Thimbleweed Park, a new old point and click by Ron Gilbert

[Crimson Wizard]

The Last Door, for instance, has two different pixel sizes for two different areas of the screen and a third for the cursor. It also has terrible art.

I never heard of that game before, but browsing screenshots made me think that I could try doing similar style for a game if I'd make one by myself , because very low resolution characters and backgrounds are simple to draw, while high-resolution fonts (like in dialog options) are easy to read.

[Danvzare]

But I disagree that it's laziness - I usually prefer the "gliding" mode in AGS games, unless the frame rate of the animation is high enough to result in smooth movement and scrolling.

Same here. I actually prefer the gliding effects, and as such usually turn it on, on my games. It just feels more natural and smoother. You just need a high enough frame rate of animation like you said.

All I'd say is that the way the game celebrates pixel art is at the same time denying it too and I really dislike like it Is anyone sharing my opinion? This was the question in the first instance

I heartily disagree. Pixel art does not have to be pixel perfect. That's like saying all portraits have to be painted on canvas. Technology moves on! And thanks to the limitations of technology in the past, a new artstyle was created, which was pixel art. But we shouldn't have to constrain ourselves as to how that pixel art is displayed, just because those constraints were around when the artstyle came about.

Pixel art in my opinion, is when you're highly aware of the individual pixels in your art. Using a series of blocks to trick the eye into seeing a mosaic image as something more complex than it actually is. The fact that you can misalign it on top of another piece of pixel art, does not automatically invalidate it as pixel art.

If you actually drew pixel art, you would understand what I mean.

[KONEY]

Inconsistent pixel sizes annoy me and they're definitely not my taste. Same goes for subpixel positioning.
I didn't back Thimbleweed park, but I thought it was sold as something more authentic than Broken Age. It's a bit disappointing that they didn't clamp movement to pixel boundaries or keep a consistent resolution. I think it's probably them deciding it's not important, but then with such an emphasis on the 80s throughout the game, it's a puzzling and disappointing decision.

This summarize well what I think. Early development screenshots showed us a game basically identical to the usual 256 colors Zak or Indy but as soon as the game was on my screen I had the bitter feeling of a 3D version of them.

[Gurok]

I think they are "gliding", but it's hard to tell, because the animations are pretty fast. But I disagree that it's laziness - I usually prefer the "gliding" mode in AGS games, unless the frame rate of the animation is high enough to result in smooth movement and scrolling.

It's less work to implement. Also, gliding in AGS and the sliding I described aren't the same thing. AGS always glides on pixel boundaries. I was describing both the gliding and someone being careless enough to not align animations to pixel boundaries. I can maybe tolerate the gliding part, but having both would confirm laziness.

It's interesting that you think gliding is a matter of preference. There are some animations that would look horrendous that way, purple tentacle, for instance. I would argue that all animations look pretty bad if they're gliding across the screen. To me, it seemed as though the whole glide/anti-glide thing in AGS was there to correct an early design mistake in a compatible way.

The Last Door, for instance, has two different pixel sizes for two different areas of the screen and a third for the cursor. It also has terrible art.

I never heard of that game before, but browsing screenshots made me think that I could try doing similar style for a game if I'd make one by myself , because very low resolution characters and backgrounds are simple to draw, while high-resolution fonts (like in dialog options) are easy to read.

Yes, there's a sort of sub-genre going on with these ultra-low resolution games. The Darkside Detective is another example.

What I find most jarring abut the Last Door is that pixels for the inventory area are say, 6x6, whereas the pixels for the main area are 10x10. They're not in neat ratios to one another. This is compounded by the character often not lining up with background art. I find it hard to swallow this being described as "retro" when I know that traditional graphics modes don't work that way. Also, I was wrong. The cursor is the same resolution as the inventory area. The text, however, as you pointed out, is a higher resolution still.

High-res text is a little less jarring than direct disregard for a pixel grid. There's even some historical precedent. A few text-based games used extended ASCII to simulate an 80x50 grid (or sometimes 80x25) and mixed that with text. I'm thinking in particular of a few Megazeux titles that used block graphics the whole way through. I also remember making games that way myself in the 90s after seeing how Nibbles worked.

[kconan]

  I enjoyed it overall, despite some unoriginal ideas (insult clown, Trek nerds, etc...all funny but tired tropes) and the overused fourth wall jokes.  I liked the characters and their subplots, most of the puzzles (especially the detective stuff), and most of the graphics.  Being a kid from the 80s and early 90s, I was in their target demographic for the many throwback references.

[Danvzare]

I find it hard to swallow this being described as "retro" when I know that traditional graphics modes don't work that way.

Agreed. Just because it's pixel art, does NOT make it retro.
Of course there's nothing wrong with having pixel art and not being retro. It's just annoying when everyone calls their game retro just because it uses pixel art.

[InCreator]

Missing at least 50 hotspots and 100 lines of dialogues. Empty ginormous rooms.

Have you played Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade? Loom?
I always thought lack of hotspots was LucasArts handwriting. Sierra games let you look at basically every pixel in the room.
It is logical to have less if your game is full talkie, you wouldn't do billion lines of voiceover for things that don't advance story (although many players love adventure games for pure exploration).
Lack of hotspots also make game much, much easier. And this isn't very difficult game to begin with. Probably not intended so. Open-world thing makes it messy too.

Other than that, it's nicely done but pretty mediocre so far, in my opinion. I wish they went for more realistic graphics, such as Loom or MI2. 12-verb UI should have stayed in the past, Full Throttle handled it much more elegantly -- why go back?
Ghost character feels like direct ripoff from Blackwell series. Either they didn't do research into modern games thoroughly or they did... both probabilities are disappointing.

Haven't finished it yet, but way over halfway.
While story has clearly gone to hell, and even beginners here make more believable walk cycle animations, I just wish to admire more of those marvelous backgrounds.
And despite pixel size problems, usage of shaders make it up a lot in my book. Not sure, but I suspect those wavey ghost modes and all would just look horrible with original pixel resolution.