KickStarter Peripeteia - Deus Ex-inspired FPS/RPG set in anime cyberpunk Poland

[Shodanon]

Don't like the skill icons much. They seem uneven and don't mesh well with the UI. I guess they're going for the pip-boy aesthetic, but it needs more work.

When I move to polishing such details, I am planning to experiment with a scanline effect to make them blend into the wheel. Otherwise they'll stay as they are.

I'm willing to bet this game is one "guys I came out as trans to my parents and now I'm homeless" away from meeting the Void of Vaporwareness.

At very unfavorable odds.

Is she staring at my crotch and taking snapshots?

No, that's her looking from behind the journal. The photos go to the cringe compilation.

 

[Maxie]

will you buy ads on bus stops like pixellated milk and go under to the point that you will have to collaborate with IPN to produce a propaganda piece

 

[Lagole Gon]

So... just like the original (actually) uncensored GitS manga, this game will be full of random lesbian orgies, right?

 

[Maxie]

So... just like the original (actually) uncensored GitS manga, this game will be full of random lesbian orgies, right?

there wasn't that many of them

 

[Shodanon]

will you buy ads on bus stops like pixellated milk and go under to the point that you will have to collaborate with IPN to produce a propaganda piece

No, we will rent an exorbitantly expensive office in downtown Warsaw to prove to ourselves we're "real" developers, a much more effective way of squandering all the profits.

So, just like the original GitS manga, this game will be full of random lesbian orgies, right?

That's not Catholic!
Side note, though: in Poland the manga was published uncensored, so I was surprised seeing the english release years later.

 

[rubinstein]

Hirotonfa's UI cartoons were always a Filutek/Vault Boy/Jucika-inspired thing, so weren't ever THAT weeb

gotta be honest, i dont really think the icons fit that well. i agree with ghostdog. but on the other hand they are, god forgive me for using this term, because i dont expect users to do so, adorkable and i wouldnt mind them that much in finished product.

Is she staring at my crotch and taking snapshots?

most likely, this would explain the caption

 

[Lagole Gon]

It just needs a little something to work better with the background. No idea what though. Some oscilloscope effects maybe, some kind of outline... Fuck do I know.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

I still think it’d make a good wall clock. Hell, you could sell stickers, mugs, T-shirts, etc. I’d probably buy a sticker book or art book.

 

[Spacer's Nugget]

I'm willing to bet this game is one "guys I came out as trans to my parents and now I'm homeless" away from meeting the Void of Vaporwareness.

At very unfavorable odds.

Oh, good to know they got with the times.

 

[S.torch]

When I move to polishing such details, I am planning to experiment with a scanline effect to make them blend into the wheel. Otherwise they'll stay as they are.

Nice! Your icons are very cute. I like their style.

 

[Kabas]

They seem fitting precisely because of how somewhat unfitting they're, as weird as it sounds.
Or maybe i am just biased they remind me of those cute Jucika comics.

 

[agris]

Don't like the skill icons much. They seem uneven and don't mesh well with the UI. I guess they're going for the pip-boy aesthetic, but it needs more work.

When I move to polishing such details, I am planning to experiment with a scanline effect to make them blend into the wheel. Otherwise they'll stay as they are.

not to pick on you, but this seems to be a classic example of cargo cult design.

in fallout 1 & 2, the pip boy made sense. there was a campy 50s aesthetic, and he was obviously an icon used by vault-tek to illustrate and make palatable concepts. setting aside the use of the pip boy in the manuals and even in-game videos, the part of the UI that incorporated it also made sense. the character screen had info panels, and the pip-boy conveyed a simple monopoly-man like image next to text. it was rendered in the UI in an approximation of a display unit (TV screen). it was all cohesive, and made sense.

so, why are you using these pip girl images in your game? presumably because fallout's use of the pip boy was fun and effective. your images, while cute, do not fit into the form or function of an o-scope. further, they don't look coherent with the rest of the your aesthetics.

that's cargo cult design, in a nutshell.

 

[Maxie]

Don't like the skill icons much. They seem uneven and don't mesh well with the UI. I guess they're going for the pip-boy aesthetic, but it needs more work.

When I move to polishing such details, I am planning to experiment with a scanline effect to make them blend into the wheel. Otherwise they'll stay as they are.

not to pick on you, but this seems to be a classic example of cargo cult design.

in fallout 1 & 2, the pip boy made sense. there was a campy 50s aesthetic, and he was obviously an icon used by vault-tek to illustrate and make palatable concepts. setting aside the use of the pip boy in the manuals and even in-game videos, the part of the UI that incorporated it also made sense. the character screen had info panels, and the pip-boy conveyed a simple monopoly-man like image next to text. it was rendered in the UI in an approximation of a display unit (TV screen). it was all cohesive, and made sense.

so, why are you using these pip girl images in your game? presumably because fallout's use of the pip boy was fun and effective. your images, while cute, do not fit into the form or function of an o-scope. further, they don't look coherent with the rest of the your aesthetics.

that's cargo cult design, in a nutshell.

you've almost matured to the point of discovering the real energies ruling the world. the cute girl is in the game, because cute girls are cute. there is no other more objective measure of quality design.

 

[Shodanon]

not to pick on you, but this seems to be a classic example of cargo cult design.

No offense taken my dude, just seems to be a fancy synonym for our

approach

I would posit that in game design generally, most things are iterations on existing things. If a dev likes cute cartoon UI icons because that's what Fallout does, the dev will implement it because it's fun and effective. Probably most design is "cargo cult" design.
Some will give an explanation for that but sometimes it will be just an afterthought (for example, does Avernum ever do this? does it need to?) or worse, give a hand-waving explanation. Yes, in our case, the moment we put these things in the game we do ask ourselves the questions "if someone asks, how do we explain this?" and "do we hint at this in the lore somehow or do we state it outright?"
But first came "hey we love this one artist's work, let's reach out to him for cute icons, ask him to make our character a Jucika or things from Szczutek" and "what cool device can we kitbash so it fits the UI aesthetic by having a round display for the skill wheel?". And, of course, as Maxie put it:

cute girls are cute.

so, why are you using these pip girl images in your game? presumably because fallout's use of the pip boy was fun and effective. your images, while cute, do not fit into the form or function of an o-scope.

The reason she looks like that is often explained publicly by snakku

This explicit explanation I'd rather leave out of the game however.

further, they don't look coherent with the rest of the your aesthetics.

Aesthetics are influenced by soviet/warsaw pact countries and Polish interwar period. Plenty of newspaper cartoons in that time, some of which I named.


This is how the thing looks in motion. We'll have a bit of exposition during the "how to use implants" tutorial. Activating an retrofitted implant requires Marie to emit a signal of specific frequency range, dependent on where it's interfaced. Original idea was using actual sound tone:

but the current explanation makes more sense.

I hope that suffices.

 

[agris]

that’s interesting, and glad your team has given it more thought than just cute pics are cute

I know it’s a silly nitpick in a lot of ways, but it’s born out of a tiredness of the derivative designs seen in a vast majority of games made today. games that seem to be made by people with little understanding of history, science or art.

one of the reasons i read this thread is because your team has shown a spark of creativity, the Warsaw pact angle is fairly unique. points to inspiration beyond gaymer “culture”. that’s why i posted what i did. if you were just going for bg4 or deus ex: butt cheeks divided, i wouldn’t care.

 

[udm]

I actually think this is looking better. The feel is more consistent now, not just a one-off "Hey check out my cute loli icon" shtick.

 

[Infinitron]

Bonk.

 

[El Presidente]

they are, god forgive me for using this term,

Relax my man, bring it on

adorkable

I don't think God will forgive you for that.


As for the game, I see the devs are in this thread so I will refrain from saying what I truly think of the bigass anime girl head on the protagonist, but I will say this: while I respect you folks going for your integral artistic vision for your creation, without giving in on any aspect of it, I'd say you should also not lose focus on the fact you're making a game for an audience to enjoy, an audience that will comprise of mostly 2000's Deus Ex fans, and I can't see this audience's #1 dream being to play "Deus Ex but JC has a waifu bobblehead". I'd fear alienating my playerbase, but then again, I'm not into that style at all. In fact I had this game on my wishlist and removed it when I saw the animu bits. I think quite a lot of people will give the game a try despite the character design, meaning, the rest of the stuff here will have to fight with and ultimately outweight this character design in order to successfully attract the players, so I'd imagine this will always be a big "yeah it was a good game, BUT..." for Peripeteia.

I think what I want to say is that, to me this seems like an unnecessarily self-inflicted con for the game. As a matter of fact I just checked the Steam forums and, as expected, there are a couple threads complaining about this aspect. Now imagine if the character design was more normal, like 99.9% of the people would expect and anticipate from this game when they discover it. None of this "this looks very promising, BUT..." would exist, people would just be into it and hyped with no caveats.

 

[Jinn]

The anime head clashes terribly with the rest of the aesthetic and presentation, and that's its problem more than the fact it's an anime head. El Presidente is absolutely spot on with his above concerns. I know it has something to do with the character background, but it still seems like it'd be worth revising that aspect.

 

[antimeridian]

The anime head has been here and elsewhere and I doubt the devs will change such major part of the game's identity at this point. I wasn't sold on it originally but I've come around after referencing some of the developers' influences. I respect them sticking by their guns with this.

Now hurry up and drop the full game so I can P E R I P E T E all over it!!

Unrelated but I joined the Discord recently and it's been a good source not only for this game's development, but also for finding other indie immersive sims that aren't on my radar. Quite a few other devs in there and people posting updates to other games.

 

[Jinn]

Well, there's a very good reason that dead horse is being beaten so viciously. I respect developers sticking to their guns, but it's worth listening sometimes too.

after referencing some of the developers' influences.

Please share.

but also for finding other indie immersive sims that aren't on my radar.

Also please share.

 

[El Presidente]

It's like they're selling hot dogs with raisins as the main topping (believe it or not, this is a thing in a few places). Sure, if the hot dog is delicious enough some people might be willing to shove it aside, and a few might even be into it, but all the trouble and controversy this decision will inevitably stir could be avoided if there was no fucking raisins on the hot dog in the first place, you know what I mean?

 

[antimeridian]

after referencing some of the developers' influences.

Please share.

but also for finding other indie immersive sims that aren't on my radar.

Also please share.

Serial Experiments Lain seems like the big one. It's not something I've watched and it's not the same exact artstyle, but seems like an obvious homage. Ghost in the Shell is an obvious one too.

I guess I am sympathetic to those who don't like it, maybe the devs could provide alternative head designs for people to toggle between. Maybe it'll be easily moddable anyway bc Unity but I'm not sure

Off the top of my head some neat looking games that the Discord put on my radar are Full Fathom, Corpus Edax, Retrospace, and B.C. Piezophile.

 

[Jinn]

B.C. Piezophile

Nice! Just put this on my wishlist yesterday, actually. Haven't heard of Full Fathom or Corpus Edax yet. Retrospace looks cool, but I can only allow myself to be cautiously optimistic about it.

As for the influences, I had definitely already identified those two. I thought maybe you were referring to something that very intentionally clashes in style or something. Those are great influences to have, but they are anime in their entirety, which actually works, as opposed to Maria's stupid head being completely out of place in this.

 

[Dadd]

Let us take off the animu head. Make it a mascot head.