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Thoughts on Graphic Styles
The latest game review on AG is for a game called Alum. I know nothing about the game. Don’t really care to. But the one thing that did grab my attention was the opening line of the Good values.
“Looks outstanding with detailed, colorful retro-styled graphics throughout.”
Personally, I’m getting really tired of games produced in 2015 that try to look like games produced in 1993. What is the point of that?
I don’t see it when a fangame is updated, a la KQ. In those games the objective is to bring the game into the modern age. I’ll even give credit to LSL1 Reloaded for taking on that task.
But why, for heaven’s sake would you want to design a game that looks like something your grandfather might have played? It just baffles me. More than that, it almost guarantees that this will not be a game on my “Buy” list.
For whom the games toll,
they toll for thee.
Personally, I’m getting really tired of games produced in 2015 that try to look like games produced in 1993. What is the point of that?
I could not disagree with you more. I buy retro games all the time. I play adventure games mainly for plot and characterization.
Give me a great story and some interesting characters and I’m a happy camper.
Some examples:
Gemini Rue
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I enjoy playing adventure games on my Alienware M17 r4 and my Nintendo Switch OLED.
I like pixel art.
For some game types I prefer it.
The latest game review on AG is for a game called Alum. I know nothing about the game. Don’t really care to. But the one thing that did grab my attention was the opening line of the Good values.
“Looks outstanding with detailed, colorful retro-styled graphics throughout.”
Personally, I’m getting really tired of games produced in 2015 that try to look like games produced in 1993. What is the point of that?
I don’t see it when a fangame is updated, a la KQ. In those games the objective is to bring the game into the modern age. I’ll even give credit to LSL1 Reloaded for taking on that task.
But why, for heaven’s sake would you want to design a game that looks like something your grandfather might have played? It just baffles me. More than that, it almost guarantees that this will not be a game on my “Buy” list.
There is a reason for it and it is technical. This game, like several others (for example, The Blackwell Legacy) are built using AGS(Adventure Game Studio). To my knowledge, Adventure Game Studio does not support very high resolutions, so people using it have to live with its limitations. They can probably build their own engine, but that would cost too much time and money, especially that Alum was built by only 2 people.
Yeah, I switch off to this art style. It made sense back then as technical limitations, but now it’s for classed as retro. Meh.
Recently completed: Game of Thrones (decent), Tales from the borderlands (great!), Life is Strange (great!), Stasis (good), Annas Quest (great!); Broken Age (poor)
Personally, I’m getting really tired of games produced in 2015 that try to look like games produced in 1993. What is the point of that?
I understand where you’re coming from, but I think in the case of a lot of these small, 2 or 3 person projects it really comes down to a “we should really” instead of a “wouldn’t it be cool if”. What I mean to say is that there’s a reason low res pixel art games are so prevalent nowadays - it saves you a LOT of time going that way, rather than doing some full HD, 24 fps animated stuff.
Case in point, I remember back when Alum was being Kickstarted, it was a couple of 20 something brothers that made the whole game, if I’m not mistaken. Plus, if you’re not amazing at graphics and/or animation, you can get away with minimal stuff. As an animator, I’m not crazy about how people move around in Technobabylon, for example, but it works, it probably saved the dev tens if not hundreds of hours of work, etc. Same with puppet animation - it really is very, very time and cost effective to do that as opposed to traditional.
To sum up, I’m convinced a lot of these games make these kinds of graphical decisions strategically, too, and are riding a -now apparently dwindling a little- wave of low-res, retro resurgence that’s king at least in the indie scene.
There is a reason for it and it is technical. This game, like several others (for example, The Blackwell Legacy) are built using AGS(Adventure Game Studio). To my knowledge, Adventure Game Studio does not support very high resolutions, so people using it have to live with its limitations. They can probably build their own engine, but that would cost too much time and money, especially that Alum was built by only 2 people.
Re AGS limitations - sort of. The maximum resolution has officially been 1024 x 768 for some years and in fact there has been a version allowing pretty much any resolution you want for a while, although I’m not sure if this has yet come into the “official” build of the engine.
As a point of reference, this (i.e. 1024 or below) allows graphics like this:
“Poser? No, never heard of it…”
or this:
Now regardless of your opinion of which of the two styles above is better (“modern” vs “pixel/retro”) the point remains that, put very simply, the more pixels you have, the harder and more time consuming it is to colour them all. Unless you have a big team of artists it basically means that painting a background at what we might call “HD” level is going to take so long that it will mean small/indie teams will take so long to produce a game that it will basically never be released.
So small teams basically have the option to either go in at a lower resolution - say 640x400 (second screen above) or even 320x200 or to go the route of the top screen above and model/texture in 3D and then import as 2D. Trouble is 3d modelling, textures, lighting etc. isn’t necessarily every artist’s strong suit AND, if you are good enough to make great 3d models then you might just as well make a game in full 3D - and AGS is not your friend in this circumstance.
Furthermore some people would rather see or make a game looking like the second screen above, than the first one.
Also, I notice that a lot of people think that resolution defines graphical style - but this isn’t true unless you are talking about a really low resolution. So take the Kathy Rain screenshot above (the second one) that is a 640 resolution. Here is another picture - not from a game - at 640x400 resolution.
Obviously that is a photo, but it is at 640x400 resolution and technically could be created by hand, pixel by pixel, by an artist. After all, this is only a canvas made up of individual pixels right?
So why do all games at that resolution not look so photo realistic? Because it is far too hard and time consuming (and soul destroying no doubt!) to produce a lot of art like that.
[/end boring rant]
3.5 time winner of the “Really Annoying Caption Contest Saboteur” Award!
I was going to say something about the matter—and then I realised that I’ve already said it three years ago.
I’ll add that a low resolution should never be an excuse for bad art. If you look at what Mark’s Ferrari’s doing for Thimbleweed Park, and compare that to, say, Gemini Rue or some of the worse-looking Blackwell games, it’s clear that it’s the artist’s skills, not the number of pixels, that really matters.
And just a small correction, because that’s who I am:
So take the Kathy Rain screenshot above (the second one) that is a 640 resolution.
The background (and the sprites before whatever scaling might take place) is actually 320x240, with doubled pixels to convert it to 640x480 (you can see that the picture made up of blocks of 4 pixels). So in effect the photo does have 4 times as many pixels as the in-game shot.
So basically it`s not a choice to do “retro” graphics it`s much more of a constraint ?
Yeah, I switch off to this art style. It made sense back then as technical limitations, but now it’s for classed as retro. Meh.
There’s another reason to do it - HD graphics require large teams and that can mean some of the intimacy of the game is lost. When you have 2 or 3 people making a game, it has a kind of charm that appeals to me. The big productions can lose some of that, resulting in the feeling of a discord between one group focusing on the technical side (graphics, sound) and another on story. The so-called AAA games suffer this, making me feel like i’m playing a soulless corporate tech-demo rather than an intimate game experience. The more people involved the harder for someone’s artistic vision to survive the development process intact.
Well we’re one of those kooky 3 person teams working on a traditionally animated HD game, yay for being irresponsible! 
The latest game review on AG is for a game called Alum. I know nothing about the game. Don’t really care to. But the one thing that did grab my attention was the opening line of the Good values.
“Looks outstanding with detailed, colorful retro-styled graphics throughout.”
Personally, I’m getting really tired of games produced in 2015 that try to look like games produced in 1993. What is the point of that?
Yeah, I switch off to this art style. It made sense back then as technical limitations, but now it’s for classed as retro. Meh.
That’s the main problem,if there’s no technical limitations left so why they keep still limiting themselves and players already?
Possible answers are,they’re great hobbyists now quickly they can show the world build their own game,they’re pretty lazy,pullin nostalgia bait for quick bucks,all of them and more.
In design aspect retro style refers to new things that display some characteristics of the past,if you reproducing oldstyle as it’s that means nothing but derivativeness and imitation.
Ags or similar projects shouldn’t ask for real money, while there are flash adventures build by 2 or 3 people with really outstanding,detailed,colorful graphics and not braggin about how great retro pixelart they have.
“Going on means going far - Going far means returning”
Personally I also prefer HD graphics over low-res, but as others have mentioned, there can be good reasons for selecting the low-res instead.
I am not an artist myself, but I would imagine that making good looking pixel art can be just as time consuming and difficult, perhaps even more difficult because you have fewer pixels to work with, as making high-def graphics, so it is not necessarily just a case of budget, there can also be artistic reasons for it.
As I said, I personally prefer HD graphics, but more than anything then I prefer graphics that simply looks good, so given the choice between poorly made HD and excellent made pixel art, then I prefer the excellent pixel art. That of course doesn’t mean that all the low-res games we see know, are equally well made pixel-art, in fact some are quite poorly made, and I must admit that it can also sometimes bug me.
My point? I don’t know, I kind of take these things as they come, and I would rather have the current indie scene with a lot of small developers making a lot of games, than only a few HD games by large developers.
You have to play the game, to find out why you are playing the game! - eXistenZ
I prefer non retro graphics most of the time (be it HD or relatively low res but more artsy) but as said, it’s a choice that’s understandable and I prefer a great story and fun puzzles over great graphics so in the end I don’t really care all that much.
It’s an aesthetic and artistic choice at this point, because we live in a point in time where we can choose to do things the way we like them. Some may like it, others may not. In the end, it’s the developer’s choice to create it and it’s the gamer’s choice if they want to buy and play it. It’s not a hard conceit to comprehend.
Bt
Personally I also prefer HD graphics over low-res, but as others have mentioned, there can be good reasons for selecting the low-res instead.
I am not an artist myself, but I would imagine that making good looking pixel art can be just as time consuming and difficult, perhaps even more difficult because you have fewer pixels to work with, as making high-def graphics, so it is not necessarily just a case of budget, there can also be artistic reasons for it.
As I said, I personally prefer HD graphics, but more than anything then I prefer graphics that simply looks good, so given the choice between poorly made HD and excellent made pixel art, then I prefer the excellent pixel art. That of course doesn’t mean that all the low-res games we see know, are equally well made pixel-art, in fact some are quite poorly made, and I must admit that it can also sometimes bug me.
My point? I don’t know, I kind of take these things as they come, and I would rather have the current indie scene with a lot of small developers making a lot of games, than only a few HD games by large developers.
We should also note there is a spectrum between HD and low-res. Why are so many ‘retro’ developers doing games which look exactly like Sierra circa 1992? In 2015 I consider ‘HD’ as being on the level of Book of Unwritten Tales 2 or Dreamfall Chapters. 5 years ago it would have been something else. HD using the latest graphics technology is impossible for small teams. So where are all the new retro indie games which look like Discworld Noir, Zork Nemesis, GK3, Keepsake? There is a lot more variety to ‘retro’ besides pixel-art.
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