Indie What is your indie game hot take?

[CyberRabbit]

Banana

 

[Waffles's iconWaffles]

GameMaker is an excellent tool which doesn't get even an ounce of the respect it deserves.

 

[Nebulon_Galaxy]

I'm tired of earthbound-likes or rouge-likes deck building games. No i will not play your game that has the same copy and pasted tropes

 

[moonbits]

Making the most basic, rudimentary 3D models and calling it Retro PS1/N64 "aesthetic" ain't fooling me. Put some love into it, add some sub divisions, paint it, give it some love; there's plenty of tools to help with that.


And it feels like a lot of developers pursue the "aesthetic" and the "vibes" more than the actual gameplay/mechanical complexity that indie development has the freedom to explore.

 

[qw90700]

GameMaker is an excellent tool which doesn't get even an ounce of the respect it deserves.

Yep. It's a better choice if you just wanna develop simple 2D games quickly. Unity is better if you want quick physics-based game but Gamemaker allows you to write your own scripts to write many complex programs actually so advanced physics based 2D Gamemaker games are so possible you can develop a pixel graphics game that people have realistic cloth and hair physics on Gamemaker lol. Only bad aspect of Gamemaker is your 3D development kinda limited mostly by PS1 style games as any more than that suffers from too much loading lol. So you gotta make sure using absolutely lowest quality possible in your model and texture files to have a better 3D level and decent loading time. Otherwise you can even develop Portal games on Gamemaker even with a working portal effect lol. It wouldn't be hard if you know what you're doing. It's also good that Gamemaker support extensions so you can use your C language skills put into good use lol.

For example can develop any 2D game on Gamemaker, even the ones that has 3D aspects like Breath of Fire 4 without performance issues and for beginners Gamemaker is easier than Unity and in terms of 2D with 3D elements Gamemaker is not worse than Unity. Gamemaker's own language + simple programming logic to develop games helps beginners a lot so they don't have to learn a programming language and its rules to develop simple 2D games like Super Mario lol.

 

[Nebulon_Galaxy]

Making the most basic, rudimentary 3D models and calling it Retro PS1/N64 "aesthetic" ain't fooling me. Put some love into it, add some sub divisions, paint it, give it some love; there's plenty of tools to help with that.


And it feels like a lot of developers pursue the "aesthetic" and the "vibes" more than the actual gameplay/mechanical complexity that indie development has the freedom to explore.

say it louder so the people in the back can hear!! Preach it brother!

 

[Jill_Sandwich969]

Chilla's art games is soulless

 

[Phage]

Making the most basic, rudimentary 3D models and calling it Retro PS1/N64 "aesthetic" ain't fooling me.

As someone who started with the NES as their first game console and watched console gaming evolve in real time, THIS. I see so many games that claim they're a "Retro PS1/N64-style game!" and then trot out some PS2 level graphics, or just straight up shitty models. If you're shooting for PS1, I want jaggy polygonal heads with detailed yet crunchy, compressed face textures, chunky movement animations, etc. Same goes for the N64. That shit better look blurry/smudged, but designed to make it look soft and dreamy or colorful and detailed because you took advantage of that to give the model lots of shading. And if I can't *see* the polygons, you did it wrong.

As a bit of an extension to this, I am so fucking sick of "8-bit styled retro games!" that are ridiculously detailed with a million colors. Go play an actual NES game and then come back to me and claim that system could run the 64-bit technicolor light show that is your game. Most of these are at *least* 16/32-bit games that would have needed a Genesis/Megadrive or SNES to run, and the number of games that claim an 8-bit aesthetic that throw it all the way back to the Atari is wild. I've seen only a bare handful of games that managed to capture the NES aesthetic of limited color palettes, with big, detailed sprites and basic movement.

Essentially, a lot of people who are making "retro style" indie games have no idea what the old consoles they're trying to emulate were actually like. They've either gotten their idea from *other* indie games trying to ape the style, or only ever seen pictures of classic games. That or they played a bunch of retro stuff via emulation and swapped around generations too much to the point that it all blended together into an amorphous memory blob consisting of way too many traits from different consoles that their brain just says is "8-bit."

If you really wanna make a retro style game emulating a specific console, I suggest spending a month or two playing a bunch of games *specifically* from that console and taking extensive notes on what they looked like, what kind of limitations they had, how they controlled, etc. I'd also suggest sticking to one visual style to emulate. Gex: Enter the Gecko is a far cry from Resident Evil or Final Fantasy 9/Chrono Cross. Games with super high-res models and detailed textures tended to have pre-rendered backgrounds to allow for more processing power to render them. Horror games with more realistic proportions on their models had to use low-poly models to achieve fully functional limbs and hand animations and such. Mascot platformers used detailed player character models but a lot of simple environments, flat planes, and low-poly enemy models/textures with lots of draw-distance fog to allow for as much colorful, whimsical visuals as possible without killing the console.

Basically, stop saying you're making a retro console style game when you have no idea what those games were actually like and why they were technically impressive. If you're not talented enough to create modern high-res models and fall back on polygonal characters so you can create a fun game, just call it a stylistic choice, but stop saying you're making a PS1 game, and if you tell me your game is 8-bit and I see a rainbow of colors with tons of particle effects I'm going to mock you viciously.

 

[Big Finger Jim]

I am so god damn tired of seeing Toby Fox's quirk chungus tumblr furry bullshit.

 

[hatmike]

If you're a studio that spends more on ads, hype, and 'sponsored' reviews, then you're just not an indie game in my book.

 

[Tonberry]

I've always been super confused by the way people (consumers) treat indie games the same way they treat the AAA landscape and get really weirdly critical and antagonistic at hobby games made by like two or three people just because they happen to get popular once in a blue moon, but in reality, indie games are beholden to none.
They are two separate worlds and should be treated as such.

An actual problem/truth about derivative, uninspired, incestuous trendy products nobody wants to tell you about are that investors have sort of infiltrated the indie space too, and have a way easier time giving huge grants to projects that are similar to massive sleeper hits, and if your projects are slightly more original than those, they want to use their money as leverage to force you to make your game more similar to said hit games (this has literally happened to me personally twice). They're the same suits as the suits in the AAA space and they're actively hurting the scene because they gaslight everyone to think that it's always just been about money.

Just like make game

Making the most basic, rudimentary 3D models and calling it Retro PS1/N64 "aesthetic" ain't fooling me. Put some love into it, add some sub divisions, paint it, give it some love; there's plenty of tools to help with that.


And it feels like a lot of developers pursue the "aesthetic" and the "vibes" more than the actual gameplay/mechanical complexity that indie development has the freedom to explore.

Basically, stop saying you're making a retro console style game when you have no idea what those games were actually like and why they were technically impressive. If you're not talented enough to create modern high-res models and fall back on polygonal characters so you can create a fun game, just call it a stylistic choice, but stop saying you're making a PS1 game, and if you tell me your game is 8-bit and I see a rainbow of colors with tons of particle effects I'm going to mock you viciously.

I've never understood this complaint. Nobody is forcing anyone to play these games, so what's wrong with small teams wanting to make primitive-looking games both because it's more economical, and they have the tools to do it efficiently and as a chosen style, while not actually having the manpower or tools to compete with contemporary fidelity?

 

[moonbits]

@Tonberry it's about using the generation or "aesthetic" to justify rudimentary assets. I'm okay for economic usage of assets, props and what not.

 

[ciro64]

Huh, I swear there would already be a post complaining about too many spiritual successors at this point.

 

[moonbits]

Huh, I swear there would already be a post complaining about too many spiritual successors at this point.

the floor is yours champ

 

[Tonberry]

@Tonberry it's about using the generation or "aesthetic" to justify rudimentary assets. I'm okay for economic usage of assets, props and what not.

I still don't see what's wrong with doing it the way you're describing. If anything, this is something that the observer applies to a given work much more often than the actual work promoting itself as being "exactly one thing" when it might actually be "almost that thing". What's wrong with taking cues from old limitations and transforming them into something different now that it's possible? People, usually enthusiasts, clearly don't care about graphical fidelity as much as style, but when being presented with something deliberately nostalgic they attempt to call it out as hacky or whatever.

Just want to clarify: I like doing these "limitations to the generation" things personally (like only using three colors plus black and white if I want to make something look 8-bit), but I don't get why people feel the need to disparage games that don't.

 

[Clippy]

Huh, I swear there would already be a post complaining about too many spiritual successors at this point.

Name 10 Castlevania 64 spiritual successors.

 

[ciro64]

the floor is yours champ

Ok then

Not only there aren't enough of them, but also they don't copy their source material enough.

Name 10 Castlevania 64 spiritual successors.

I can't name one, but I'll gladly take 20 of them

 

[Sunnyside]

The indie scene has ruined rogue-likes and metroidvanias for me. Kinda like AAA studios ruined open world. I groan whenever I see these in the description of a promising title. Everybody jumped on the bandwagon and at this point the horse has been beaten to death 100 times over.

Recently I've come to despise the word "cozy" for similar reasons.

Post automatically merged: Yesterday at 10:09 PM

An actual problem/truth about derivative, uninspired, incestuous trendy products nobody wants to tell you about are that investors have sort of infiltrated the indie space too, and have a way easier time giving huge grants to projects that are similar to massive sleeper hits, and if your projects are slightly more original than those, they want to use their money as leverage to force you to make your game more similar to said hit games (this has literally happened to me personally twice). They're the same suits as the suits in the AAA space and they're actively hurting the scene because they gaslight everyone to think that it's always just been about money.

Just like make game

Facts. Corporate ruins everything. Eventually the indie scene will need its own indie scene.

That being said it's nothing to lament too hard about. It'll take a bit to shove past the highly advertised "indie" stuff but somebody somewhere will always be making something. Just have to dig a bit. Kinda like the old days when indie games had little exposure. It's all a cycle. A niche interest gets popular, investors latch on, they run it to the ground for the sake of money, and the creatives find another outlet.

 

[Phage]

I've never understood this complaint. Nobody is forcing anyone to play these games, so what's wrong with small teams wanting to make primitive-looking games both because it's more economical, and they have the tools to do it efficiently and as a chosen style, while not actually having the manpower or tools to compete with contemporary fidelity?

I didn't say a single thing about playing them, nor did I say that I dislike these games. I've played plenty that were legitimately fantastic. My point was that labeling them as "PS1/N64/8-Bit" style games when they are not is annoying. I have no qualms with their existence. I enjoy quite a few of them. I actively encourage them so that studios without huge budgets can still put out banger titles with a pseudo-retro aesthetic.

My complaint is that they're misrepresenting themselves and muddying the waters on what classic console titles looks like. This whole topic is supposed to simply be hot takes/pet peeves, so it's not some huge problem that I have, merely a personal gripe that I happened to share with another poster. I've had discussions with people who have looked at older games and said "Well that's a PS1 game." when I could tell at a glance that it was PS2, because the PS1 could *never* have handled that level of detail in textures or that high of a poly count. It's a legitimate issue that people seem incapable of distinguishing between two systems that had *vastly* different graphical capabilities.

If you want to make a game in this style, just call it a retro-style game and be done with it. If you're going to market it as being in the style of a specific console then fucking *be accurate*. If I see a game advertised as being PS1-style and get a PS2 level graphics and textures, I'm gonna call it false advertising, because it is.

Ultimately, I think you've completely misunderstood the pet peeve that I put forward. You're trying to defend the existence of these games at all, which was never even brought up. I simply don't like them being labeled as a specific console and then not being anything like the actual games for those consoles that I grew up on and experienced in real time. If you're just a "retro style" game then rock on, I'll dive in and enjoy some low-poly, non-specific graphics and classic-style gameplay without all the bloat of modern games where there has to be sixteen different kinds of progression and a crafting system. If you lie to me and tell me I'm in for an N64-style adventure and I see ray-tracing and 4k textures, I'm going to feel deceived.

 

[Tonberry]

I didn't say a single thing about playing them, nor did I say that I dislike these games. I've played plenty that were legitimately fantastic. My point was that labeling them as "PS1/N64/8-Bit" style games when they are not is annoying. I have no qualms with their existence. I enjoy quite a few of them. I actively encourage them so that studios without huge budgets can still put out banger titles with a pseudo-retro aesthetic.

My complaint is that they're misrepresenting themselves and muddying the waters on what classic console titles looks like. This whole topic is supposed to simply be hot takes/pet peeves, so it's not some huge problem that I have, merely a personal gripe that I happened to share with another poster. I've had discussions with people who have looked at older games and said "Well that's a PS1 game." when I could tell at a glance that it was PS2, because the PS1 could *never* have handled that level of detail in textures or that high of a poly count. It's a legitimate issue that people seem incapable of distinguishing between two systems that had *vastly* different graphical capabilities.

If you want to make a game in this style, just call it a retro-style game and be done with it. If you're going to market it as being in the style of a specific console then fucking *be accurate*. If I see a game advertised as being PS1-style and get a PS2 level graphics and textures, I'm gonna call it false advertising, because it is.

Ultimately, I think you've completely misunderstood the pet peeve that I put forward. You're trying to defend the existence of these games at all, which was never even brought up. I simply don't like them being labeled as a specific console and then not being anything like the actual games for those consoles that I grew up on and experienced in real time. If you're just a "retro style" game then rock on, I'll dive in and enjoy some low-poly, non-specific graphics and classic-style gameplay without all the bloat of modern games where there has to be sixteen different kinds of progression and a crafting system. If you lie to me and tell me I'm in for an N64-style adventure and I see ray-tracing and 4k textures, I'm going to feel deceived.

Yeah, my bad, I kind of lumped your post in with the other while I know that your point was more nuanced (than that one quote, not compared to moonbits' post). Sorry for that. I jumped the gun because I had already began writing my post before yours popped up and had kind of riled myself up, so it was kind of a knee-jerk quote.
No offense at all intended, and I do agree with what you're saying in this post even.

 

[Stingy Perry Stingy Perry]

Oceanhorn is probably one of the best Zelda clone out there!
The game feels like The Wind Waker at some point and the fact that Nintendo didn’t file any copyright infringement on this one makes it great. And also Nobuo Uematsu’s Dog Ear Production is the one who did the music for this game.

 

[Cardboardtubeknight Cardboardtubeknight]

Orange

 

[CyberRabbit]

There are ACTUALLY good Roblox games out there and I’m annoyed of them being ignored by everyone and instead having uncreative games take the home page and spotlight away from passion projects like stars align and detriment that deserve it more