Yeah, I'm going to echo fisk0 here; the pixel design here is very well used.

1) The color palette is actually continuous and matches those of the era.
2) The art is clear. I can tell exactly what something is by looking at it.
3) The character art actually matches the style of the game.

Well done, bravo to the team.

I feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone or some shit, because for me this is a game so ugly I don't even see the point of picking up a free demo, and yet everyone is dropping their fudge over how good it looks. Ah well, same old, same old. Quite literally in the case of this game, but I guess that's what a lot of people here want - endless regurgitation of chewed up nostalgia.

Also, let me thank you all for the inevitably incoming downvotes, their crushing weight will surely force me to acknowledge the excellence of endless brown, black, grey and radioactive green in a resolution so low Fox Mulder could hang pics of it in his office and claim it kidnapped his sister.

I think you forgot to a word in this post.
Huh, long ago I noticed that when it comes to personal taste for games I hardly ever agree with you. But not this time.
I endorse both your description and the sarcasm used to deliver it. +1

Okay, I can get the ragging. But let's do a quick thing: This actually looks like an old game. People are kinda thirsty for those; especially those before the VGA era. This looks like a lot of old shareware games.

Now to contrast: Kraken Academy. Whose artstyle looks like it belongs nowhere because there's a LOD clash.

Big time Ultima vibes.

Much like Nox Archaist, correct?

LOL I can see certain someone got uppity over the graphic, forgetting that this game is supposed to emulating the classic Commodore 64. Kids today are so pampered with high quality graphic they can't deal with this kind of graphic. A huge shock for them.

I do realise that, oh great and enlightened one. That's exactly what I referred to as "regurgitation of chewed up nostalgia". I'm sick and tired of games trying to look like other old games instead of doing something new and having the creativity and the balls to have a style of their own.

I've been playing video games since something like 1994. And I played and enjoyed games older than that. But old games are not the same thing as new games pretending to be old because nostalgia sells.

So, is there even any chance of not using the latest state of the art and not being accused of trying to sell nostalgia?

in reply to: "i do realize that, oh great..."

this is all well and good, but there's plenty of new games that don't look like this. go look into those. some of us enjoy this and are glad that they're making more games like this and in this style.

we're not raining on your parade because you're getting new games in your preferred style, so it's absolutely not necessary to rain on ours.

in reply to: "i've been playing videogames since..."

i fail to see the problem with new games "pretending" to be old games.

sometimes, you can build very neat things using the constraints of those old things. [cf: shovel knight, which is the poster child for this.] - plus, they're often taking some of those very old ideas and modernizing them in a way that the original developers just didn't consider back then.

as an example: in shovel knight, there's checkpoints throughout the levels. you can: pass by them and have them register so that you start from that point when you die [and don't lose /a lot/ of progress] or you can smash them to get extra gold, immediately, knowing that if you're not sufficiently well versed in shovel knight's platforming that you could lose all that extra coin immediately by dying.

that's an in-game difficulty setting that probably just never occurred to the nes developers of old.

so, it's not like these games are bereft of ideas, often, they're just choosing to work in a particular medium because it makes them feel warm and fuzzy and there's no harm in that.

i'd much rather have games like this than "here's another dull assassin's creed," thank you very much.

No. It is absolutely impossible to create something original with a fresh art style. Retro clones and AAA games are the only two options.

Edit: great, the forum can't handle multiple links in the same sentence. The post comes out all mangled. Here are the games I tried to link to within the words above :D

https://www.gog.com/game/apotheon
https://www.gog.com/game/pyre
https://www.gog.com/game/my_memory_of_us
https://www.gog.com/game/thronebreaker_the_witcher_tales
https://www.gog.com/game/feudal_alloy
https://www.gog.com/game/pendragon

apotheon has a GREAT art style and i absolutely hope we get more games that look something like it.

Yeah, and sadly those games tend to not get nearly as much attention and praise. You make something brilliant like Apotheon or Ghost of a Tale and it barely registers, but copy the graphics of something old and you're pretty much guaranteed nostalgia driven success. It pissess me off how lack of originality and playing it safe and cheap keeps getting rewarded.

Nothing here is "necessary". I just state my opinion, same as everyone else in the thread. It's just that for some reason people tend to act like a minority opinion is less valid, or less "necessary" and has less of a place than whatever the majority is chanting.


Here's the thing, and I said this before: games that try to be just like old games are actually nothing like them in a basic, fundamental way, they are doomed by an inherent paradox. When playing the original classics years ago, did you think to yourself "oh yeah, this is just like the old times"? Of course not. So if that's what a new game is making you feel, than it's actually nothing like those classics. The great classics we remember were cutting edges, pushing envelopes and thinking outside boxes. It's the games that try new things and and look unique that actually feel like the classics used to - fresh, exciting, creative. These rerto-clones are to the indie scene exaclty what the endless Call of Duty and Assassin Creed titles are to AAA games.

This game has one of the more accurate and polished ultraretroart direction in a lot of time because it emulates with good taste and understanding the aesthetics it want to emulate, but the game has more quality of life features than could be expected. Not counting the gameplay intention and genre.

Nothing will be changed in how these things work and probably the game will be a niche retrogame with a lot of fans. Me included, and it will sell decently. But It won't sell millions of copies and it is because of the graphics. It won't appeal to newer generations. I could understand it.

So your taste or opinion could be respectable and/or needed, but it won't be a minority or so special as you believe.