Birth of Oniken part 1 news

Hey everyone! I didin't post anything lately, I´m finishing the last events in Oniken last stage. As I won't show much stuff about the game´s ending to not spoil it to you, today I decided to talk about Oniken's beginning.

Oniken begun in 2010. However, it was inspired in a previous work, a 2005 indie game that I never finished. It´s name was "Onikenchou".Now you´re problabling asking "What the... so it´s the same game you dumbass!" Yes and No. Oniken had the same base plot that Onikenchou, similar enemy designs but similarities end here. The rest is totally different.

During 2005, I was 17/18 years old and very little experience in creating games or even in pixel art, character design and stuff like that. (I´m not saying that today I can be considered much stuff, but at least I'm much more experienced than before.)I really wanted to make a 2D action game, with ninjas, robots, explosions and everything that could be cool so I decided to start to sketch some ideas for this game.

I was a big fan of Ninja Gaiden and Strider Hiryu and, of course, old games in general. However, I'm not joking dudes, in 2005 if you show to people who you was making a 8 bit game everyone could spit in your face and say "are you f***ing insane!?". Back in 2005, people wasn´t that open to retro game style so I decided to make it in 16 bit style with lots of effects.I don´t think that it was a bad decision for the game itself, HOWEVER it implied, at least in my case, in very bad results to the game final result.As I said before at that time I was very little experienced in pixel art. As a result, while I wanted to make the game with overdetailed graphics, the graphic outcome was weird. Also, 16 bit graphics need a making time that I just didn't have doing the game by my own, programming it and also, you know, living. I choose the "super deformed" style for the characters because I found that was easier to animate and, during that time, lots of japanese indie games used it. I was very influenced by them and by SNK´s Metal Slug.

*a lot more detailed figure using less colors and tiny resolution.

The main character was Zaku, however he was a very different Zaku if you guys can notice.Characters also were more anime look because I wasn´t good at portrait my personal art style into pixel art, like more "realistic" faces and more detailed figures.Beside the bad graphical choices, I had made another big mistake in Onikenchou.It´s gameplay...Onikenchou´s gameplay was very complex. It had RPG based level progression, special attacks like in a fighting game, itens that could be used like potions, different weapons and two playable characters... It had so much stuff that I think that was impossible to me, completely by myself, do that. But during that time I really though that it could be done. That was a huge mistake.

*what the f...!?
With so much stuff Onikenchou´s gameplay was off. As you can see, there was lots of useless features like, if Zaku was using a firearm, he became slower and heavier however if I choose the main weapon, the sword, he was much faster and powerful so what was the point in having a weapon that was useless!?

Lots of mistakes like this killed Onikenchou and in 2006 I canceled the game. (Thank god...)Well that is half of the story... Next week I´ll show to you guys the rest. Stay tuned! =)