This game was on Steam Greenlight until now. Reasons for its take down are:
1.) It was a bad day for it to be posted unfortunately. An hour or so later, news of Iwata's death shook the gaming world. Any sort of news about my game was buried and I didn't want to bring it up with that news in the air.
2.) The feedback I did receive didn't enjoy the art. While I certainly thought art could improve, it seems many people thought it was utter crap. I still don't really see how it looks terrible, but some people at least gave good opinions on what I could do to improve. Which I agree and can't believe I over-looked a few details (Like the Player not being shaded).
With that in mind I decided to let any news of it die down quickly and talk about it with my composer. We're currently doing a new approach with the game in terms of style and music.
On the bright side, it seems everyone whose seen the gameplay thinks it's solid and interesting. Same with the music and overall concept. It's only art that people feel needs an overhaul. I just assumed people would notice that this game still had a long while before it was finished and would take it as early art (Though someone said it looked like Programmers Art...Look, it's early art but not THAT early. That's just insulting.). But I didn't think people would be that picky about.
But it looks like I'm going to have to do even better than what I was going to have to do...which means remaking ALL the art pieces from scratch and with a whole new tone. I even plan on redesigning the enemies and everything in general. Coding will primarily remain the same, which means I only have to focus on art instead of constantly switch between programming and making art pieces!
I plan on trying to do it in a sort of crayon style. If you want a reference to a game like that, look up images of Kirby's Dreamland 3. I want to stylize it like that instead of it just being...some random digital art. There needs to be meaning to it! And what I'd REALLY like to do is have each world be it's own form of art; First world would be Crayon Drawings, 2nd would be Water Paintings, Ink brush, etc. Problem is what does this mean for the overall tone as well as how the Player's design looks relative to the design of the world you're in? Is she still a crayon drawing when you're in the Ink Brush world? I'll have to experiment.
And for tone, the game original went like this - you were in a colorless stage, you collect color to revive it. But the thing is, I haven't really been feeling it with the recent changes like I thought I would. I feel like there are a lot of missed opportunities with all the stages being completely black and white and slowly becoming colored. So I'm working on a sort of mix; you go to a Stage and parts of it are Colorless. But what do these parts do? How do you recolor them, especially since they are not always present? I will have to figure it out.
So the game will be back on Greenlight eventually! But for now, it's time to work on art for the next couple of months. I want each stage to be unique in some shape or form, which means more concept art and research. At the very least, I will try to see if I can make a short Demo that contains one stage sooner rather than later.
As always, follow on Twitter for updates! I plan on trying to post concept art on there as often as possible! Twitter.com
