Gosh thank you SO MUCH everyone!!
@supajackle: I am so glad you think so!! It means a lot from you. I'm always pretty proud of the graphics when I make them but they get kind of old to me as dev continues so it's always reaffirming to hear compliments on their quality, especially from rad artists like you.
@ottbott: Thank you!! As always I'm very thankful that people are excited for this game and very humbled that people assisted me in realizing it back when the kickstarter ran. <3 And I'm glad you can empathize, it makes it really hard to buckle down and respond to feedback/keep people in the loop
The textures in that level give me a bit of a Monster Party vibe. I like the little red enemies too.
Aw thank you, coincidentally enough I think of Monster Party every time I see your avatar! The face reminds me of the tree where the first level changes. I love Monster Party, it's so fascinating. Your game kind of has the oppressive and dangerous atmosphere of Monster Party but with better game design in general.
I want to touch the moth.
@flashysquirrel: I'm glad it can create a sense of nostalgia! With all of my games it's my goal to create a game that would have been one of my favorites if it already existed. Creepy Castle is an RPG that I would have loved to play on the MSX or NES.
@baroda and i.i: Thank you! Being on Greenlight was pretty nerve wracking because I had never done it before, but overall I enjoyed the experience. There's a really special kind of joy you feel when a game is greenlit to be on Steam.
The graphics are lovely..
Where do you get your ideas from?
Thank you very much happymonster!! I'm very flattered that you like the artwork. I've always admired not only your amazing graphical skills but also the fact you made a cool program for your art (I need to try it out- I'm so attached to ms paint I never branch out and try other programs even if I think they look cool...)
It's tough to pin down exactly what my biggest inspirations are! I like the old japanese game aesthetic of big heads and small bodies, and in general how far japanese developers pushed the constrained dimensions of their sprites- in a 16x16 space you could count on the subject being exaggerated and nicely filling out the space, rather than being a concept that was simply downscaled until it fit in the required tiles- I think that's a big mechanic trick that makes spritework look more full (picking a size and trying to fill it out).
Aesthetically, the roots of my setting and characters was basically "cute like kirby, but with some darkness to it in the style of castlevania". Nowadays I take some design cues from Animal Crossing, Akira Toriyama (specifically his chibi characters- like Kid Goku and Pilaf- and his monster designs in Dragon Quest) and Pokemon designs.
La Mulana is a big inspiration in both technical and aesthetic regards- its big chunky sprites and its character designs are perfect to me. And I'm not sure if there's an "enormous dungeon" setting I like more than La Mulana itself... with lore like that, how could anything else ever compete? Such an amazing game!!
Some of the skins that the lore you find will be displayed with. The 7th "computer screen" style skin has green text to match, most others have black text.
Also, redid an older boss sprite. In the past there were more "weird" designs (like quadruped bugs), now mostly everything is bipedal.
>>REDONE>>