FMP 5 - July 9th

Indie-games are resurgent, we all know this. Ironically, they are frequently amongst the highest rated games, critically, and show an umistakable victory of imagination over manpower and brand - quite a great evolution when you are looking to get into the world of (indie-) games!

Indie games are often able to capitalize on nostalgia, and many of the best indie-games are run with pixel-graphics or simple sprites.
My game is in the queer situation of being inspired by a semi-old game, without it being old enough to actually be considered retro - namely Paper Mario 1, from 2001 I think. I want my game to feel like the old one, that is, simple graphics rather than advanced, with cartoonish characters and a funny story. But when it comes to Games Art, it can be hard to look up inspiration for this sort of thing; there's quite a sizeable forum for low-poly art, but whilst beautiful, I don't really remember seeing that type of graphics back in the day - the low-poly graphics weren't a challenge but a necessity.

Here's an example of what I mean:

Weebo, WrestlingMarks.com

TrendHunter.com

Anton Moek

JR Schmidt

These are examples of modern 'low-poly' graphics/art, but they don't feel old to me - they are too stylized. Compare to pictures of actual 'old' game, like Spyro, Crash Bandicoot and of course, Paper Mario:


Spyro the Dragon

Crash Bandicoot

Paper Mario

It seems to be that the difference between the two types of games is that, back then, they were actually trying to make things look as good as they could (within the chosen style of course), whilst with low-poly graphics, people are deliberately reducing the poly-count on models in order to make it look less advanced than it is. It's a funny challenge then, to try to make something look like it is trying to look advanced, but is not.

In this, my poor art skills might actually come in handy!
I love the original Paper Mario, and of these 3 it is the style I will try to emulate the most - a curious mix of 2D and 3D really. I'll devote another blogpost to it later I think, but for now, back to programming.

PS: Nintendo showed some new footage of the upcoming Paper Mario: Color Splash game coming out later this year I believe, and while their decisions regarding the design of the gameplay can easily be called into question, no one can complain about the lack of graphical polish in their games, so I will likely have a look at this later.

Till Next!

Games:
Spyro the Dragon, 1998, PlayStation [Game], Insomniac Games
Crash Bandicoot, 1996, PlayStation [Game], Naughty Dog
Paper Mario, 2001, Nintendo 64 [Game], Intelligent Systems