[WIP] Dinothawr

[Arachne]

Hey, guys! I'm done with school for a little while, but I'm moving to another city to continue my studies. In the meantime, I'm making a puzzle game with a friend of mine. The engine is close to finished (mainly just needs a level select screen, I think), so most of the remaining work is puzzle design. I've added most of the graphics we need, but it was thrown together in a few days, and I'd like to hear some suggestions for improvements.

The color restrictions are 5 bits per color channel (color values are multiples of 8 ) and 1 bit alpha.



Title screen so far. Our hero is a dinosaur who wants to save his frozen friends by thawing them over lava.



Here's a screenshot showing the different tile types. The main elements are rocks (stationary), ice blocks (pushable), frozen dino blocks (pushable), top of glacier (floor), water layer (slippery) and lava (goal tile). The floor and slippery tiles need polishing and need to look more like ice and water, I think.



Standing...



Walking...



Sliding...



Thawing dino and cheering.

Things I still want to add are a pushing animation and more tile variations (especially for floor and level border).

What do you think of it so far?

[PypeBros]

cute. That little dino could use some more body & head movement when walking, though.
My only real critique would be that the side and front sprites are hard to relate to the same 3D character.

Any project to make give the tail its own room so that it can giggle behind the dino when walking up ?

[Facet]

Thoughts: is awesome; kinda push push penguin with a charming pop-archeological backstory .

The tiles especially are great although almost feel a bit over-detailed, po-faced for the theme. I much prefer interior rock tiles to some of the alternate, bordering ones; perhaps the variation there is unnecessary.

Titles feels a little flat so far. Descriptively; looks like the top of a waterfall more so than an ice rink and I can't tell that it's a frozen dino-buddy and not an anthropomorpic beverage-cooler . Idea: can you give the dino little skates. please?

Edit: the water-slick tiles are exclusive from the ice with lava under it. I can see how that makes sense from a game design perspective if blocks are to stop there but it still looks strange.

[PypeBros]

is the side-sprite + top-tiles perspective mix voluntarily, btw ?

[Arachne]

Glad to hear you like it so far!
 

That little dino could use some more body & head movement when walking, though.

Yeah, I'll see what I can do.

My only real critique would be that the side and front sprites are hard to relate to the same 3D character.

Agreed. Maybe his head should be a little narrower in the front view? I'll experiment.

Any project to make give the tail its own room so that it can giggle behind the dino when walking up ?

Yeah, that should be doable.

The tiles especially are great although almost feel a bit over-detailed, po-faced for the theme. I much prefer interior rock tiles to some of the alternate, bordering ones; perhaps the variation there is unnecessary.

Initially, I thought about going with a style closer to an earlier tileset of mine. Would something like this, except with less of a tiled look, be better?

Titles feels a little flat so far. Descriptively; looks like the top of a waterfall more so than an ice rink and I can't tell that it's a frozen dino-buddy and not an anthropomorpic beverage-cooler .

Yeah, I added some more details to the frozen dino, so I hope it's better now. Also tried to make it look more like it's a water layer on top of ice.



I think the speed lines need to be toned down and maybe given a different angle. I also want to see if I can make his closest hind leg bend more naturally.

Idea: can you give the dino little skates. please?

Edit: the water-slick tiles are exclusive from the ice with lava under it. I can see how that makes sense from a game design design perspective if blocks are to stop there but it still looks strange.

Once you're on the slippery tiles, you have no control of the character until you hit a different kind of tile. I wanted to make that lack of control more obvious to the player by adding the sliding animations. I think by adding skates, there would be some implied control, which he doesn't always have.

Not sure what else to do around the lava block that would read well within a single tile space. I agree that it looks a little odd that there's ice around the lava, but no water.

is the side-sprite + top-tiles perspective mix voluntarily, btw ?

It seemed like the easiest choice at the time, but it does look a little jarring. I'll see if I can try to make him look like he's viewed a little more from above.

[Charlieton]

Overall I'm getting a very good retro feel about all this, both from the visuals and concept. Intro screen plays into that, as well. Love it!

Idea: can you give the dino little skates. please?

Once you're on the slippery tiles, you have no control of the character until you hit a different kind of tile. I wanted to make that lack of control more obvious to the player by adding the sliding animations. I think by adding skates, there would be some implied control, which he doesn't always have.

How about having skates as a temporary powerup? With it, the dino would gain better traction and control while on ice. But they would only show up on certain levels. Might be possible to construct other types of puzzles from such a feature.

[Lackey]

A few thoughts:

• I like your rocks and how you put so much detail into the tiles, but you've been doing this style of stone for a while and to me it looks less like natural stone and more like granola. Like a bunch of rocky bits stuck together with something. This might be personal preference since we expect some abstraction with tiles anyway
• That said, the glacier floor looks a lot like stone! Like cobbles, actually.
• Maybe diagonal lines for the icy shine?
• The sprite really fills his square but there's not very much liveliness in his motion. I think if you ditched the outline (it's probably unnecessary since you know he'll always be on backgrounds of a certain brightness) you'd gain some pixels to move him around  more and to fit in some more detail.
• I don't know, even though everything is outlined I don't think it improves the readability of the sprite anyway.
• Consider adding a secondary colour (like a differently coloured underbelly or something) to make the character a little more interesting and a little more readable.

Super quick take on the dino sprite:

Maybe it will give you some ideas. The contrast is probably eye-breaking because I was dealing with bright glare off my laptop screen when I drew this. The main thing I was trying to show was the dinosaur actually having a different posture for the sliding animation, I think it would add a lot.

[Facet]

Titles: swag water effect , Probably the speed lines would indeed look more natural going horizontally. The jaunty angle of the cube still gives it a bit of a bobbing, floating feel as oppose to sliding though and is also a little smaller than the in-game counterpart.

Tiles: yeah, something like those others sans divisions would be nice. +1 Lackey; currently, although individually great it is looking just a bit grey and homogeneously sized overall. More icy blues and larger geological features for interest would be my inclination. I got a bit carried away with a doodle swapping out the icey 'cobbles' for straight-up toony snow for contrast/readibility + tried some ice stuff too.

Once you're on the slippery tiles, you have no control of the character until you hit a different kind of tile. I wanted to make that lack of control more obvious to the player by adding the sliding animations. I think by adding skates, there would be some implied control, which he doesn't always have.

Makes sense, the flailing anim. is a lot of fun. I'm not sure how dino might lace up a pair of skates with those arms anyway

[Bissle]

The tiles are the sprite are very well composed; nothing bad to say about them in and of themselves at all. I have to agree that the floor doesn't really fit the environment you're going for. Something along the lines of Facet's edit would be preferable in my opinion. It looks more.. frozen. The walls don't actually bother me, though they make me think "RPG" more than they do "puzzle game". Strange as this sounds, maybe make them more segmented (i.e the dreaded grid)?

The description of your game sounds fun, by the way. Looking forward to a demo! 

[Arachne]

How about having skates as a temporary powerup? With it, the dino would gain better traction and control while on ice. But they would only show up on certain levels. Might be possible to construct other types of puzzles from such a feature.

Once we hit a limit with the current mechanics we'll consider other options, but I was actually surprised at the number of different puzzle types which could be made from the few, simple mechanics we already have. At the moment, it seems like it'll be a while until we've exhausted all the possibilities, but it's still a bit too early in development to be sure. I'll keep any gameplay ideas in mind in case we need them, though.

• I like your rocks and how you put so much detail into the tiles, but you've been doing this style of stone for a while and to me it looks less like natural stone and more like granola. Like a bunch of rocky bits stuck together with something. This might be personal preference since we expect some abstraction with tiles anyway
• That said, the glacier floor looks a lot like stone! Like cobbles, actually.
• Maybe diagonal lines for the icy shine?

Yeah, I see what you mean about the granola-like rock texture and the stony floor.

• The sprite really fills his square but there's not very much liveliness in his motion. I think if you ditched the outline (it's probably unnecessary since you know he'll always be on backgrounds of a certain brightness) you'd gain some pixels to move him around  more and to fit in some more detail.
• I don't know, even though everything is outlined I don't think it improves the readability of the sprite anyway.

Good points. I guess I've been doing enough outlined sprites in previous projects that it felt more natural at the time. Removing the outlines as well as increases the sprite sizes should give him some more room.

• Consider adding a secondary colour (like a differently coloured underbelly or something) to make the character a little more interesting and a little more readable.

Yeah, good idea.

Super quick take on the dino sprite:


Maybe it will give you some ideas. The contrast is probably eye-breaking because I was dealing with bright glare off my laptop screen when I drew this. The main thing I was trying to show was the dinosaur actually having a different posture for the sliding animation, I think it would add a lot.

Yeah, I really like that edit. I'll see what I can do.

Titles: swag water effect , Probably the speed lines would indeed look more natural going horizontally. The jaunty angle of the cube still gives it a bit of a bobbing, floating feel as oppose to sliding though and is also a little smaller than the in-game counterpart.

I'll try to enlarge the ice cube a little. I ended up drawing it as if it's sliding on its edge, since it seemed like the easiest way to edit the last version. I'll give a different angle a try to see if it works better.

Tiles: yeah, something like those others sans divisions would be nice. +1 Lackey; currently, although individually great it is looking just a bit grey and homogeneously sized overall. More icy blues and larger geological features for interest would be my inclination. I got a bit carried away with a doodle swapping out the icey 'cobbles' for straight-up toony snow for contrast/readibility + tried some ice stuff too.

Very nice! I'll see if I can do something more like that when I redo the tiles.

Currently pixeling on my laptop, so I'll have to deal with any palette issues later, but I tried to change the dino sprite a bit according to some of the advice.



I tried to make his look more consistent with the frontal view, reduced the use of outlines, added a little bit of color to his belly and changed the viewing angle a little. I'm not sure the perspective is changed radically enough to go with the top-down perspective of the tiles, but I'll test it later and try to find a way to either get the tiles to go with it or edit it further. In any case, I'll have to figure out how to offset him with the new size or if the drawing order has to be changed so that he doesn't overlap with the tiles in jarring ways.