Video Game Developer Deep Dives are a continuous series with the objective of clarifying particular style, art, or technical functions within a computer game in order to demonstrate how apparently easy, essential style choices aren't actually that easy at all.
Earlier installations cover subjects such as how GOG improved the imperfect with the re-release of Alpha Protocol, how Ishtar Games developed a brand-new dwarf race in The Last Spell, and how Krillbite Studio formulated a tasty food preparation experience in Fruitbus.
In this edition, Point N' Sheep lead developer Antônio Rivero explains in careful information the considerations behind the basic however sharp art instructions of the pacifist ronin video game, Bloodless.
I'm Antônio Rivero, lead developer at Point N' Sheep, dealing with Bloodless, an action experience video game about a pacifist ronin with non-lethal parry-based battle and a distinct minimal scheme art design. It is our very first industrial video game as a studio, despite the fact that the majority of us have actually collaborated to make mobile video games for various business, and took part in numerous video game jams together. We understood a lot of aspects of making video games, however we needed to discover together how to make a video game this huge, this enthusiastic, and this quite.
Bloodless started as a video game jam task for the 45th edition of the Ludum Dare. The Jam's style of “Start with absolutely nothing” motivated us to make a video game about a swordless samurai. As a group we had actually taken part in lots of video game jams together, and we were utilized to making gameplay and visual choices to make our work simpler in the restricted advancement time provided to us for occasions like these.
Among these choices was to make the character have the exact same action for evade and parry, to minimize animation and coding time. Another such choice was to have a 1-bit-ish visual, with only black, white, and red on the screen, so that the artists might produce environments and animations rapidly.
This 3-color scheme design is really various from what we wound up with in the video game. Characters in Bloodless still keep the black-white-red scheme for the many part, however the surroundings has actually entirely altered. I believe the term “hi-bit,” which I've seen a couple of times to describe modern-day pixel art video games, actually encapsulates what we opted for with Bloodless. It has a severe scheme restriction, with an optimum of 12 colors on the screen simultaneously. Still, the characteristics of the visuals make it immediately visible that this is a modern-day video game with expensive results going on.
Image by means of 3D Realms.
How and why did we get from one to the other? When we ended up the video game jam variation, we were by no ways disappointed with its visual design. We had a favorable reception to the video game from the neighborhood, and among the most repeating feedbacks we got was that the visuals were really striking.
