Mr. Skeltal's thoughts deposit

Retro inspired titles are the main theme for many indie developers, one doesn't have to search hard to see the huge number of indie projects reminiscent of games from the past. To truly understand them, one must look at the source, see for themselves what inspired such a huge community. While it hasn't been yet the source for such inspiration, Beyond Oasis is still a classic, worthy to be taken a look at. Aesthetics Just a bunch of rat-men dancing around a fire, nothing dangerous at all ... The pixel art used has aged really well, thanks to the usage of vivid colors and huge, detailed sprites. I really enjoyed the animations, elaborated and effective, plus a detail I noticed is that you and the enemies get up almost instantly if on the floor, giving the fights a really nice feeling of an adrenal...

Making a good parody of an opera is not an easy task, you must give the feelings that a spectator would have had when first approached the original work and also make it different and entertaining enough so it doesn't feel like a stale retelling. Games might be even harder since a developer must also copy the game mechanics, it would explain why these types of games aren't popular. UnMetal is a parody of the old Metal Gears and I wanted to see how well it fared. Aesthetics Sneaking inside an enemy base The pixel art used is clearly reminiscent of the title the game aims to spoof, while also expanding it with the usage of more vibrant colors and bigger sprites, you could put a screenshot of the game and its source material side to side and see all the inspirations it took. This is true only for the in-game graphics though, the pixel art used in the cutscenes is much more redefined, all of this is true for the animations too. There aren't that many...

The recent push from many game companies to remaster/re-release older forgotten titles is a movement that I support in full. However, not all works come out perfect and unfortunately Starshot: Space Circus Fever suffers from this. Aesthetics Ah yes, a weapon so dangerous that had to be sealed away: the slingshot-tank The 3d graphics used are peak Nintendo 64, with its heavy usage of colorful, saturated textures on the blocky models of the characters and world. Like wise, the animations tend to be a bit exaggerated to give the general feeling of a cartoon. The particles effects are ok, except the fact that the main protagonist is surrounded by these sparkly ones without any real reason, they're just there and are a bit annoying. The voice acting is fine, many if not all characters receive a voice fitting their looks, if there are cases of bad acting, I don't remember them. The soundtrack is ignorable, it doesn't stick out in the game and it didn't remain impressed in my...

DANGEN Entertainment, a publishing house for independent developers, is becoming one of the most interesting companies to watch. Beyond the success of Bug Fables , they have published Batbarian, an explorative platformer/Metroidvania developed by Unspeakable Pixels. Aesthetics Resting in the ruins of a forgotten temple The pixel art graphics use a style that I define as "granular", that is, instead of following convention and rules to imitate the graphics of 8 or 16bit machines, it prefers to use a substantial number of pixels. While it's not bad to look at, it can cause problems keeping an eye on the protagonist, especially in the most intense fights with several bullets on the screen or if you play at some distance from the monitor, which frustrated me a lot during the second act. In addition, due to the context, the game is ver...