, I basically just played with value and maybe a little with saturation when I was making my highlights/shadows. The last one, with the pillars, actually took quite a while to make, but that's where I feel like I tried to experiment more with shifting hues. I don't know if it shows though - I'm sure it still looks pretty sophomoric.
If you have any advice or suggestions, or even links to other resources, in dealing with color selection, I'm all ears! Thanks a lot for the input - it really means a lot.
I think what I mean by grey is more that the ramps used are quite monochromatic - they don't shift in hue a great deal, and don't have a great deal of contrast. The character himself is also pure grey. In life we rarely see pure grey, shadows tend to move towards ultramarine, and highlights towards the orange-yellow end of the spectrum (very roughly.) You may well be aware of this and trying it but doing too subtly. Basically where sunlight hits, there is warmth, and where it doesn't there is coldness. The pillar shot is the most interesting for me, but again I'd expect more blue in the shadows, and the mid grey of the ground seems quite desaturated compared to the rest of the shot.
In the cave shot we have a slightly confused ramp of saturation from background to foreground - from desaturated, to saturated blue rocks (again, yellow or greenish highlights could help) but then back to desaturated for the foreground which is jarring to me. Perhaps the foreground and first background layer should have their tones swapped? I really like the purple skulls here btw, the colour ramp seems right (and also the parallax layers behind are great). Their mid tones are the most saturated which works I think, whereas the blue rocks seem to have more saturated shadows - I guess its consistency that's lacking there.
Take all this with a massive pinch of salt, I'm not an artist myself, so there are others who could probably offer better advice.
Generic is a loaded word, I think it was a bit unfair to say, because even clones of other games (which I'm not saying this is) can end up having their own flavour. Although your game wears its influences on its sleeve, it combines a number of elements of other good games very well and because of that it has its own thing going on. Perhaps the wrapping is grating a little, I've probably seen a number of skull-faced characters recently, and quite a few grappling hook games. I'd say after GUR, this has the best feel of those I have played, as it's not something I normally have a good time with. Perhaps it just needs a simple twist to the formula, I couldn't honestly say. Are you super attached to the story? I find it odd that a Death-like character has a grappling hook, perhaps there is another story that fits with it better? Then again, perhaps it's a spinning-grappling-scythe that can also smash / slash things... Just silly suggestions but I'm sure you get what I mean.
Also another thing it does well is a sense of scale, which I think it not in any of the games you mentioned as influences. I think it might be worth seeing how far you can push that side of things.
Loved the falling bones btw.
Hope that's of some use man.
