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Cynical 7 - SNES Styled RPG about Comical Misadventures and Confronting your Inner Demons

Tris Bee

Literate
Joined
Oct 27, 2017
Messages
8
Location
US
Greetings RPG Codex Community!

f0IqWnm.gif


Cynical 7 is a Narrative Action RPG that tells the story of Tris, a cynical and anti-social failing game developer who has no direction in his life. It all starts when Tris decides to make the very bad decision to attend a party full of people he doesn't know at the request of a friend… This game is all about the comical misadventures that befall him and on a more serious note it also showcases the anxiety and depression I went through during my time as a game dev and confronting your inner demons.

I plan for the final game to be hopefully around 5 or 6 hours in length.
Also the combat it real time! It uses a system that constantly has you dodging attack and managing your resources to trounce your opponent!

Fights over pizza, social awkwardness, and even party crashing await you in Cynical 7!

You can grab the demo here: http://tacopizzacats.com/index.php/play-the-demo/

It's about an hour long so plan accordingly!



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Yes it's true, I'm here to plug my game, not because I don't care about your community but more because I didn't know it existed until I spent an extensive week digging for places RPG lovers go to find games! That being said I look forward to chatting with you guys and learning more about your games/community!

I also look forward to hearing what you think about Cynical 7! :D

Social Links:
https://twitter.com/tacopizzacats
https://www.facebook.com/cynical7game/
 

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,236
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
On one hand, lol. On the other hand,

a cynical and anti-social failing game developer who has no direction in his life

Maybe you're in the right place after all!
 

Tris Bee

Literate
Joined
Oct 27, 2017
Messages
8
Location
US
On one hand, lol. On the other hand,

a cynical and anti-social failing game developer who has no direction in his life

Maybe you're in the right place after all!

I hope that an "in a good way" kind of lol :P

And bring it fellow Cynics! Wondering if anyone's taken a stab at it yet...
 

Lutte

Dumbfuck!
Dumbfuck
Joined
Aug 24, 2017
Messages
1,967
Location
DU's mom
I've come to hate how "SNES style" has become synonymous with Earthbound basically making this sort of claim clickbait in titles. It wasn't even a well known game in the era of SNES gaming but somehow mediocre indie devs who couldn't spend the time and skill required to make decent pixel art work managed to make cloning Earthbound-style trendy and respected, whereas in the era of the SNES it was heavily criticized and called 'enchanced 8 bit' mockingly.

SNES JRPGs commonly had a lot more love and detail crafted into their 2d pixel art than all these edgy oh so zanny and proud of it earthbound clones.
nFgmp89.jpg


See how everything gives off a detailed, textured vibe, from the ground, to the walls, to the furniture? this is what people who actually played 16 bit era games remember and have experienced. This is what most of us have fond memories of, not a bunch of basic shapes filled with a single color and no attempt at shading, lighting, texturing.
 

Tris Bee

Literate
Joined
Oct 27, 2017
Messages
8
Location
US
I've come to hate how "SNES style" has become synonymous with Earthbound basically making this sort of claim clickbait in titles. It wasn't even a well known game in the era of SNES gaming but somehow mediocre indie devs who couldn't spend the time and skill required to make decent pixel art work managed to make cloning Earthbound-style trendy and respected, whereas in the era of the SNES it was heavily criticized and called 'enchanced 8 bit' mockingly.

SNES JRPGs commonly had a lot more love and detail crafted into their 2d pixel art than all these edgy oh so zanny and proud of it earthbound clones.
nFgmp89.jpg


See how everything gives off a detailed, textured vibe, from the ground, to the walls, to the furniture? this is what people who actually played 16 bit era games remember and have experienced. This is what most of us have fond memories of, not a bunch of basic shapes filled with a single color and no attempt at shading, lighting, texturing.


Hmmm, it's interesting to me how you felt the need to bump a fading thread of an indie dev just to attempt condescend them from your RPG Connosieur High Horse.

Have you ever made a game? Have you ever made a game in THIS indie market. Do you know how HARD it is to create an elevator pitch or to make something that sounds compelling in a single line?

I used the term "Earthbound Style" because people always use it so it's not click bait but it's a lot easier and interesting than saying "RETRO STYLE"

You post that screenshot as if it is factually better. I, personally did NOT prefer that style of Pixel Art despite the effort that went into it. When Playstation just came out I had some friends that refused to play 2D games anymore, I however
thought most of 3D games coming out were hideous (and by today's standard they really are), some people would rather have an anime poster in the house over a portrait, so I really can't validate you essentially saying my game needs to look more like XXX, it's my game, it should look the way I want it to.

These people were experienced TEAMS game makers, and by experienced I mean at the cutting edge of graphics and skill at the time, they had more than one person doing the art and it still took years to finish games. I am just a single guy doing it all, (and I'm totally not defending my games art, do I think it's the best? nope. do I like it and does it look much better than the first pass? yup.) I'm not saying that doesn't mean it's impossible for me to shade a game to this degree if I wanted to spend 5-7 years doing it, but I'm not aspiring to emulate anyone else's pixel art, or convince someone that my game is "legit" by doing so.

Another thing to note is that Final Fantasy games tell these epic stories of some impending doom that's generally going to plunge the world into destruction, and to me, I feel like style can often decide how you convey your message. If Family Guy characters were filled into a Final Fantasy game style wise, for me, it'd be a lot harder to take it seriously. I'd feel different about a cartoon having a traumatic moment than an anime character because anime character's feel more real to me. My game discusses heavy themes that pull from my own experiences (self-harm, depression, anxiety) but my humor is also sprinkled in, so I went with a more flat cartoony style to make it feel less heavy. My game is trying to tell a story, it's not about saving the world from some time wizard or defeating dragons. I'm not the best pixel artist and I never will be, I'm okay with that, does that mean I shouldn't be allowed to make games? Fack no.

The final thing I will say to you good sir is that I'm honestly really embarrassed that you prefer to bump my post to be blatantly condescending and try to completely crap on my efforts that reverse that energy and try to be constructive. I'm not sure why indies rub you the wrong way (at least ugly ones I guess is what you're saying?) but it is a SERIOUSLY hard market, and I can't speak for everyone but I'm certainly doing my best, many of us are, and to actively putting effort into putting people down trying to put their ideas into the world, well, I just hope you have cheerier days ;)
 

Tris Bee

Literate
Joined
Oct 27, 2017
Messages
8
Location
US
Hey mods, can we remove this thread? If people are just going to condescend my ideas, instead of you know, being constructive or just ignoring them I'm good.
 

MRY

Wormwood Studios
Developer
Joined
Aug 15, 2012
Messages
5,703
Location
California
Lutte I generally agree with the sentiment, but it's funny looking at the FFIII screenshot today. When I played it back then, I was blown away by the jump from FFII to FFIII, but I dunno, looking at it now, a lot seems kind of weird. I'm noticing issues with the scale (I'm not sure the last time I saw a table of that sort with chairs taller than a person around it, for instance, and the record on the gramophone is ~5 feet in diameter), the perspective (what is going on with that chimney?), the "noisiness" and lack of edges (check out how the chair, especially, and gramophone blend into the bricks), and the character posing (it looks like she needs to use the bathroom or something). For all Earthbound's simplicity, I think I may now prefer its visuals (I didn't back in the day). (Incidentally, Chrono Trigger and other SNES era games don't have the same issues as FFIII in this regard.)

Also, the three posts that just came in made me laugh out loud. Apparently the Codex wasn't the right place after all.
 

Tris Bee

Literate
Joined
Oct 27, 2017
Messages
8
Location
US
I'm not the best artist, I can cop to that, in fact I can even see why it would completely not appeal to someone, but considering these are RPG forums I just thought it'd be a little more constructive then HEY YOU'RE MEDIOCRE AND YOUR ART SUCKS, he's totally entitled to his opinion though.

This is my first attempt at building a game from the ground up on my own, I wanted to keep the scope reasonable and not tread too far out of my abilities, in my opinion that's how game dev works, you don't try to code an entire game at once, you build the blocks, much like I wouldn't try to literally make something comparable to Final Fantasy on my first stab. I'm happy with what I've come to so far.
 

Tris Bee

Literate
Joined
Oct 27, 2017
Messages
8
Location
US
Oh, so in other words he was welcome me? I seeeee. Interesting. Well, hey, it's kind of like in jail when the first time someone tries to jump on me you gotta show them your nads you know? Or maybe you don't know, but that's how it goes!

I know forums frown on newbies but I honestly have just been swamped trying to make fixes on and improvements after showing this at a convention a week and a half ago, so I really haven't had any idle time to explore any forums.
 
Joined
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Messages
891
Location
Canuckistan
My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
I don't care much about the graphic style one way or another it's suitably standard modern indie fare, but the writing looks like it comes from a B-Grade webcomic circa 2007. An "over 9000" joke in the year of our lord 2017? really? The humour seems to be going for awkward and zany, but doesn't seem to hit either point that well. At least it's absurdly short at 5 or 6 hours.
 

Tris Bee

Literate
Joined
Oct 27, 2017
Messages
8
Location
US
I don't care much about the graphic style one way or another it's suitably standard modern indie fare, but the writing looks like it comes from a B-Grade webcomic circa 2007. An "over 9000" joke in the year of our lord 2017? really? The humour seems to be going for awkward and zany, but doesn't seem to hit either point that well. At least it's absurdly short at 5 or 6 hours.
Cool beans.

Not gonna really acknowledge your opinion's on a character you have no backstory of in a game you've never played or intend to to play, so, get your kicks condemning my work if that works for you :D

peeeeace
 

felixfogarus

Barely Literate
Joined
Nov 3, 2017
Messages
2
Hey there, new guy here...umm...I had to create an account and at least post this reply although I don't know if Tris Bee is still around.

I think it would be better for you to stick to let's players, bloggers, press and in person events etc... Personally, I don't think your game seems all that bad at all, but after seeing your project on kickstarter and lurking around to study how you've promoted it so far, you seemed to have better engagement elsewhere. With forums what I think I've found is that you need to get to know the people who lurk around first, it's more of a tightly knit group, so coming on and posting your game as your only post may not fair well.

It may seem like extra fast exposure, but there's nothing positive that'll come out of attracting people that are bored and disinterested in your work. You've gotta get this out to Undertale and Earthbound fans for sure, good luck with the project, hope you keep learning, improve and get to release it to it's correct audience. Getting like the 30% funding that you got on the first day is really no small feat for a solo developer, especially in these oversaturated times for 2d indie games, so you should really just pick your battles and be done with it.

Another thing is, you absolutely must learn to not be effected by anything anyone says. If someone posts something condescending back (or like in this case it seemed like 3 people teamed up on you) you should just say to yourself at that point "look, there are two or three condescending people here in a closely knit community...hmm...maybe I just ignore it and move on.". You wouldn't go into someone else's neighborhood and cause trouble. I know it's tough, but if you start to argue back it can make you look bad and that can be really bad because it's on the google search and everything. Remember what happened with the creator of Fez. He seriously should have just held his tongue and moved on.

They may have come off as condescending but I doubt a lot of the people here are half bad. There are many perspectives, many viewpoints in this world. You have to just realize that from Luttes perspective, he's completely correct in his view. To many people they prefer and would like to see more realistic color pallettes and detail put into pixel-art. It sounds like he's sick of things like Steven Universe and/or Undertale gaining traction, maybe he has a little brother that won't shut up about it or something while he had something that LITERALLY had a serious opera scene in it, like it was some classical Italian performance, when he was a kid. That game meant a lot to him I'm sure, it meant a lot to me growing up to tell you the truth.

From your perspective as a designer, you're completely correct, it takes a lot of work and multiple artists that were probably highly skilled at painting creating those scenes. I do commend you for at least not sitting around on your ass and actually creating something. I think what you've got here visually looks good, and you seem good at presenting it.

So, I don't know...You should just ignore it, or if you post something back respond to his perspective just at least honor it rather than calling him wrong.

You realize this by now I'm sure but it's just the wrong place to put your project, unless you take the time to probably contribute to the community and get to know people, although again I would just recommend sticking to press, blogs, portals and let's players. Maybe you should target Undertale fans instead since that seems to be what your style is like, but then Undertale is an american action ....rpg? game...You're DEFINITELY not going to reel in classic Final Fantasy fans if they're looking for something that takes itself very seriously like some Studio Ghibli-ish production.

Another thing maybe I'd say is that when you present it to rpg fans, make sure to show the inventory menus, the stats, the numbers, the math, the battle system. Explain what kind of battle system it is, how it works, those nitty gritty details. I've got a friend who used to be such a hardcore rpg player in his teen years, he would literally sit and lose days of sleep playing Monster Hunter. If you presented ANY game that had a turn based or active time battle system, even if the game was TERRIBLE, he wouldn't only just sit there and play the whole thing through, he would buy the game even if it meant dipping deep into his savings to do so (since there aren't many rpgs really comparatively speaking). People play Monster Hunter not for the graphics but almost entirely for the battle system. You literally just walk around and hunt monsters with (I think) no plot. When that game was advertised to rpg fans, it more than likely had the press writing articles about it's game mechanics and that sold it, not it's artwork or it's story. For me I personally just enjoy a long story, I would rather play an adventure game, but I'm just trying to drive home that point to a degree.
 
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spekkio

Arcane
Joined
Sep 16, 2009
Messages
8,278
It's funny when all these devs decide to make promotional threads about their games on every site which appears in the google search for "rpg site", and when they end up here it's mostly:

Prima: "Look at my game, my game is amazing!"
Hivemind: GTFO
Prima: :cry:

If you can't take the heat, stay out of the shit-kitchen.

:rpgcodex:
 

flyingjohn

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2012
Messages
2,945
It's funny when all these devs decide to make promotional threads about their games on every site which appears in the google search for "rpg site", and when they end up here it's mostly:

Prima: "Look at my game, my game is amazing!"
Hivemind: GTFO
Prima: :cry:

If you can't take the heat, stay out of the shit-kitchen.

:rpgcodex:

Ironically this is exactly the feedback indie devs need.The usual Reddit"Everything is awesome and sunshine" is useless and inspires less capable devs to actually think they know what they are doing.
 

flyingjohn

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2012
Messages
2,945
Btw your game checks every single box of indie shoverlware:
-Shit art style that looks like a mobile game
-Focus on narrative yet writing seems juvenile
-The entire pitch is about style or story with game play getting little focus.
-Using stupid words like "rpg lovers" that makes you look like a hipster
-Not actually willing to take criticism and just want a circle jerk of "Yes your game is awesome"
 

Tris Bee

Literate
Joined
Oct 27, 2017
Messages
8
Location
US
Hey there, new guy here...umm...I had to create an account and at least post this reply although I don't know if Tris Bee is still around.

From your perspective as a designer, you're completely correct, it takes a lot of work and multiple artists that were probably highly skilled at painting creating those scenes. I do commend you for at least not sitting around on your ass and actually creating something. I think what you've got here visually looks good, and you seem good at presenting it.

So, I don't know...You should just ignore it, or if you post something back respond to his perspective just at least honor it rather than calling him wrong.

You realize this by now I'm sure but it's just the wrong place to put your project, unless you take the time to probably contribute to the community and get to know people, although again I would just recommend sticking to press, blogs, portals and let's players. Maybe you should target Undertale fans instead since that seems to be what your style is like, but then Undertale is an american action ....rpg? game...You're DEFINITELY not going to reel in classic Final Fantasy fans if they're looking for something that takes itself very seriously like some Studio Ghibli-ish production.

Another thing maybe I'd say is that when you present it to rpg fans, make sure to show the inventory menus, the stats, the numbers, the math, the battle system. Explain what kind of battle system it is, how it works, those nitty gritty details. I've got a friend who used to be such a hardcore rpg player in his teen years, he would literally sit and lose days of sleep playing Monster Hunter. If you presented ANY game that had a turn based or active time battle system, even if the game was TERRIBLE, he wouldn't only just sit there and play the whole thing through, he would buy the game even if it meant dipping deep into his savings to do so (since there aren't many rpgs really comparatively speaking). People play Monster Hunter not for the graphics but almost entirely for the battle system. You literally just walk around and hunt monsters with (I think) no plot. When that game was advertised to rpg fans, it more than likely had the press writing articles about it's game mechanics and that sold it, not it's artwork or it's story. For me I personally just enjoy a long story, I would rather play an adventure game, but I'm just trying to drive home that point to a degree.

I had pretty much already decided I was done engaging here but I wanted to thank you for making an account to make such a thoughtful reflective post.

I said this earlier, but the truth is, probably the biggest struggle of being indie is getting your game out there, in the past few weeks I've finished the demo so I usually spend literally hours daily trying to find new nooks on the internet that google doesn't give you in the first page of options where I might find a good community or it. There are many places I didn't post, and I made sure to read the rules of different communities, for example, I didn't post on NeoGAF, Something Awful, IGN, Gamespot, etc. I didn't see anywhere where posting it would be necessarily offensive, and when I post in gaming communities, I actually end up being pretty active if the community is willing to have me!

Even though a lot of what's coming my way is "YOUR GAME SUCKS", it wasn't my intent to argue but sort of say yeah, well everyone doesn't have Cuphead Talent, and some people actually have to make their first game somewhere which probably isn't going to be their best. Considering this IS the first game of this scope I'm attempting I purposely chose to keep the art simple and in my comfort zone so 5 years later I still don't know how to cross the finish line on it. At the beginning of the year, I thought I had enough art to finish the demo but It turned out I probably needed twice what I had. Can you imagine how much worked 2x the art is for a more intricate style with only 1 person to work on it? Once I get comfortable and more knowledgeable of EVERYTHING needed in the process I am looking forward to improving my skills and going with a style that's more ballsy next time around. When you're taught code, you're taught to build simple programs at first, and build them block by block. Yes, there's plenty of alarm clock apps out there, would I be any less proud that I learned enough to make an unattractive solidly working one? Absolutely not.

You saw my Kickstarter so you probably realize that the game I'm making is a humble one and have no delusions about how "epic" it is in terms of production value. Of course I don't think this is ANYTHING akin to a Studio Ghibli movie.

I appreciate your thoughts on the game play, maybe I should showcase the battle system a bit more, I was slightly more shy about it because the game only has "boss" style fights, there are only 3 in the demo so I tried not to show too much, maybe this was a mistake but I'm certainly still learning!

Maybe the people here aren't that bad, but to me, I see a lot of people post games with "programmer art" who are clearly really passionate and they work on it for years, and my impulse is to try and tell them how they can improve, not ignore them much less take the time out to bash them. This is the internet, it's unfiltered and raw at times, I get that, but apparently me taking up for my work is equivalent to me only wanting to hear good things about it. I'm actually not arguing but as someone who believe in his project and wants to get better "YOUR GAME IS SHIT" isn't an argument that'll ever ly with me, I think not even attempting to stand up from my work from points of rationality would be worse as a small developer- I don't think I've attacked anyone or been vulgar to anyone here, or even suggested they HAVE TO LIKE MY GAME OR DOESN'T KNOW WHAT'S TALKING ABOUT, I've admitted previously and many times before that yeah, there are much better looking games and mine isn't doing anything groundbreaking art wise.

Again thanks for taking out the time to craft a post to me and this really makes all the other noise happening on this thread. I have thoroughly comprehended that this was probably not the best place for Cynical 7, and there's a reason I haven't messaged any of the mods about shutting it down, I think this is an interesting learning experience, it's also becoming a daily ritual to wake up at 5AM and see that someone else has come in to join in the festivities! If you'd like to talk more about it, feel free to message me! With your research skills it shouldn't be too hard! Otherwise as much as I like y'all I'll probably only reply to well cultivated response (positive or otherwise)

Cheers! It's been a fun ride and I hope you all have a great weekend!

PS: Another reason I want this to remain existent is because I'm sure there are other creators who are just getting out in the world that are going to have to face some harsh criticism, as brutal as this is if this can be a reference for those people to stand firm and keep working towards something greater, to me it's worth it.
 
Last edited:
Joined
Jan 28, 2015
Messages
891
Location
Canuckistan
My team has the sexiest and deadliest waifus you can recruit.
I don't care much about the graphic style one way or another it's suitably standard modern indie fare, but the writing looks like it comes from a B-Grade webcomic circa 2007. An "over 9000" joke in the year of our lord 2017? really? The humour seems to be going for awkward and zany, but doesn't seem to hit either point that well. At least it's absurdly short at 5 or 6 hours.
Cool beans.

Not gonna really acknowledge your opinion's on a character you have no backstory of in a game you've never played or intend to to play, so, get your kicks condemning my work if that works for you :D

peeeeace

You really should be listening. I'm not tearing your game down for no reason. Making games is hard as fuck, and I always want to see the best. I'm just pointing out what I see as a major weakness.

To be less sarcastic:

You're emphasizing story over gameplay, which is fine, but the writing comes across as amateur and the jokes are weak.
 

felixfogarus

Barely Literate
Joined
Nov 3, 2017
Messages
2
I had pretty much already decided I was done engaging here but I wanted to thank you for making an account to make such a thoughtful reflective post.

I said this earlier, but the truth is, probably the biggest struggle of being indie is getting your game out there, in the past few weeks I've finished the demo so I usually spend literally hours daily trying to find new nooks on the internet that google doesn't give you in the first page of options where I might find a good community or it. There are many places I didn't post, and I made sure to read the rules of different communities, for example, I didn't post on NeoGAF, Something Awful, IGN, Gamespot, etc. I didn't see anywhere where posting it would be necessarily offensive, and when I post in gaming communities, I actually end up being pretty active if the community is willing to have me!

With this particular community (probably others as well) you probably would have to spend a couple months posting and getting to know people personally I'm thinking. You pay tribute to a community and they will reward you down the line I'm thinking. If you're confident enough I would watch something like this on blog and press coverage, it seems pretty helpful. He's also made videos on social media marketing. I would really try to find small blogs and work your way up, try to get youtube streamers, maybe not spam them but message them, then if they don't respond message them back in 2-8 weeks or so to see if they would reconsider.



Even though a lot of what's coming my way is "YOUR GAME SUCKS", it wasn't my intent to argue but sort of say yeah, well everyone doesn't have Cuphead Talent, and some people actually have to make their first game somewhere which probably isn't going to be their best. Considering this IS the first game of this scope I'm attempting I purposely chose to keep the art simple and in my comfort zone so 5 years later I still don't know how to cross the finish line on it. At the beginning of the year, I thought I had enough art to finish the demo but It turned out I probably needed twice what I had. Can you imagine how much worked 2x the art is for a more intricate style with only 1 person to work on it? Once I get comfortable and more knowledgeable of EVERYTHING needed in the process I am looking forward to improving my skills and going with a style that's more ballsy next time around. When you're taught code, you're taught to build simple programs at first, and build them block by block. Yes, there's plenty of alarm clock apps out there, would I be any less proud that I learned enough to make an unattractive solidly working one? Absolutely not.

You saw my Kickstarter so you probably realize that the game I'm making is a humble one and have no delusions about how "epic" it is in terms of production value. Of course I don't think this is ANYTHING akin to a Studio Ghibli movie.

I wouldn't sell yourself short, though at the same time. You seem consistent in your production, you spent the effort making the after effects trailer and everything, so you still are presenting a piece of entertainment that will have quality to the correct audience (only).

Maybe the people here aren't that bad, but to me, I see a lot of people post games with "programmer art" who are clearly really passionate and they work on it for years, and my impulse is to try and tell them how they can improve, not ignore them much less take the time out to bash them.

Yeah but the problem that all of us have is that the world is a big uncontrollable place and whether it's online or offline in this industry, and I think as you've shown with getting some attention to your animated gifs (I've been studying how you promoted your project because that's what I do as I'm a game designer myself) this is the main place in where people have their trouble. If you have a project that you'd like to display, like you have done, you have to display it in person perhaps to get a sense of getting out there, talking to people and understanding what would be appropriate to showcase.

I'm 29 now, I've been developing since I was 17 years old, and if I could attest to one thing it's that the greatest mistake I ever made was to not demand of myself completely and utterly finished polished colored AND animated graphics to have readily displayable, whether my systems in programming were functional and decent or not, and whether I was able to draw or not. It's far better, especially these days where we've evolved to having an attention span to that of a goldfish (look it up that's actually a thing) to have first and foremost a large repository of animated gifs and screenshots. Your animated gifs posted online seemed to do very well compared to your forum posts.

On piece of advice I might have graphically is to find a way in where you could spice your graphics up to stray from Undertale just enough to stand out of the crowd. You need to look completely original so that you don't blend too much with any of the other Untertale clones out there.

This is the internet, it's unfiltered and raw at times, I get that, but apparently me taking up for my work is equivalent to me only wanting to hear good things about it. I'm actually not arguing but as someone who believe in his project and wants to get better "YOUR GAME IS SHIT" isn't an argument that'll ever ly with me, I think not even attempting to stand up from my work from points of rationality would be worse as a small developer- I don't think I've attacked anyone or been vulgar to anyone here, or even suggested they HAVE TO LIKE MY GAME OR DOESN'T KNOW WHAT'S TALKING ABOUT, I've admitted previously and many times before that yeah, there are much better looking games and mine isn't doing anything groundbreaking art wise.

Again, I don't think you should have that kind of selling yourself short attitude. To fans of Undertale they'll think your graphics are great, it's all subjective. The problem is not as much that you have "bad" graphics, it's that you are displaying it to people that don't prefer that style, where as you've posted it elsewhere to people that do prefer that style. In the end, let's hypothetically say that you find your audience, you successfully fund your kickstarter and you gain a following, you can create a sequel or something I don't know...Really you are going to get quite a lot of people that are praising you, and then the trick then is going to be not letting it get to your head and thinking you're all that and a bag of chips.

You know, on another note, there was a game that was posted on kickstarter called Arcadian Atlas that was like an FF Tactics clone...kind of. I'll never understand it but I've tried studying it for quite a while, how they were able to raise $90,000+ with only animated gifs and screenshots.

What I do make of it is that they didn't post to forums so much as they ended up getting coverage from press like Destructoid and they got a single twitter mention out of luck from an avid blogger I think (don't remember who). Just a thought, since your game looks like Undertale, think about trying to get it on blogs and press with that or something. People don't come to forums to buy sh*t, they come to discuss topics, you need to be targeting the people who are gonna buy your game (only). I don't mean that literally, I mean like "buy" your game as in be engaged and want to look up more information on it. Typically when folks go to gaming review blogs and youtubers they go because they are considering buying into a product, being engaged by it. THOSE are the people you should be after, whether that space is competitive or not to get into.

You need to be absolutely clear on who your audience is. I guarantee that like <2% of the people here would like to play your game let alone buy it, and even if there is some guy that would, that guy wouldn't be worth your time that could be spent e-mailing let's players.
 
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Hyperion

Arcane
Joined
Jul 2, 2016
Messages
2,120
Maybe I'm completely crazy, but I didn't see anything excessively harsh until the Dev started lashing out at said criticism.

Dude said he was cynical, the very definition of which is to greet new things with negativity. When said expected negativity comes, you respond by lashing out? You're supposed to be cynical, where's the dry, witty sarcasm? The bitter, caustic retorts? Shitting all over some optimistic twat whose mere existence pisses you off?

You aren't cynical, you're just a pussy. Also, when I saw the screenshots, if you didn't refer to yourself as male, I would have guessed you were every generic, androgynous GAMERGURL who's QUIRKY, AWKWARD, and CAN HANG WITH THE DUDES (read: fat and annoying), based on the character model. Or perhaps you were aiming for gender non-conforming?

Oh, and it's real-time combat to boot. You didn't read up on this site for very long if this is what you're bringing to the table.

The graphics suck, the dialogue is worse, and for a combatfag like myself, the combat looks AWFUL. Why is the dude dressed like a 90's TV movie burglar 30 feet tall, with a DK Mode head? Why is he dropping Pez dispensers on your head?

Preview: Coolbeans/10, wouldn't play it for free.
 
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Repressed Homosexual
Joined
Mar 29, 2010
Messages
17,867
Location
Ottawa, Can.
Another thing he probably doesn't get is that by now, people are tired of "meta" humor. The novelty has long worn off. Breaking the fourth wall continuously is a big turn off.

If you noticed all those older SNES games, they didn't constantly make pop culture jokes. They were their own semi-believable universes.
 

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