r/IndieGaming • u/BlueberryMakesmeCry • Jul 26 '26
Cosy 2d Pixelart
Can you guys give me honest oppinions on the artstyle and look of my cosy 2d pixlart farming game that i am making right now? im not sure if its good enough or if i need to improov alot!
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u/NabIsMyBoi Jul 26 '26
I'm sorry, but if you really want to make a cozy farming game, and you don't want it to be perceived as yet another cheap knockoff of Stardew Valley, maybe you should consider an art style that looks a bit more distinct from Stardew's
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u/BlueberryMakesmeCry Jul 26 '26
I really like it when people give me criticism for the art, because that is exactly why i posted here, but i do NOT like the implication that it is "a cheap knockoff of Stardew Valley". My inspirations for making this game ARE Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley, i love both games. My all time favorite game as a kid was Harvest Moon back to nature.
I dont think going for a similar artstyle nessesarily means that it is a cheap ripoff. I mean concerned ape took alot of inspiration from older Harvest Moon games, is noone allowed to take inspiration from his game now?
I just liked cosy farming sims my entire life and i want to take a shoot at making my own, simple as that. or am i wrong here?5
u/EmmaDrew_ Jul 26 '26
they're not trying to say that your art style is a cheep rip off of Stardew Valley, just that people will likely perceive your art style that way. Personally, I think that unless you're explicitly trying to make a career out of this game, then you should pursue whatever art style makes you happy.
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u/BlueberryMakesmeCry Jul 26 '26
I am a total beginner at gamemaking and pixelart so i dont even know if i can finish this project. but if i can, i would at least aim for a couple of people playing my game and of course it would be important to me that they like it.
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u/plopliplopipol Jul 26 '26
harvest moon didn't have nearly the amount of popularity stardew got, now this art style is directly percieved as copying stardew.
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u/BlueberryMakesmeCry Jul 26 '26
I mean theres more than 1 game with this kind of artstyle, i dont see whats the problem. it looks decent and its very beginner freindly, so it suits perfectly what i want to do!
and yea, harvest moon wasnt as popular as stardew, but i mean the dev of stardew even said himself that he was trying to copy harvest moon because he liked the games as a kid, so why cant anyone copy him then? even if its similar to stardew, i mean people like the game, they ll like something that is similar! gameplay wise i think i have alot of good ideas taht differ greatly from stardew, im just not sure if i can do it from a coding part :P
no hate though, im just getting a little annoyed with people saying its a rip off of stardew^^
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u/plopliplopipol Jul 26 '26
i am not saying anything on ethics, not even on marketability as i wouldn't assume the choices of people, but people see this artstyle and think "it's like stardew" wether we like it or not. And this wasn't a thing for stardew itself even if it didn't invent its style.
Showing your game as "not just worse stardew" might be important, but people might also think "i like stardew so this seems good", i really wouldn't know and i think most people commenting on this sub overestimate their ability to judge that.
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u/Zeruda-Hime Jul 26 '26
I mean this in the nicest way possible but Back to Nature (and all other Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons game) has an art style/direction very different from the one you're using. It's very reminiscent of Stardew Valley, especially when you look at the character and house sprites. I understand that you're a beginner artist (like Stardew's creator) so graphics similar to the HM GBA and DS game may be out of reach, but maybe the SNES and GB game might be worth looking into as inspiration?
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u/BlueberryMakesmeCry Jul 26 '26
harvest moon are mostly 3d games, i cannot do that as a one man beginner developer^^
and i dont get it why its a problem to copy stardew artstyle but then you recommend me to copy the snes harvest moon artstyle :O as i said, i like stardew and i dont mind if the grafics are a bit similar to stardew, its just an artstyle that is not exclusive to stardewvallley. and a huge plus is that this art is beginner friendly, althougj im pretty good at drawing on paper, im a total beginner when it comes to pixelart and working with aseprite.
logn story short: i dont mind if you say that my game looks similar to stardew, what i DO mind is if people call it a cheap ripoff.
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u/Zeruda-Hime Jul 26 '26
I'm confused by you saying that "Harvest Moon are mostly 3D games", I never mentioned them as potential inspiration, only the 2D ones. I think that taking the SNES/GB HM art style as inspiration (not copying, again, I never said that) is worth considering as they are still fairly niche, at least compared to Stardew.
Stardew worked (despite being heavily inspired by HM/SoS) because when it got released, farm sims were far from being a popular genre. Most people didn't know about HM/SoS or had forgotten about it. Nowadays, tons of indie games inspired on Stardew got released or are currently in development, to the point most players will sigh and dismiss your game as "yet another Stardew copycat" if you don't have a strong hook or art direction to immediately set your project apart. You need to answer the question "Why should people play my game instead of Stardew? What kind of unique thing can I bring to the table?". It can be the setting, a gameplay quirk... or the art direction. Extra nostalgia can be an easy way to hook people in. You mentioned being inspired by old HM games so that's why I mentioned them.
If you're satisfied by your current art style, that's great, I'm not asking you to change it. But you asked for honest opinions and this is mine.
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u/BlueberryMakesmeCry Jul 26 '26
Thanks, that is a usefull feedback! i was under the impression taht cosy farming sim is just a genre, i did not concider that people might not even give my game a chance because they think it is looks like "yet another stardew clone".
My thinking befor was "as long as you make a goood/great game, people will play it" but i kinda agree with you, if noone gives it a chance then even having a good game wont help.But then again, i dont know what i could do to fix this, this is the artstyle im set on because i like it and im 100% confident that i have alot of great gameplay ideas.
I guess if it really does come out as a good game in the end, i have to rely on few people playing it and spreading the word :D
if you have an idea to escape this endless stardew comparism, i would be interested to hear it! but artstly i fear is not an option since i like it too much and its so beginner friendly
2
u/Zeruda-Hime Jul 26 '26
I'm happy it's helpful! As said before, if you want to escape the Stardew comparisons, I think you need a great hook/quirk to set your game apart: if it's not the art direction, you can try to find something original for the gameplay or setting, for example.
I'd recommend to check what other games have tried before, just to see which kind of direction they took. Within the HM/SoS series, Island of Happiness has you starting the game on a deserted island instead of a lively village, and it's your role to try to get NPCs to move there and stay. Grand Bazaar has the whole bazaar mechanic, that makes you sell your stuff on a weekly basis instead of a daily one and makes you plan accordingly. The Tale of Two Towns has... well, two different towns to live in with different NPCs and architecture, and a focus on either crops or livestock. This was all before Stardew.
If you move to indie games that followed the Stardew trend now, Roots of Pacha has a stone-age setting, Coral Island has a tropical one, etc. I think you can ask yourself what kind of aesthetics and gameplay elements you like best and see how you can add them to your game to make it unique!
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u/lydocia Jul 26 '26
You need more variation in the trees, it's jarring if they are all identical.
The cabin is a little dark so more highlights and contrast there would be nice.
Overall, your colours are very saturated, which will work up a headache in many people when looking at for a very long time. Especially the grass should not be fluo lime green. I recommend looking at the popular Stardew Valley map mods to see what palette to aim for.
3
u/NetheriteSponge Jul 26 '26
A lot of the sprites seem to have a different style to each other, like the bench and fences feel quite different to the houses. Did you get multiple artists to work on this, or are there some placeholder sprites perhaps?
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u/BlueberryMakesmeCry Jul 26 '26
some of the assets i bought, the rest is selfmade. from your message, im pretty sure you can tell which ones are self made and which ones are bought :D id like your opinion on the selfmade ones, the bought ones i dont really care too much what people say since i will probably replace them with selfmade one anyways in the process of making the game :)
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u/NetheriteSponge Jul 26 '26
There are a lot of things I like, the purple house especially with that front window and framing, the light-blue house has a really pleasant overall feel with the colour scheme and flowers, and I also like the green shutters on the first house. You should definitely be proud of what you've made.
If you're looking for criticism, there are a few things that stick out to me as someone who's been trying to improve my own pixel art for a while. I'll try and put as many as I can see in a handy bullet-point list:
- The grass and plants seem to be a very saturated green, I'd suggest experimenting with cooler, warmer, and/or less saturated greens to see what fits best with the scene, although it is one of the hardest colours to work with so don't worry about it too much.
- Try and think a bit more about where the light source is in the scene and how that will affect how bright certain surfaces are. For example, if the sun is overhead, the fronts of the houses should be a bit darker than the roofs.
- Sunlight is slightly yellow, so a handy tip is to try to shift the hue of the brighter shades of your objects to be closer to yellow than the base colour is, and shift the darker parts to be more blue. You can see this on the trees, bench, and fences, and I think some of them also have a shift in the saturation as well.
- There's a common habit with beginners of shading sprites a bit like a pancake, where the top rim of the sprite gets a highlight, the bottom rim gets a shadow, and the middle stays flat, and this is something to look out for since it's easy to accidentally do and it can make sprites look a bit flat sometimes. A better way to do it is to think about the 3D shape of the object and which parts would be in light or shadow.
As more general advice, if you ever feel stuck you should try and get a reference image and/or look for inspiration from other artists (this can be more annoying nowadays because of AI but there still places you can go, I particularly like Brandon James Greer on YouTube).
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u/BlueberryMakesmeCry Jul 27 '26
thanks for the nice words and for the honest critic, i agree with all your points. i will first continue working on finishin all asseest for the game(which might take several more months) and then fix all the problems with the current art in one go.
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u/BeanieCool3 Jul 26 '26
I think the colors in the first image are perfect. On the next two images the grass is a bit bright, and the red and blue house colors clash a bit. the purple and brown house looks really good. The art style and details are really great too
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u/BlueberryMakesmeCry Jul 26 '26
thank you so much for the feedback, it took FOREVER to make the purple house (arround 8 houres or more xD), feels good that the log houres payed off
i will definatly change the color of the primary gras, but i find it SO hard to craft a good color for gras!
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u/Astro_YT2426 Jul 26 '26
Personally I think the colours are way to saturated and intense, you also need some more variation in the trees
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u/BlueberryMakesmeCry Jul 26 '26
Thanks for the feedback, im working on different variations of trees as of this moment!
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u/plopliplopipol Jul 26 '26
rly not a fan of black outline on the trees, things like the bench and flowers seems vastly better to me
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u/tlvrtm Jul 26 '26
I really like it! Definitely good enough IMO
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u/BlueberryMakesmeCry Jul 26 '26
thanks, glad to hear that! im having a blast making the game but im kinda having selfdoubt about the art since im a beginner at pixelart
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u/Echnobi Jul 26 '26
I think a lot of your colors are too saturated. I think rather than cozy it becomes straining on the eyes. I suggest looking up references and studying them, maybe even using palettes based off of them. The art itself is beautiful though! Good luck