Hi I'm Bacrylic and aslo the acting art director for Squaretale.

Founded by myself and my programming friend Brandon, Squaretale attempts to make its first game. An guess what, its a pixel game!!!

As this is our first step, we want to leave a good impression. So I'm here to ask for some advice. I haven't been doing pixel art long, and yet I find myself making an entire game in the style. We have pretty much rushed production, and environmentally I'm not sure if I found a good blend with how I want to portray the story to the player.

Any words or suggestions would sure be appreciated.

Also, if you're curious to what this game is about, I'll share a little info. The game will be a sidescroller pixel game, done with an expanded take on the metroidvania style. One of my goals for the game is to have very dynamic combat. I want the enemy npc's to feel like actual players are trying to kill you, and it is a struggle just to run into one.

As far as I know I'm not allowed to say anything about the story yet, but believe you me I like some dark stuff at times and I can get behind this story. I can tell you what we've based this game off of and what has inspired us. Art wise, I've looked at more recent games for inspiration. We don't really have a goal of nostalgia planned to make it like other metroidvania games in the past. Nope. Our nostalgic inspiration ties more into the story and wasn't from a game at all. We came up with the story of this game while talking about the movie The Pagemaster.

Haven't seen it? Thats ok. If you went back and watched it, you might not like it. I know I tried. It wasn't that great, but something internally makes me like it. Maybe because its from my childhood, but conceptually we liked the idea and for some reason, both thought it was an iconic movie. Now we've completely made our own lore for this story that was based off of this movie, but as a game I wanted to expand on it. So now comes the actual game inspiration and second thing that I like to sum up the idea behind ours as. Kingdom Hearts 

Yup, nothing does world diving and has a vast diversity of enemy characters quite like Kingdom Hearts. So yes, Kingdom Hearts meets The Pagemaster movie, to inspire this pixel game.

That sounds like a tall order, I know. But we've spent a lot of thought and we both feel like we can get on board for the long haul.

I would sure appreciate any help you guys can offer, while I'm deciding on the style. So here is a small clip from a scene I'm working on.





We will eventually have our website up and running, and when we do, if you like the work we're doing you can stop by to see any updates at squaretale.com.

So bring on the critiques, so I can spoil you guys with the first updates.