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A twisted reality house from the perspective of a mother going crazy? Cool.

Because of an Arcade Game? Less cool.

Basing it off of this urban legend will give you an easy back-story, but I think that you could come up with a more creative reason for delving into a crazy twisted reality.

Overall, if you did it, it would probably be a good game if you put some effort into it.

I don't want to discredit the beginning concept, but I think you can turn this into something vastly original. Let's answer a few questions:

What arc do you want the main character to tell?

Are there any specific events you want to occur and why is the character going to begin this arc?

How will you translate a failing sanity and a mutated reality into a visual interactive experience?

What is the main setting?

What are you trying to convey?

What is the problem and, ultimately, resolution?


Once those questions are answered we can then reverse engineer! You will have been inspired, taken the derivative of your inspiration and then apply it to a new completely YOU concept.

I'll put in some hypothetical answers:

What arc do you want the main character to tell? I want the player to venture through the characters mind, experiencing his emotions of grief and depression and anger and guilt, etc...

Are there any specific events you want to occur and why is the character going to begin this arc? I want the main puzzles to be him confronting these emotion in a tangible way. Almost like his personal demons are corporeal threats that he must combat in order to regain his sanity. He has to kill his best friend. that's why he begins this mental deterioration.

How will you translate a failing sanity and a mutated reality into a visual interactive experience? I want to mix the occult and demonic with the old west. It'll ground that he's a character in the "Wild West" and also the fantasy doesn't;t need to be explained as it's a total figment of his imagination.

What is the main setting? The old west town he's the Marshal of, with the reoccurring hubs being the Saloon, Main Street and the Whore House (Ooo... filled with succubus, vampyres and nymphs.)

What are you trying to convey? I want the game to be a metaphor for dealing with death, though more importantly dealing with the emotional strife of being an accidental murderer.

What is the problem and, ultimately, resolution? The problem is that the character is constantly under attack from his "Personal Demons" who have betrayed him. He needs to find out why, and regain control of the town... in the process the player learns that the reason his Squad of Robbers, Pillagers and Killers has betrayed him is because he killed someone... but who? Ultimately the player comes to realize that this isn't the reality at all, instead this man is trapped in shock, moments after committing the murder and he is battling his emotions... We find out who he killed, how he killed them and why, over the course of the game as the man struggles to survive the slaughter and take back the town (a metaphor for controlling himself.) At the end of the game the player looks back on everything that has happened, and after knowing the full story is given the chance to end the characters life, let his demons devour him, or let him live...


So, by using what you described to me I took that influence and game up with a game idea on the spot. Original, though influenced in many ways, and it frees me up to create whatever story I want.

Using a process like this allows you to be inspired, but instead of making an adaptation it allows you to create something new entirely.

If you build the game you laid out, you're going to have to lay out the back-story of Polybius and I can only see two ways to do this:
A.) An intro at the beginning of the game.

These are boring and I usually skip them if at all possible, if I can't be told it during the game, I don't need to know it. This of course has led to being confused by the story in some poorly designed games, making the game play less enjoyable by default.

B.) Exposition during the game by "scraps" of info, or NPCs. In something like this, it would be weird if some character popped up and was able to explain to poor old mum, why everything was happening and what she needed to do in order to stop it.



You know what sounds like a better game? Get rid of the Arcade game... instead, it's mom at her sons funeral... she can't take the grief, she pops a bunch of pills, 15 minutes into the wake, her world goes shitface... practically everything you wanted in the game can still be in it. The reason for the game occurring is simplified, no need for exposition or back-story at all.

I'm not saying that it's a bad idea. I think it could be pulled off and as long as the game play is engaging, any of the flaws I pointed out would be negligible anyways... BUTTTTT, I do think that there is room here for an even better game concept.

Owl should probably be a seperate sprite.

I don't like the aqua colored outline on the GUI, it's distracting.

Only about 1/3 of the screen has anything to look at. This could be intentional, or not, though it makes the screen shot feel empty.

1 Shade
2 Twin Moon

I don't like the position of his face, it feels unnatural. It's too horizontal, maybe? It's as if he doesn't want her to touch him (maybe he doesn't...) I think his head should be tilted to his left more (the right of the picture.) Also, his collar could be cleaned up a bit. His hand sort of just disappears.

I like the older buildings better too, but I think that they could be better in both and I like the direction you said you would take them in.

Score: 8/10

This is a badass piece that reminds me of my favorite artist, Fabian Perez

I will enter this one, then if just for the sake of keeping this comp alive, i'm busy with my games but I'll make sure to make time, I promise.

First off nice entries everybody. So far my favorite is matti's ClassMasterâ,,¢. Oh what I wouldn't have given!

@Lionmonkey:

You could have instead used the multifunctional noun "rectangle" which is in all regular 4-sided polygonal cases correct.

I'm not going to agree, but let's just say: I WAS going to enter...

How about:

"Uh- should I be worried?"

I think I prefer the "2-up."

The feet and hands look good to me. I think his body should rotate from side to side (if you want to include that movement) rather than translate from side to side. 

Absolutely, instead of having torsion at the hips; your sprite is shifting yo the left and right, this makes him appear to glide from side to side as he walks forward.

I also feel that he raises his legs too high for it to appear natural, it looks a bit cartoonish, this matches the movement of his cloak, however, as that also appears exaggerated. Human movement is actually more subtle than most people conceive, and they assume that in order to translate human motion into a medium such as pixel art (an inherently small art style,) they have to exaggerate motion/action. It is of course an ill assumption, as the human mind fills in gaps. Even human sight is not a stream our brains capture images at approx 60-70 frames per second and we fill in the rest and it all appears fluid.

Take this for example:

Randomizing letters in the middle of words [has] little or no effect on the ability of skilled readers to understand the text. This is easy to dendrite. In a publication of New Scnieitst you could ramdinose all the letetrs, keipeng the first two and last two the same, and reibadailty would hadrly be aftcfeed. My ansaylis did not come to much beucase the thoery at the time was for shape and senqeuce retigcionon. Saberi's work sugsegts we may have some pofrweul palrlael prsooscers at work. The resaon for this is suerly that idnetiyfing coentnt by paarllel prseocsing speeds up regnicoiton. We only need the first and last two letetrs to spot chganes in meniang.

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.

(from, http://www.bisso.com/ujg_archives/000227.html)

Being more subtle can give your character more life and depth than having exaggerated movements.

Have you considered having him bounce up and down a pixel at the height of the walkcycle?

On a sprite of this size, that kind of movement might be too much. Hopefully Orge will do an edit so we can see.

I also can't help thinking his hair could benefit from some highlights since the rest of the sprite has solid shading.

I agree. It's generally accepted that the best shading technique is to use 3 high-contrast colors, it allows for lots of dynamic shading style and and looks good when used correctly. That's not to say that it's a limit, but anything bellow 3 colors tends to look almost as two dimensional than object with one shade and the people that use MORE than 5 shades tend to misuse them and make their images too muddy and distracted.

...Oops...

Well, they sort of looked like over-alls.

Well, at least they're safe from the inevitable Nazi invasion... Blonde hair and blue eyes... maybe change it up a bit...  At least on the girl, now her eyes match with her dress too much and it looks weird.

I like it a lot, though maybe add a riff fill, too much repetition is annoying and after the lead ends I feel like the riff should hit twice and then on the third time near the end I just want it to wail at the end, a couple more notes, silence and then a fourth riff and the drummer hits a crash and the lights fly into the audiences eyes and we all go friggin nuts! Then you step out from behind a light with your arm raised, and you're like "This next song is called 'Ode to-"

Er- Anywho... uh, anyone else thirsty? brb...

Maybe a dress for the girl... it doesn't have to be a extravagant Marie Antoinette type thing, but it would certainly make her look less like a boy. The dead blue eyes and no expression makes them seem like dolls (or Children of the Corn.)  This most likely won't be a big problem though as half of the game will be played with the character moving sidewyas, and anoth 1/3 of the game with characters back to the player, although i'm basing this on my experience with Adventure games.

These characters could benefit from an increase in size OR be less worried about detail.

I'm going to agree with everyone about the smoke. But, the only thing that bugged me about this image is the sky. Something seems odd about it. Maybe it's that horizon thing, maybe it's that there is a lot of it and it's a little bland (though i'm not exactly sure how a sky can be "not-bland.") I dunno...

Other than that I could 100% see this working AMAZINGLY as is.

It would have probably been funnier if you used your own country to shot the nuke, no? 

Nah, he's targeting West Virginia... everyone wins in that scenario.

ROFL!!

That's funnier than I had it pictured in my head! LOL

I love the 'stache...

Good Topic! Wow, I think we'll get a lot of entries for this one.

Ohh nice entry #5... it sort of remind me of the music from Harvest Moon... lol, ahhh childhood.

Me and My Girlfriend agree #2 & 4 are the best ones.

If you put a different image on #1, then it would be a contender, too; though, right now it looks like a blue tongue.

Two issues with me: The bulletin board seems a ittle too bright, even if it's meant for character interaction, I don't think it needs to be that bright. It's literally SCREAMING at the player like "LOOK- AT- MEEEEEE!"

Dull it up with the rest of the room, a little.

Then the portrait: it seems a little bit messy, but it's a big improvement. Clean it up a bit and it will be a major improvement.

Let's look at your pixel art version of your main character.


Now let's reference back to the original character which I loved.



He's a little quirky and he's got flaws, but that's not a problem! Flaws add character unless they're sloppy flaws, this is all part of the style. When turning him into pixel art you want to maintain as much of this character as possible.

The first things I notice are that the colors feel dull. The second thing I notice is that his eyes aren't those dinner bowls they used to be, now they are just tiny specks. (There goes some more of his charming character.)

Then something bothers my eyes, there's not enough contrast in many of his features. When working on such a small level you need contrast to help differetiate between the many minute features of the sprite.

The last thing I noted was that his over-all silhoutte is vastly different: mHis hair is different, his arms are different, his pocket is different. And, it all seems a little messy.

So, trying to keep the style of the original character as much as possible; I replaced his eyes with larger circles, I used the original colors you had. I added higher contrasting colors (if you zoom in close enough you can see that the outline of his shirt is purple, his pants are a dark green instead of a muddy yellow and the outline of his skin is a dark brown.)I tried to maintin his silhoutte as much as possible (sometimes with pixel art, things just look different, so changes usually have to be made when scaling.)