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[First off, in response to comments about my work:]

First off, in response to comments about my work:
The thing in the first image is half a gardening shear attached to a rake handle, a reference to one of the first puzzles in the game . I mostly did the first sketch as a thing to amuse myself, as I don't think the traditional "Important characters looking into the distance" box-art would really work for this game. Like many of you who commented (although it seems those that liked it were the ones who hadn't played the game? ), my personal favourite is the 3rd one.

I'm not sure about pollution in the universe of Technobabylon (although it does have a lot of smokey, cool looking sunset/sunrise images), so maybe I can remove the other smoke lines, and just leave the one emanating from the exploded building.

The binary was just quickly generated filler, the final would have to be better incorporated into the BG, and probably be made up of similar snippets of text to the ones hidden about in the game. I wanted to somehow represent the "Trance" part of the universe, although it plays less of a role here than in the other Technobabylon games, so maybe it can be abandoned- so it was the building silhouettes, then the binary code buildings as a reflection of the real buildings, but distorted for being in water.
If I didn't go with the 3rd image, I'd probably go with the second, maybe include some ideas like the tiny people on the buildings and the smoking building in the background.
I would definitely be curious as to the rules on incorporating the game's title text style into the box-art. It seems a pretty vital part of the representation of the game.


Now as to the other sketches:
For reference, I haven't played any of the games except By the Numbers and Ben Jordan 2, and I'm not a very good artist (my major method of drawing something is simply what looks right to me).

ThreeOhFour:
Very cheerful sketch, although I'd almost think it was some sort of farming simulator, if it wasn't for the cat with the key .

Waheela:
My personal favourite is actually the 2nd sketch, I can totally imagine that on the box-art. Maybe you can have the letters of the secret language floating about, mostly faded in the background.

oraxon:
Following the beard-strangly idea, I'd probably prefer E, as F, but otherwise maybe A with the animals included in it somehow?

Soxbrooker:
Considering the limitations of the game, I think you did pretty well. As a suggestion (no idea how well it'll work), perhaps you can integrate some ruler/grid/angle overlays of measurements of eye-openness, or shape of mouth or something (I think they had something similar in the TV show "Lie to Me", but I can't find any references right now .

Ilych:
All the thumbnails are pretty awesome, and I can't even narrow down which I like best beyond 2,3 and 4. 4 definitely looks the most box-artish, I could almost expect him to be holding a gun up next to his face, looking tense . 3 is cool to me too, although as someone else said, perhaps it might be a bit boring composition-wise. If you go with 2 or 3, you could maybe add some small details that personalise it to that game (again, I couldn't say what, as I haven't played), beyond it being a game about/on a train.

calicoreverie:
Hahah..I quite like the layout you've gone with. Maybe it's just me being influenced by all the little logos and things you added, but it already looks like a game-box I might find in a store somewhere. You could probably also test around with adding a few zombie heads showing in the foreground.

nihilyst:
I like the references for this image as well . As miez suggested, you could fade the suited character somehow more into the background somehow. I guess the hidden text could be a problem, but I couldn't think what else the game title would've been (maybe "The Burger Flipbar"? ). I'm curious to see what else you'll add!

cat:
You obviously settled on the best composition, and it's quite striking and dramatic as well. Can't think of anything else I could add.

Ascovel:
Seeing the image first, then the text, I didn't really get that it was comic book panels, I thought it was just a street. Maybe you can make the borders white? Then again, it could just be that it hasn't been refined yet at the sketch level. The panel idea itself, and the individual panels, though, look quite good so far!

miez:
I think you definitely chose the best layout. I thought the same as Waheela: it would've been cool if you had it as in your initial sketch, with Ben's legs outside the frame, and the title text in the area outside it.

CitizenParagon:
Heh..quite cute box art, and fairly reminiscent of what I know of the game .

EDIT: Nevermind, was a page behind .

Oh. If you were banned, it was probably not a good idea to come back. At least you should've waited a while.

You don't need to create a new account just to change your name. You can change your name from your own account as well.

I'm pretty sure you can't start a thread in this forum without Gilbot's permission.

But wait...you're the guy who made Not the Explainable?! :O

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJeX6F-Q63I&list=PLQJW3WMsx1q3BAZh3XsK1cSwCiaqjSulc

A counter-argument...of sorts.

Only watched the first 10 minutes, but I think I understand the two arguments.

The feminist one actually seems slightly better argued. But completely missing the part were the weak and ineffective female breaks that 20 foot tall armoured man with the gigantic punch to the balls is pretty bad. I think the man really goes not question enough, and takes too many feminist beliefs as correct without testing them, and therefore really fails to counter her arguments well enough.

Okay, Anita was one level of preachy condescension, but that thunderf00t guy was something beyond. I too could barely watch 10 minutes of his video, and his constant repeating of the woman punching the giant lich thing irked me at its dishonesty. In Double Dragon Neon, the game being talked about, the final boss is that guy, after beating it up, you punch it off a cliff, and the credits roll, with the it in the background. After about 5 minutes, by which time most people would've exited the game,  the credits finish, the lich-thing almost reaches the floor, says "I'll get you, Billy and Jimmy!", except the girl is there, and she "punches it in the balls". The screen fades, and your final concept art is unlocked: Billy carrying his adoring girlfriend who he just saved.

So yeah, that doesn't disprove anything Anita said about that particular trope, she even mentioned that occasionally the damsel does her token end-of-game "defence".

The discussions here have been kinda odd. Nobody seems to deny that there is a certainly level of misogyny (or at least male-centric targeting to the detriment of women) in games, but loads of people really seem to dislike the way Anita expresses herself.

I believe you might be talking about Femspray, although in that, the scientist is trying to turn all males female, not gay. Also, I'd say the art was good for what was needed, and the animations were hilarious, as was most of the game!

I have not played it, but sounds like Gord10's "Lost in the Nightmare".

Here is an update of the original game: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/642/

And here is an update done in 2008: http://www.adventuregamestudio.co.uk/site/games/game/982/

I don't know if whatever glitch you are talking about was fixed, but it probably was?

Sorry if I'm late or something, have been moving, and I'm no longer quite sure about the deadlines and stuff for this thing. I hadn't played any of the games before, so this was a good opportunity to catch up. For research. Blew through all 3 of them in one afternoon, now I'm waiting for the final part .

The next part of my "research" mostly involved madly taking screenshots of the game, and relevant characters from other parts of the series:

Spoiler

[close]

And scouring the web for other possible art for Technobabylon:


Browsed some other box art, but was at a loss as to how to tackle this one. The city is obviously important (the game is even named for it), and Dr. Regis and Dr. Lao...
So I finally got around to the sketches. These are literally rough pencil sketches, and not too much mind paid to proportions and straight lines and such.

The more "traditional" style of box-arting didn't really seem applicable here, but I tried anyways for laughs:


Then I figured the tree is important as well, it drives the entire motivation for Dr. Regis. So...


One of the bits of praise the Technobabylon games constantly seem to get is comparisons to Beneath a Steel Sky, so I thought why not do a cover that is a bit of a reference to it?


Now I'm not exactly sure if this is more a workshop on box-art, or a workshop on illustration and (digital?) painting with "Box-art" as the topic, so I'm not quite certain how appropriate the last attempt was. If it is just a box-art thing, minimalistic box art has worked (BaSS again), and can look cool, and sometimes be a BETTER representation than more traditional box-art.
Also, Technobabylon has a very distinctive title font, which I've attempted to mimic here. Should I be going for my own title font instead?

A bit late to say this , but I'm a bit worried as to the calibre of my work, and following from that, my presence here...unfortunately, I'm neither very good at this sort of art, nor, more importantly, do I have a very sound understanding of the process involved. I enjoy drawing, but rarely ever practice, so hopefully this will be a useful learning experience for me. I don't know exactly how this works, but I'd definitely appreciate all and any help and criticism.

I *WAS* actually working on a game called "By the Gun: Tales of a Gun", to be released just before TerranRich's similarly named game. But then work on his game stopped, then he disappeared, now probably no one remembers it, even...I bet he'll capitalise on MY fame instead!

I believe Primordia at least had to go through Greenlight. Most of the Blackwell games came out before Greenlight was a thing?

But yeah, thanks for this very interesting information!

I think that worked, thanks for that! Now everything in the interface (File, Edit, etc.) is tiny, but I'll live with that, as long as the content is the size it is meant to be. It boggles the mind that they'd make such a thing adjustable.

You're right, Crimson!
Sorry I couldn't post more images, Selmaik .

No to both guesses, and I don't believe this game had anything to do with any Forgotten Realms engine, UI or setting.

Hahaha...no Bible Adventures, and no Hobbit.
Miguel might have it, considering it has everything he just said. If only he could remember the name!

That guess makes me suspicious that you know which game this is, Crimson Wizard

I need to brush up on my skills, and while I'm not sure how far along I'll be able to go, count me in.

I hadn't realised that the 3rd part of this series had already been released (I wasn't even aware that the 2nd part was out), so I just finished watching them both today, and was surprised there hasn't really been any discussion on it in these forums.

Now you probably want to watch them to know what is being talked about:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLn4ob_5_ttEaA_vc8F3fjzE62esf9yP61
If you haven't seen any of them before, I think it'll take over an hours worth of your time.

I know there has been loads of horribleness surrounding the funding and development of these videos, but personally, I'm interested in them as a developer of games.
After watching, I had loads of thoughts and questions, so I figured it'd post them here as a way to get loads of different viewpoints.

First off, has there really been no game similar to the one she described at the end? It sounds familiar...or am I just thinking of the dozens of "male" versions of the game in existence?

Secondly, a lot of us are drawn here thanks to our love of the adventure games of the past, and our desire to recreate them. Is the only thing we can draw from those games the aesthetic and gameplay? Were the stories really so universally bad back then?

For my own part, my last MAGS game featured quite literally a Damsel in Distress- a songstress (I really love that word ) you were listening to was abducted and taken to the king for nefarious, probably sexual purposes, and then you a random stranger, went on a quest to save her. If I felt the need for it, I maybe be able to throw a couple of arguments about my specific case defending the game, but what I want to ask, out of curiosity (I'm not dead set on making- or find the basic premise of it a necessary one- a Damsel in Distress game and trying to justify myself ), is it possible, through carefully crafted story and narrative or whatever, to feature that- saving a friend, a girlfriend, a sister, a mother, or even a random female stranger as the goal or purpose of the game, without all the negativity inherited through this trope, or does cultural context and history and so on make it a totally lost cause?
According to the videos, the Damsel in Distress trope is employed to feed off of male empowerment fantasies at the expense of the woman. Would it be possible to remove such themes and ideas, while still having the player essentially, rescue a female. There are games where you must rescue a male friend or partner or something. If you just swapped those out for a female, would that automatically undermine the whole thing due to cultural context, or would it be plausible?
Interestingly, the video talks about ROM hacking (changing the sprites and text) to switch around the genders in console games. I've not played any of these games, but does the essential meaninglessness of the change to the game signify that yes, it does have more to do with the cultural context?

Also, finally, I realise that the perception of women in this medium will only advance through the work of developers that actively make games that challenge these stereotypes, but if I want to tell my own story, as long as I took to heart the issues presented and avoided them, is it really my job to be one of those advancing the medium developers?

I'm lazy, and likely not properly equipped to handle making such a game, and..I don't think I ever will. But it can't be anything other than a good thing to talk about this stuff!

But it was so pretty and sparkly and unique for the SNES!

I don't THINK this has been posted before, but it is probably a lot easier than the previous game I had everyone guessing:


As usual, cropped to remove the GUI.

That looks to me to be...Young Merlin for the Super Nintendo!