The theme image :



You have until March 10th to submit your game !
Official page : http://itch.io/jam/cyberpunk-jam

Here is a small concept of mine, matrix vs flashback remix :



Feel free to join and make a very little game for fun !

Hello Pixelation.
After seing the announcement of the new Flashback HD, I was so disappointed that I couldn't resist but share my thoughts about it.

You all remember what Flashback looked like ?



Brace yourself, this is the new one :



What the fuck is this shit ? I mean seriously ?

• The background is filled with elements. No more fog, less mystery.
• The jungle doesn't feel "out of this world" anymore. It looks like it's made of common leaves and trees.
• All the assets and plants are oversized (probably to fill empty space easily instead of detailing everything).
• Poor readibility between the playable foreground and the background : same colors, same lighting. The miserable post process blur doesn't help.
• Why the laser ? Why the BIG red spot ? Does it need to be that visible and this huge ? Are we stupid ?
• Why the HUD ? Do we need to have poorly designed (and hard to read) HUD to display infos we don't need ?
• The character doesn't stand out anymore. It blends into the forest.
• Everything looks very generic and bland. No more "handcrafted" feeling. No passion in this…

If I take two examples of what Flashback could look today and what it looks like in our memories :

Orioto's take : Tete de bug's paintover :



Feng Zhu's painting (+ one hour video : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azP1im6SznA)



It's a lot closer to feeling the game left inside me. The colors, the composition, the details, everything is much better and it took not even 1/100th of the time needed to make all the 3D assets of this poor remake. And you know what ? This drop in quality is almost the same for all remakes.

Rayman Origins



Ok it's still 2D but there is basically no frames, everything is animated by rotating, moving, skewing and bending layers. It still looks good because it's not pixel art but smooth, antialised art.  It shows that everybody in this industry is getting lazy, even with huge budgets.


Sonic 4
Horrible 3D cell-shaded art that really destroyed the original look of Sonic II. Less work = worse results.



Pokemon BW
Horrible sprites, frames aren't fully drawn, you can see they're using terrible nearest neighbor rotations…



It looks as bad as our own animated edits on this forum, when we spent only 20 minutes to block out the feeling of the animation, when it's still heavily WIP and not production-ready.  Do you realize it's fucking Nintendo ? For one of their best selling franchise ever ? Don't they have the money to pay animators ? I wonder, why there is such a discrepancy between today's 2D games and our older traditionnal, hand drawn games. I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

I'm wondering. Can't we try together with a new challenge to do something like "bring back 2D pixel art games to life"… And show the world HOW it must be done ? By hand ? With a palette ? With many frames of animations ? With respect of the original art direction ? We should do something like this. Even just a few animated mock-ups. To show the world it's possible. And what it can look like if done correctly.

I'm going to bed now, and I know it's going to be a sad night. Flashback is my favorite game ever. Goodbye my old friend.