Adventure Gamers - Forums

I think this is Gary’s natural style: http://www.lambiek.net/artists/w/winnick_gary.htm

Yeah, that bottom black and white comic strip looks like it might be from the comic I was talking about.

Caliburn - 22 November 2014 07:28 PM

I mean the way that the animation gradually forms the command “Use balloon animal with corpse,” a crazy input which makes you wonder how the game will respond, and then . . . the gif loops back to the beginning so you’re suspended in that moment of anticipation.

I hope it’s because of the animated gif, but the ‘corpse’ description doesn’t appear automatically when the cursor hovers over it…

If that’s actual gameplay, and not just for the sake of an animated gif to represent the basic gist of the game, then they’re going with the worst version of the verb selector…

Jim Purcell - 22 November 2014 08:18 PM

Also, for all those bitching about ‘poor graphics’, give it a rest. Intentional style doesn’t equal ‘poor’.

Imo, it does in this case. And like Dag says, if we don’t say anything now, then we’ll end up with what we’re seeing now, and there’s been quite a few people mentioning it doesn’t look good, now, so there’s going to be some truth in it, no?

In fact it’s often more challenging to create primitive looking style, since modern art tools are so powerful, and today’s computer artists aren’t nessiserily experienced with pixil Art.

People keep saying that. I don’t buy that for one second. I can agree that it poses more of a challenge to make an object easily recognizable in 320x200 than in 1920x1200 pixels, but simplicity then becomes key, and keeping things simple requires a bit more planning, but is not more of a challenge when making the art…
In other words, I’m inclined to agree with Dag on this as well.

And obviously this game is going to be full HD with millions of colors. Instead of the old days of low res and 8 or 256 colors with limited sprite loading. This game is going to look damn good in action.

The millions of colours actually make this retro pixel art choice worse. Having more colours means you can do more with the pixels you have since you can use the colouring for transitions between objects.
The style they’ve shown here is imo more fitting for 256 colours…

Karlok - 23 November 2014 12:33 AM

EDIT: I’ve read the latest update. Voices will cost another $250,000. Hehehe…

This surprised me as well.

They’re asking a shitload of money for a game in this style, imo. The only good thing about this is that they won’t end up overshooting their scope like Broken Age did…

I recall reading that voice actors get paid by per line basis, so the money going towards the voice acting might also indicate that the game is relatively dialogue heavy. The price depends on an actor though.

TimovieMan - 23 November 2014 08:55 AM

And like Dag says, if we don’t say anything now, then we’ll end up with what we’re seeing now, and there’s been quite a few people mentioning it doesn’t look good, now, so there’s going to be some truth in it, no?

It doesn’t matter what we say, we’ll end up with what we’re seeing now. They couldn’t change the basic concept now that the KS is running, that would ruin everything.

Actually, I’m surprised they’re offering voices as a stretch goal. It’s one of the first things I looked for in the KS and when I didn’t find any mention of voices, I thought: “Well, at least they’re consistent.” But the fans aren’t! 

Didn’t Fester Mudd prove that a lack of voices results in nearly no sales at all these days?

Don’t Machinarium and Botanicula and Journey and Kentucky Route Zero prove the opposite?

Okay, Machinarium and Botanicula do have creatures making sounds.

Yeah, but Fester Mudd combined it with a retro approach like Thimbleweed Park does…

I do think that if a game contains characters who actually talk with a languagae people can understand, then the players do expect that the dialogue is voiced as well. On the other hand if your characters just mock talk, then you can get away by using some random noise, like how they do it on the Sims and show the “dialogue” as icons the same way it was in Machinarium.

tomimt - 23 November 2014 12:36 PM

I do think that if a game contains characters who actually talk with a languagae people can understand, then the players do expect that the dialogue is voiced as well.

Thimbleweed is a Maniac Mansion style game. Maniac Mansion had no voiceacting. Not even the original Day of the Tentacle in the early nineties had voices.

BTW, Kentucky Route Zero has lots of text and no voices.

tomimt - 23 November 2014 12:36 PM

I do think that if a game contains characters who actually talk with a languagae people can understand, then the players do expect that the dialogue is voiced as well.

IMO voice-overs added to Monkey Island 1-2 remakes killed a lot of original humour. Those games were clearly made without spoken lines in mind, and writing was quite different from the dialogue-heavy CMI that followed 6 years later.

Doom - 23 November 2014 01:45 PM

IMO voice-overs added to Monkey Island 1-2 remakes killed a lot of original humour. Those games were clearly made without spoken lines in mind, and writing was quite different from the dialogue-heavy CMI that followed 6 years later.

Personally I think the VO made MI1 and MI2 a lot funnier.

Karlok - 23 November 2014 12:57 PM

tomimt - 23 November 2014 12:36 PM

I do think that if a game contains characters who actually talk with a languagae people can understand, then the players do expect that the dialogue is voiced as well.

Thimbleweed is a Maniac Mansion style game. Maniac Mansion had no voiceacting. Not even the original Day of the Tentacle in the early nineties had voices.

BTW, Kentucky Route Zero has lots of text and no voices.

Sorry, but that is wrong. The Floppy and CD versions of DOTT were released similtaneously and the CD version was Lucasfilms first talkie.

Didn’t even the floppy version of DOTT have VO in the intro and in the first part of the game before the the other kids are sent through time?

tomimt - 23 November 2014 02:39 PM

Didn’t even the floppy version of DOTT have VO in the intro and in the first part of the game before the the other kids are sent through time?

Never played the floppy version so not sure.