Demo Graphics Downgrade

That is so funny and sad at the same time...

I agree to an extent, I feel like I preferred the previous look. Most of all, that old screenshot was just great, with a lot of colors and everything really popped out.

I will even say that the very first development prototype (the one IGA played on PC on one of the first videos) looked more on point with the colors. They were... more vibrant, I guess.

I would really like an in-depth analysis of the team for the aesthetics. I will explain myself: I kinda hate when people still say "Should have been 3D, it's ugly" since it's not helpful at all to complain about it especially now.

But... I know the team opted for 3D instead of 2D because of costs. 2D = more expensive. But at this point I really wonder... Hollow Knight gets thrown in as a comparison often, and annoying as it may be it actually raises some questions in my mind.

Leaving out all external money (publisher, etc) Hollow Knight was born from 57.000+ dollars (AUS dollars, so I don't really know how much in US dollars but I assume it's a similar amount), Bloodstained from 110 times that amount, more or less. Now, I understand that Bloodstained is bigger in scope, and that the campaign had more physical rewards to pay, but was that kind of 2D art really unusable with that much money? I understand that 3D is cheaper, but honestly some of the current aesthetics we got LOOK cheap. And again, as annoying as it may be cheap 2D looks a bit better than cheap 3D. I'm really interested in why the 2D aesthetic was out of the question even considering all the money raised, compared to other Kickstarted 2D games. Or I could even bring up Dust: An Elysian Tail. Again, much smaller project in scope, but it literally had one guy working on the majority of it so I wonder if that kind of look was really so much prohibitive in proportion.

I know I'm sounding like one of those annoying guys on the internet I don't even like in the first place, but I'm way too much invested in this game now not to take it really at heart.

(All of this 2D talk is purely a pour parler at this point, I know it's no use complaining about it or pretending aesthetics to be 2D instead of 3D. It was estabilished it was going 3D from the get go. It's just a curiosity I had seeing some smaller projects that somehow pulled it off even with a smaller budget).

It is precisely because of "one guy working on the majority of it" that the low budgets are sustainable. The biggest expense Bloodstained faces are hourly wages. The more people you have working on a game, the more exponential the costs. And for the immense amount of content to be made for Bloodstained, a larger team is needed to get the game out in a reasonable time frame.

Also, it's worth noting that Hollow Knight and Dust are the exception, not the rule. You're comparing the top 1% of indie projects, the ones we all talk about because they're a masterclass in achievement made by incredibly talented often jack-of-all-trade developers. The vast, vast majority of low budget indie projects like that don't come off anywhere near the same quality.

lovelydumpling it sounds reasonable. I would like to know some sort of comparison between team size and budget of Bloodstained and older IGAvanias. They often recycled some enemies, but in some games like Aria of Sorrow a lot of things look like they're made from scratch so it would be interesting to compare the projects somehow.

I guess I'm just bummed that I'm not really liking everything I saw and I look back at those fine works IGA and his team managed to pull out with probably not sufficient budget and pressing deadlines.

Well that is a decision I really can't comprehend but then again I'm speaking as a fan/player and not considering the whole business side of things, as I know nothing about it.

Thanks for the replies, I don't go on Discord often so I miss insights like that, but still I deem them pretty interesting.

A lot of pixel art games do sell really well (Shovel Knight, Curse of the Moon, etc.) but they tend to be smaller games.
As much as we love these games, it's hard to deny the public doesn't really look at a pixel game and think "$40 price tag" in 2018.

dareka

bloodstainedfanforums.com/post/58202/thread

lovelydumpling freddythemonkey

Ah.. I'd missed that comment... thanks... hopefully we'll get some answers, then, and my confidence in community-dev communication can be restored.

But honestly, when I saw the comparisons of rooms inside the castle, it was pretty stunning ... it's like they took the trouble to make it look worse. Me smells a graphics downgrade to meet certain hardware specs... I hope I'm wrong... I'd gladly pay double what I did in the kickstarter for such a difference.

The 1st one looks waaay better. The gold pillars actually looks like a metal instead of paint. The dark/light contrast between foreground and background also improves the aesthetic.