I have no problem with the pixel art form. I see people saying it’s being over-used etc, but when you are a small team or one-man band, and are not good at 3D software (that can look terrible, worse than pixel art often), then your only choice is pixel art. In the curious expedition i think they do it very well, the natural scenes, the people and dinosaurs are certainly not the worst pixel art i have seen.
But yeah there is a ‘backlash’ of sorts due to the high number of indie pixel art games, but i think you need to try making a game first to understand why it is miss-placed? Can YOU afford any of the industry 3D tools (3ds Max/Maya etc), can you use any of the free 3D software (Blender etc) well enough for it to not look terrible? Those are the main issues for indy devs using pixel art, beyond the perceived ‘they do it to be cool’ thing. If you can draw/paint, you can make pixel art.
FYI, Curious Expedition is being made by two guys. Who just recently quit their jobs at Yager (Spec-Ops: The Line) to be able to work fulltime on this.
I don’t think you understand what I meant: I have nothing against pixel art in general. Even a decade ago I used to lurk the pixelation.net forums purely for the sexy images. I’ve also “made” (i.e. never finished) multiple games with my own art that’s very very shit. I can understand very well how much effort goes into making art not crap.
But in this specific case I don’t like the “style” they’ve drawn the people in. I think the dinos and the giant crab look cool, and even the portraits of the people. But for some reason they’ve not put the same amount of detail into the people and to me that style clashes with the dinos. The deliberate amount of effort and design they’ve put into the little stick people sprites are the thing I didn’t like. I don’t like the widely spaced, thin, long legged style that’s been a trend for a while games like that Super brothers one and Kentucky Route Zero use and that this game is also using. I think it looks stupid.
@ Pod, ok i thought you were just trotting out the ‘pixel art looks crap, why can’t it all look like Call of Duty’ refrain many a young man makes around the internet ;)
Looks stunning, probably has a thread (i think i remember it being mentioned somewhere) around here, but just so i don’t ‘lose it’ i thought i’d give it a mention now. Also an RPS piece on it:
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but I suspect I could write a Zak Gordon bot.
For each new RPS post:
if post contains the word "kickstarter" and a link to a kickstarter webpage:
ks_url = get kickstarter url from RPS post
game_name = get game name from the kickstarter post
list_of_mechanics = get list of mechanics from game's kickstarter page
possible_cools = [
"{game_name} looks cool!",
"{game_name} looks and sounds lovely",
"{game_name} looks stunning!",
"{game_name}: a game with {list_of_mechanics}"
]
cool_idx = randomint(0, len(possible_cools))
possible_RPS_leadins = [
"RPS has this to say about it",
"RPS piece here",
"And an RPS write-up here", ## this one has been used a few times
"Something from RPS about it here",
"And a decent RPS article about it here",
"RPS spiel here",
]
rps_idx = randomint(0, len(possible_RPS_leadins))
print(possible_cools[cool_idx])
print(ks_url)
print(possible_RPS_leadins[rps_idx])
print(RPS_post_URL)
I picked it up and it’s kinda fun to play in short spurts. In a typical level (that I’ve played so far) you launch a moon around a planet by setting the direction and speed of the launch. It is then affected by the gravity of the planet and asteroids. The goal is to collide with a certain amount of asteroids to absorb them. As you absorb them the moon gets bigger, which affects how it interacts with the gravitational forces. You get bonus points for absorbing 1 to 3 of the gold asteroids.
As you progress, different interactions get added, such as the ability to thrust the moon a limited number of times after you launch it. There are some levels that solely rely on you using the thrusters to control the moon. It starts out low key enough, but there have been some levels that require the player to move the mouse around and click pretty rapidly to use the thrusters, which may turn off some players. There is a set of levels per planet and each planet introduces some new gameplay element. I think I’ve only played through 2 complete planets, so I don;t know what they all are, or if they require more and more hand eye coordination.
