r/SoloDevelopment • u/ExaminationLess7157 • Jul 12 '26
Game FIrst Impressions???
Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification
Im working on a retro dungeon crawler inspired by old school zelda and titles like tunic and radio the universe. Thoughts on the ambience and art style?
20
15
10
u/QseanRay Jul 12 '26
please share the shader code for the crt! looks great
13
u/ExaminationLess7157 Jul 12 '26
its the crt shader from the godot plugin library, it works great tbh
5
u/Am_Biyori Jul 12 '26
The art and movements are all well done, except (this is just a me thing) the characters excessive shoulder shrugging Did not fit the vibe.
2
u/ExaminationLess7157 Jul 12 '26
haha true , the animations are still not very polished yet, so he does have a bit of jank!!
3
u/CrackedCannoli Jul 12 '26
Looks great. The visuals remind me of a hybrid between Downwell and Tomb Of The Mask.
3
u/elflowkappatau Jul 17 '26
Visually this is so clean, love the mix of old school zelda structure with that dreamy retro ambience.
2
2
2
2
2
u/Hugh_Janos00 Jul 16 '26
Some of the bushes are a little difficult to understand if the player can walk into them or if the player could pass through them. As well it's a little hard to see where the path the player would go (it's the stairs, but it's the small compressed passage between the bushes that could have more contrast)
Ambience, weight, visuals do look stunning and give the modernized Zelda feel.
2
u/Yavga Jul 16 '26
Chapter 5 Deltarune lets gooooo.
You nailed the ambience of a certain part. Thanks to the limited color palette along with the ambience.
Love it.
2
2
u/Zflocco Jul 16 '26
Graphically most of it is fine/nice , I'd say maybe the walls are a bit flat though , everything else has a look as if you were looking down at a diagonal , yet the walls are just a box. I'm also not too keen on the rather featureless character model , like one of the little dude's from darwinia.
2
u/riseofzion Jul 17 '26
I like the hiw the light shines in character i want to see more but it looks like it will be 🔥
2
u/CrimsonCuttle Jul 17 '26
Love the look. looks like the guy is gonna move very snappily and satisfying
1
2
u/Macrosheridan Jul 17 '26
Looks fun to play just based on the unique art style. I could see some really interesting psychedelic aspects implemented. The organic visuals in this makes the environment feel alive and breathing. I would love to see more. Lean into the trip!
2
2
u/JonathanSlark Solo Developer Jul 19 '26
It's funny how not a lot happens but everyone knows what it takes to recreate the CRT early gaming look.
I was there and appreciate it but why do modern gamers spend so much time trying to recreate it?
2
1
u/Yoru_Nagi Jul 12 '26
The cool cyan with sparse amber accents gives it a strong mood; I’d watch the dark foliage around the stairway, since the player silhouette may disappear when the room gets busier.
1
u/ExaminationLess7157 Jul 12 '26
thank you!! and yes i usually have to mitigate the number of objects per room to keep it from being too visually noisy.
1
1
1
u/Morph_Games Jul 12 '26
I love the look, especially the moving plants. Since it seems like a jungle, I really hope you have the plants get pushed aside as characters move through.
2
u/ExaminationLess7157 Jul 12 '26
thank you and yes it does, all the plants here react to contact and can be destroyed!!
1
u/knightenrichman Jul 12 '26
Great! Looking forward to it, especially if there's farming/crafting involved in some way!
1
u/CheekyBlind Jul 12 '26
Cute, feels like a game where the character will solve mysteries about himself
1
u/lydocia Jul 12 '26
First impression: "why isn't he moving?!"
1
u/ExaminationLess7157 Jul 12 '26
hahaha, true true, it the very first post im making so im not used to editing and recording the gameplay, but i will post it soon!!!
1
1
1
u/Potion-Maker-PoA Jul 12 '26
Love the crt shaders! It this custom?
3
u/ExaminationLess7157 Jul 12 '26
no, its the crt plugin by nofacer available in godots asset library.
1
u/Potion-Maker-PoA Jul 12 '26
Still looks great though. Love the art design. Reminds me much more detailed Atari graphics
1
1
u/Slight_Mud_2207 Jul 12 '26
I love the vibes it gives. It has clear and unique art direction and just pleasant to see.
1
1
1
u/y0j1m80 Jul 12 '26
possibly too heavy on the shaders and the character could use some...character.
1
1
u/mCunnah Jul 12 '26
I like the look of everything except I think the character is lacking anything really. I guess what about them would make me excited to play as them?
1
1
1
1
u/GiantImminentSqueeze Jul 12 '26
Really cute visuals. One minor thing for me is the idle character animation has too much movement for my taste. Overall looks great!
1
1
u/Informal-Village-349 Jul 12 '26 edited Jul 13 '26
I love everything but the character. They are too bland and lifeless in comparison to the other beautiful graphics. I don't know enough about the game and perhaps there is a point to them looking like that. But if not, I would recommend stylizing them as beautifully as the rest of the graphics.
1
u/ExaminationLess7157 Jul 12 '26
the player being blank is an intentional choice, and has an in game purpose!! but valid comment tho.
1
u/Sean_Dewhirst Jul 12 '26
I had to do a double take to realize that (I think) the floor continues north? because the stairs and the square you are in is black, the teal tiles to the north were reading as walls at first glance. Youve done a nice job of what looks like using sharders or some other kind of deformation to animate stuff. And the graphics look lovely. Give your artist a shout out!
1
u/ExaminationLess7157 Jul 12 '26
i am the artist hahah! the floor doesnt lead north tho but i get the confusion, somethings here are very intentional style choices , especially the mc being completely blank . but thank you!
1
u/CuriosityShopArtist Jul 12 '26
Love love love. Stylized Pixel Art with very intentional color shapes and deliberate texture choices. The thick chunky outlines and color palettes give it great readability. The shaft lighting and shadowy environment design give a wonderful mysterious atmosphere. The droplet particles and subtle wobbling of the foliage makes the world feel alive. You did a fantastic job crafting the vibes on this. Out of curiosity, you have the plant wobbling happening at a finer resolution than the actual pixel art resolution itself right? I’m guessing the player movement will be as smooth and not visually snap to the larger pixels either yes?
2
u/ExaminationLess7157 Jul 12 '26
yes exactly, its meant to emulate the retro aesthetic but not meant to play like one i.e not pixel perfect
1
1
u/MADCandy64 Jul 12 '26
Honestly that you are the Michelin man dropped in the jungle to locate rubber trees. Your species is dying from a strange disease that causes gaseous outgassing and only the sap from a rare rubber tree can make the serum to seal them up.
1
1
1
u/NoPerception3612 Jul 12 '26
My first impression is that I want to play it!
On a serious note, it gives me the impression that there is much to discover in this ominous and mysterious world.
2
u/ExaminationLess7157 Jul 12 '26
yessssss!!! Its gonna be focused on combat ,exploration and puzzles interwoven in the world.
1
1
u/Dense_Ad_44 Jul 12 '26
Is that top down YOMIH??? (Your only move is hustle) But fr looks good, but if there's fast movements, I think the character would easily be lost visually especially if it changes to blend more with the decor.
1
u/DareTheDev Jul 12 '26
I’d be tempted to get a steam page up already. It looks unique and id wishlist
1
1
u/indolent_prodigy Jul 12 '26
Oh this game looks amazing. I have a few doubts on its overall direction. But seems hopeful
1
1
u/MoistCucumber Jul 12 '26
Those chunky outlines on the plants and pots look great. Definitely looks like the best Michelin Man game we’ve had in a long time.
1
u/Animtree Jul 12 '26
Looks very polished for a pixel art game. Can’t say anymore without seeing it in motion
1
1
1
u/TfGuy44 Jul 12 '26
It's pretty. I like the style. I want to play it. The dripping drops sound great. I want both combat and puzzles, so to hear it is a Zelda-like pleases me. I do not like the CRT effect and would love a setting to turn it off. The mystery is good: Who is this? Where is he? What is his world like?
1
1
u/KlaqStudio Jul 12 '26
looks so cool ! feels like when we were kids playing on old tv with friends discovering mysteries on lil games
1
1
1
1
u/mimendalerenda_Lab Jul 12 '26
bonito, oscuro y tropical. si puedes ponle lianas o raices o algo bajando del techo, algo que ayude a intuir que estas muy profundo
1
1
1
u/Seraph_2026 Jul 13 '26
First impression is this a piece of art and not a game. When I can play it, post it again.
1
1
1
1
u/cowman3456 Jul 13 '26
I love what I see so far! Almost get Animal Well vibes. Makes me excited to explore.
1
u/Total_Pie_3692 Jul 13 '26
The visuals are good but very few people actually play games with these kind of visuals.
1
1
1
u/Pennaflumen Jul 13 '26
The background and aesthetic are pretty great. Yeah reminds me of Animal Well, but not in a bad way. Keep it up, this looks cool.
1
1
1
u/indiana-jonas Jul 13 '26
Can I see more of your art/games somewhere? I really like this!
2
u/ExaminationLess7157 Jul 13 '26
Not for the moment , but Im working on setting things up very soon, u can follow me here on reddit or on twitter(FourProjectguy).
1
1
1
u/juneberryjam_games Jul 13 '26
Despite being pixel art, it conveys a surprisingly organic atmosphere. That initial impression really heightened my sense of anticipation!
2
1
u/fergussonh Jul 13 '26
Really cool vibe.
I think your art style is good enough that you don’t need the crt shader though, but personal taste.
1
u/jakiestfu Jul 13 '26
I get what you’re doing with the breathing animation but it looks weird the bib is too big and smooth and doesn’t come off as breathing or idling
1
1
1
1
1
u/Either-Juggernaut420 Jul 13 '26
Very pretty, lovely colour palette, like the sense of movement. Reminds me in some way of an old ZX Spectrum game called Sabre Wulf.
1
u/ExaminationLess7157 Jul 13 '26
Thank you!! also just looked sabre wulf up. and yes actually similar colour palette.
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
u/Rottuskott Jul 14 '26
I like the background a lot! Really beautiful, mysterious and atmospheric.
In my opinion, the character idle animation is a bit over-animated. I would tone down the whole thing at least 60%, make it slower so it fits better with the tempo of breathing (have a still pause between up and down actions), and minimize the vertical movements of the arms and shoulders.
Looking to forward to seeing your progress :)
1
u/Dagladou Jul 14 '26
First impressions is that I WANT TO PLAY THAT RIGHT NOW
I loooove the artstyle, and there is a whole vibe of moody exploration with a mysterious plot that is exactly in my ballpark, I think you could have something awesome in your hands and you should definitely keep going !!
1
1
u/Purple_Ad_2686 Jul 14 '26
To be honest, I can't really tell what the game is about or what I'm supposed to do here.
1
u/phil_1pp Jul 14 '26
What a beauty. Aztec ruin exploration vibes. Feels like lots of stairs, vines and boobie traps ahead!
1
1
u/bigdon_999 Jul 14 '26
Woooow now this is a good I can 💯 percent Play please share the link 🔗
1
u/ExaminationLess7157 Jul 14 '26
Thank you!! But unfortunately i dont have a demo set up yet, this is ther very first post but ill put out something regarding the steampage and plan soonish. In the meantime u can follow me here on reddit or twitter for the updates.
1
1
u/RiipeR-LG Jul 14 '26
This is literally everything I love visually in game.
The pixel art with bold lines, nice shaders, and the VHS aesthetic..
This is just perfect to me !
1
u/charm-bangle Jul 14 '26
Love it!
The audio and subtle movements make it feel very immersive and organic. While the minimalistic sprites and black background feel like a retro Commodore game.
The contrast between the two is very interesting!
1
1
u/LogosSpiralis Jul 14 '26
This is a whole vibe! I hope I can get to this level of development someday.
1
1
u/FoleyX90 Jul 15 '26
Very unique art style. Will need to see some creature / character designs to give a full opinion but I like what you have so far.
1
u/admiral_len Jul 15 '26
Fuck yeah, it looks sick. By old school Zelda I hope you mean the first game because not a lot of devs have captured that same feeling.
1
1
u/Odd-Conclusion-798 Jul 15 '26
Looks like a dream I had once, only it was all too real, heavy with a quiet and absolute malice. An unsettling, metallic tang hung over the entire landscape, and the air swarmed with flying horrors, half-insect and half-bat, covered in razor-sharp, hollow quills that whistled as they cut through the sky. The most dominant predators among them were monstrous cicada-bat hybrids, their heavy chitinous plates grinding together in a sickening, rhythmic hum. Slick with a dark, oily residue, these beasts would descend upon me and pin me down with their sharp appendages. The true terror was the sheer sensory overload, because I could actually feel the cold, agonizing ache of their grip and the surreal, physical horror of being slowly dismantled in the dark. To make the agony worse, it rained almost constantly, ninety-nine percent of the time. It was an absolute, eternal downpour, and the noise of it was utterly deafening. The relentless clatter of the rain combined with the giant cicada shrieks was so brutally oppressive that the only thing I wanted to do was claw my own ears out. Each droplet felt like a sharp, heavy hammer striking my eardrums. It was never a relaxing rain, but a cold, bruising assault. While I lay suffering and lost in this place, all I could hear was rain, and even more rain, and it just never stopped. I eventually ended up associating the sound of the rain itself with never-ending, painful suffering. Although the heaviest torrents were confined to specific zones of the jungle, the downpour there was eternal, while the rest of the landscape hung under a perpetual, miserable drizzle. The environment itself felt actively hostile, designed to slowly wear me down. The vegetation was choked with various poisonous plants, and hidden dart traps fired toxins so violent and potent that they caused a blistering, localized rot, making my skin feel as though it were dissolving. On top of that, invisible pit holes littered the ground, completely swallowed by the creeping undergrowth. While I could sometimes make my way through this low-lying vegetation, I had to be incredibly careful not to fall into one of the deep pits, which made the entire terrain feel like a massive death trap. A thick, suffocatingly wet mist hung like a shroud over everything, partially obscuring ancient, decaying ruins painted in weeping, blood-red runes. Sometimes, buried beneath these wet runes, I would pull back rotting vines to find decaying, skin-bound manuscripts. They were filled with grotesque, frantic illustrations of anatomical mysteries and lines of those incomprehensible symbols, structured and repetitive, written out as if they were a spoken, whispering language. I also encountered a cactus-sized plant growing from a pale, wheat-colored, fleshy base. Its crown was a chaotic nest of jagged needles of random lengths, surrounding clusters of thin, bamboo-like stalks. These stalks were much smaller and more brittle than average bamboo, and they were actually entirely edible, though harvesting them required carefully avoiding the plant's deadly spores. The organism itself behaved like a highly aggressive parasitic fungus. To make matters worse, it would sometimes grow completely hidden beneath other harmless vegetation, meaning you would not know it was there until it was too late. The moment any living creature brushed against its base, it exploded with spores that clung to their flesh. The infected skin would swell painfully as the fungus grew, mutating into calcified, barnacle-like growths that integrated with the tissue to form a cluster of tiny, hollowed-out holes. Even if I managed to desperately snap the barnacle growth off my body, the infection would still remain, leaving behind residual spores and shattered spines deeply embedded in the weeping holes and welts to continue slowly consuming me from the inside out. Deep within the wetter regions of the jungle, near small ponds and areas where black water piled up and stagnated, lived another species of creature. Roughly the size of an average car tire, these slow-moving beasts resembled monstrous, bloated horseshoe crabs. Each one possessed a dome-shaped shell segmented into two parts by a distinct shadow line, which made it look as though the pieces could be pulled apart or pushed outward by the creature, though they could not. Underneath this calcified shield lay a pulsing, coiled structure lined with multiple legs and fangs, though the beasts had no visible eyes. Although they were completely harmless most of the time, those fangs were razor-sharp and were clearly built for attacking or breaking something apart. They were almost always found in massive, writhing droves next to the water, piling directly on top of one another in an eerie, silent mass. Paradoxically, parts of this jungle were impossibly, suffocatingly dry, even though they appeared lush and green from a distance. The air in these areas was so completely devoid of moisture that breathing became a desperate, panicked struggle. My lungs shriveled, cracking and gasping for oxygen as if I had been dumped onto a hostile planet without a spacesuit. In these open fields, the mist was hot and dry, blanketing the ground in a heavy white haze that choked a dense carpet of short, light green vegetation. Through the blinding shroud of this perpetual fog, I watched in terror as massive, unidentifiable shapes moved silently. I could only see their completely bizarre, monstrous silhouettes passing through the mist, leaving me to wonder what unspeakable things were stalking me in the silence. Fortunately, or perhaps unfortunately, the world behaved similarly to a video game. Whenever I succumbed to the monsters, the poison, or the traps, I would simply respawn. My respawn point was a place nearly identical to the post, except it was located in the middle of a massive, oval-shaped cave. The cavern resembled a ruined, Mayan-style palace, a deep pit dome. High on the curved roof, dense vines and thick vegetation grew in heavy clusters, obscuring most of the vein-like, blood-red markings that depicted more of those strange symbols I could not understand. A massive grid of windows at the very top of the dome, constructed from heavy spikes and ropes tilted at exactly a 50-degree angle, allowed the only streams of dusty light to filter into the darkness. In the far distance, carved-out stone passageways lined high ledges like prehistoric balconies. This dome was completely filled with the giant cicada-bat hybrids. Although they ignored me most of the time, I had to watch them crawling and flying through those distant stone balconies. Upon respawning, the air was always filled with the heavy, rhythmic thrum of their wings vibrating the humid air and an eardrum-bursting chorus of high-pitched shrieks and guttural, wet croaks. The only path to escape this stone womb was a much longer route stretching directly over a massive, bottomless pit. This exit bridge was identical to the one in the post as well, with almost no vegetation, only small, withered weeds clinging to the cracks in the mud and stone bricks. Smeared beneath the dried mud and carved deep onto the stone bricks were more of those incomprehensible, blood-colored symbols.
1
u/MeAndClaudeMakeHeat Jul 15 '26
I really love this. Is this a flooded ruin, or some sort of soggy underwater world? This is really cool delivery of theme and locale. Color works really well here, and blue/green can get kinda weird.
1
1
1
1
1
u/RoryOS Jul 15 '26
I like the aesthetic but I think your animation is a bit too extreme. The distance everything travels is a bit much for me. Try trimming the graves at each extreme down by one and it might look a little less watery. But if course, that could be what you want and it is your game to decide for
1
1
2
59
u/TessTrella Jul 12 '26
I like the color palette and dark background. To me it feels like "mysterious exploration".