I don't want to tell anything that doesn't have to do with the blog exactly, but I am making a pixel adventure game and I need some help. The concept and characters are mostly sorted out, but do you now any tips on how to animate/make pixel art? And is it possible you have suggestions on game mechanics for retro-games? Sorry if you don't want to hear this. Thank you for your patience, Have a wonderful day!
Sure!
Making graphics for your games
How to make pixel art is a very broad question. If you’re starting from zero and you want to do it/learn yourself, it’ll take time. If that’s your desire, I made this getting started prototype. It’s a rough version of what you’ll find at early stages of my game Pixel Art Academy and can give you a foot in the door.
From there on, a great link to other tutorials is @pixelartus‘ guide over here.
But you might not really want to go down that way necessarily, if your goal is just to make a game (I assume you’re also coding it?). You have a couple of options:
1. Use ‘programer art’ as long as possible, meaning mockup graphics you throw together in 5 minutes. I use this a lot:
You can make a lot of gameplay that way. When you know your game is onto something great (in playable form), it will be easier to convince an artist to work on it.
Here is an example from one of my undergrad students. After he was done with his project, I called a friend (Blodyavenger) to consider doing art for him before the game went up to the App Store.
As you can see, he did a great job and took the game to the next level. He did it as a pay it forward kind of thing. And sure enough, when Blodyavenger needed some character art, I helped him out in return.
As you can see, humble beginnings can bring you far.
2. Instead of crappy or geometric placeholders you can use free resources. @pixelprospector (who is behind the wonderful Pixelartus mentioned above) has cataloged some of the resources for you. Check them out.
In addition to free ones, you can always find indie artists who sell packs of items for you to use. It’s not a big expense (around $10) and you’re helping a fellow developer out too. Here’s for example Blodyavenger’s stuff.
Another artist I recently started following and supporting on Patreon is David Masia a.k.a. @kronbits. Here’s his page of resources, some free, some around $5. Again, a nice guy to support. Examples of his work:
These can give your games a nice polished look, but you’ll probably soon run into situations where you won’t find just the right asset you’re looking for. So you’ll have to mix it with mockups and coder art eventually.
Retro game mechanics
This is a tougher one for me to answer, despite my nickname. I’m personally fan of going for unseen gameplay mechanics; for starting at zero assumptions and building up from your theme/what you want to say (see my thoughts on this).
It might not be true objectively, but that’s the spirit I (nostalgically) attribute to 80s when everything was new territory to explore. In reality, at least on home computers, there was a lot of copying gameplay from arcades as that was the holy grail at the time. But then again, that just means the arcades were the one innovating. So I personally like to keep to that ideal, design from zero, at least for core gameplay. But on the other hand I can’t resist to make a text adventure in the 21st century because I freeking love the aesthetic and idea (you can type anything?!?).
Advice would be to go and play old games. Load up MAME and go at it. I would particularly suggest to pick something you remember enjoying most. Then ask yourself, why is that, what makes them tick. Wolfire has a great series of videos that give you a good example of how to dissect a game for its gameplay element.
(I just realized that in some sense, the games he goes over are retro—Gish is 12 years old by now.)
Use your analytical skills to understand the various components: goals, controls, risk/reward … But most of all, make something that fires your passion. Retrogaming is all about returning to the emotions we felt at the time. Playing new games that have the retro spirit plays on the same note, but gives it freshness.
Not sure if this second question was also meant to be specific to adventure games, but if it was, here are two of my suggestions of great adventure games to look into (maybe read reviews on them or watch some let’s plays):
Redhawk / Kwah! (ZX Spectrum)
Quite ahead of its time, it had an innovative way to present the action by mimicking comic book panels, a great connection since the game was about a superhero. Radically different presentation styles is something we don’t experiment so much with these days.
Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis
My all time favorite adventure game that is pure gold all-throughout, but what I admire the most is that it had 3 pretty different ways to play through the storyline. Talk about replayability. I felt the game was pretty logical, no super insane item combinations. It held true to Indiana Jones character, focused on that and reaped benefits. So picking a strong narrative is what I’d get out of this one.
Before this gets too long, since I don’t know exactly what direction would help you most, I will leave you with this video by the awesome RetroAhoy. He has one of the best documentary styles on YouTube (to my knowledge) and his video on the history of games goes over the iconic titles that all introduce some sort of mechanic or trait that made them stand out. See if it inspires you or directs your search. Good luck!
