Persona 4, Contact (DS), some Picross DS and some TF2. And I was trying out Soul Blazer for the SNES the other day too...

Haven't gone through the 23 pages yet, but hopefully no one has mentioned this one




her art is pretty great (and disturbing)
http://ginsengandhoney.tumblr.com/

Vortex, I'm going to be a little cynical here, but were all these retro games really the most emotional experiences you've had in videogames? Those you described are good, but I think videogames can go deeper when the gameplay is backed up by story.

I haven't gotten too far into Persona 4, but something that made me think is the character of Yosuke. He's mostly an outcast, with next to no friends. Early on in the story, he learns that he is hated by a person he thought of as a close friend. But what really gets me is the contrast between his cool guy persona (ha) and the feeling of dependability towards his few friends. I feel absolute empathy towards this guy.

This thread is a goldmine

I'm going to be an asshole and pretend I'm missing the point, so as to post this.

[people don't like to wait to play.]

What does having to wait an arbitrary amount of time to be able to play again add to the value of the game?

You could argue that it is a more fulfilling experience because it makes you wait, instead of perpetuating "instant gratification" culture. Or that it stops us from acting like MMO addicts. But to me, this is not enough of a reason. I simply don't like to wait to play an engaging game.

I'll admit that I'm biased towards this kind of structure, because it delves into casual, micro-transaction based games, like Tiny Tower, or The Sims mobile, etc.

You know how these work. They are "free", but you will have to wait 5 hours for that floor to get built. But hey, you can also pay so that you don't have to wait. And this works, because people don't like to wait to play.

The only exception I can think of to this "wait for things" structure that escapes the "freemium" model is Animal Crossing, and that ends up satisfying because there are other things you can do instead (Maybe you'll have to wait to get that fossil mailed back, but you can still go fish, or run errands). You have more control over the time you play.

And hell, TF2 is also like this! Technically it's also freemium, but it's doing it right. You wait for drops, and see whether you got the weapon you wanted. And if you didn't, it doesn't matter, because you can do other things (like playing the damn game).

tl;dr: If people like a game, they want to be the ones who decide how much they can play.

It's not like we are babies that need some form of control over the time we spend playing.

Maybe you should go retro all the way!

You could ditch the shadings and have a single solid color for each game object (since your goal was to simplify it enough so that it would look nice), like Atari games.

And also have chunkier, bigger pixels, like the ones on the health meter and score.

Your game is just too pretty to be scary!

Obviously, if you go for disgusting you need an organic feeling, and that isn't going to happen with those highly stylized designs. You can't have them be so featureless.

Same with scariness, the symmetry gives a sense of balance, and fear is about, among other things, not knowing how the dangerous creepy thing is going to act or move towards you.

But maybe both of these suggestions are at odds with your chosen artstyle?

tl;dr: Symmetric and featureless does not equal gross or scary  

Anyway, your second try is definitely better in the creepy department.