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Prisonscape - a prison RPG, inspired by Chronos Trigger, Oz, The Wire; on Kickstarter

I don't mind chibi/pixel art as much as some people in this thread, but it's really unfitting given the seeming tone of the title. I hope it's just a placeholder.
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
A reply to this thread by the devs that dont have accounts here yet:

Hey guys, thanks for the feedback! We don't have active accounts on NeoGAF yet, so we can't directly answer your questions but here's a short summary.

All of the stuff you have seen is still a very much a work in progress. The art style will stay, as we both love pixel art and we feel it works in the game. They will be improved though, for example the environment needs some shadows and lighting in there. The game will have blood, spit and other bodily fluids in it so it's not at all trying to be cutesy.

The realistic picture in the character screen is a nod to the Final Fantasy series (http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20100215170242/finalfantasy/images/8/8d/FFVII_Menu.jpg).

If you have any questions, post them here, at Twitter (@Prisonscape) or at our webpage www.prisonscape.com. Keep the comments and feedback coming!

Tuomas & Pekka
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Anyone got into the Beta? Did they even send it out already? I applied, still curious to check it out.
 
"Inspired by" is just another term for "well one of our idea guys liked this one game so now we're makin a game". Also pixel art should probably only be used when someone can draw or when a game is funny like Charles Barkley Shut Up and Jam Gaiden.
 

vmode

Neo Member
Hey! Programmer for Prisonscape here, finally got my account verified...

Anyone got into the Beta? Did they even send it out already? I applied, still curious to check it out.

I added you on the alpha testers list Toma, we'll start closed alpha testing at some point (end of this year, beginning of next year).

"Inspired by Chrono Trigger and The Wire" is not something I thought I'd ever see.

Chrono Trigger for graphics, multiple endings and a great story. The Wire, well, it's one of the best TV series ever made.

Interesting setting. Looks like it's being made in rpgmaker or some similar program.

Custom engine.

look pretty interesting can't wait for it to be release

Thanks!

I don't mind chibi/pixel art as much as some people in this thread, but it's really unfitting given the seeming tone of the title. I hope it's just a placeholder.

Not a placeholder, the art style will stay, but the graphics will be improved (lighting, shadows etc.).

And check this out:

grid-battle.gif


Keep the comments and questions coming!

PS. Here's some teasers from the soundtrack: https://soundcloud.com/kc_portman/prisonscape-soundtrack-teaser
 

Toma

Let me show you through these halls, my friend, where treasures of indie gaming await...
Hey! Programmer for Prisonscape here, finally got my account verified...

PS. Here's some teasers from the soundtrack: https://soundcloud.com/kc_portman/prisonscape-soundtrack-teaser

Congrats on finally getting approved and thanks for the alpha signup. Its a bit hard atm for small Indie threads because GAF is flooded with huge threads and smaller threads basically get drowned way too fast.

Cool gif and feel free to post any update or new development in here :)
 

Gloam

Member
Oh boy, this looks interesting. I wonder how deep the Oz stuff goes, some of the deaths in that series go way beyond shanking!
 
oz was great, blood in bloodout, american me, all sorts of great prison movies so there can be a great stories told here..perhaps a bit tricky so it should be interesting to play
 

Stumpokapow

listen to the mad man
I found one of the dev's accounts in the approval queue and processed it. So, uh, Pekka, yo. If the other dev has an account in the approval queue, let me know the username and I'll approve that too.
 

Kade

Member
Hey! Programmer for Prisonscape here, finally got my account verified...



I added you on the alpha testers list Toma, we'll start closed alpha testing at some point (end of this year, beginning of next year).



Chrono Trigger for graphics, multiple endings and a great story. The Wire, well, it's one of the best TV series ever made.



Custom engine.



Thanks!



Not a placeholder, the art style will stay, but the graphics will be improved (lighting, shadows etc.).

And check this out:

grid-battle.gif


Keep the comments and questions coming!

PS. Here's some teasers from the soundtrack: https://soundcloud.com/kc_portman/prisonscape-soundtrack-teaser

Really like what I see. Keep it up!
 

terrisus

Member
Chrono Trigger for graphics

But, aside from them both being 2D, it looks absolutely nothing at all like Chrono Trigger.

I also find it irritating when Kickstarter devs namedrop other games, especially when their product does not appear to have any similarities to the referenced title

"Inspired by" is just another term for "well one of our idea guys liked this one game so now we're makin a game".

Seriously, games need to stop using the "Inspired by" line, since it just makes the game look even worse in comparison to the amazing games that are usually listed.
 

Poke

Neo Member
The extreme gore and friendly, pixel graphics looks to make an extremely interesting combination. I can't wait to play this, guys!
 

pekkak

Neo Member
I found one of the dev's accounts in the approval queue and processed it. So, uh, Pekka, yo. If the other dev has an account in the approval queue, let me know the username and I'll approve that too.

Thanks mate for the approval! Appreciate it.

I'm the guy who's responsible for game design of Prisonscape and I can finally answer some of the questions and criticism we have here. So, here we go:

oz was great, blood in bloodout, american me, all sorts of great prison movies so there can be a great stories told here..perhaps a bit tricky so it should be interesting to play

We get a lot of ideas and inspiration from these movies. We try to gather ideas from classic prison movies, books and TV shows and create them into mini stories in the game, but we also want to avoid too many cliches and want to bring something new to the mix.

Oh boy, this looks interesting. I wonder how deep the Oz stuff goes, some of the deaths in that series go way beyond shanking!

Some of deaths in Oz are incredibly clever! There will be a lot of creative death scenes and surprises in our game, too. These pixel prisoners have all the time in the world to scheme nasty accidents for their fellow inmates.

As what comes to the inspiration part, I think user More_Badass said it best:

For example, when I read a game is influenced by Dark Souls, I don't think "Oh, it's going to be a Gothic fantasy action RPG." I think that the game in question will be challenging, will have a focus on exploration and atmosphere, will have combat and gameplay where caution and playing defensively is important.

So by invoking the name of a popular game, a developer can easily and quickly give a player ideas of potential concepts and gameplay mechanics.

We're not comparing Prisonscape to such brilliant classics as Oz, The Wire and Chrono Trigger. They INSPIRE us, give us ideas and concepts that might show in the end product. For example, Oz probably has the best dialogue and character stories ever seen in a TV show, and that show truly inspired us in making a prison game.

But of course this game is a living thing - concepts and mechanisms change and we come up with new ideas while ditching some of the old, non-working ones. In case of Chrono Trigger, we already have ditched a lot of ideas we straight up stole from the game, e.g. the battle system. Many ideas have come from people who are interested in the game and we definitely listen to constructive feedback.

Lately we've been mostly working on stuff that's under the hood - basic features, item and environment manipulation, dialogue and job (quest) system, and so on. Currently we want to concentrate on building the foundations so that once we decide to start pre-order (or possible crowdsourcing) campaign we actually have a working version of the game instead of just concept art.

Many here have also criticized the art style. We knew from the beginning that this is the style we want to go with for two reasons: we grew up with pixel graphics games so we all love this style, and also because it's fairly quick and cheap to produce. I personally think that there are so much more to a game than graphics, and for example ADOM and Dwarf Fortress are great examples of awesome games without any proper graphics. And the stuff you see in our devlog and the alpha video are still very much work in progress. There will be polish!

But yeah, if you have any further questions or critique about the game, put it all here and we'll give you the best answer we can.
 

pekkak

Neo Member
We've been working on the UI lately, I think it came out pretty cool. Here's the character screen:

YigwZ0T.png


Inventory (still work in progress):

QCJv45y.png


Job journal:

yPuretY.png


Battle menus. These will probably change dramatically, as we're moving on to grid-based combat with lots of new features.

JE34VFE.png
 
It looks nothing like Chrono Trigger.

And why do the field maps, menus, and fonts all use different pixel resolutions? Pick one and stick with it.
 

pekkak

Neo Member
It looks nothing like Chrono Trigger.

And why do the field maps, menus, and fonts all use different pixel resolutions? Pick one and stick with it.

It isn't supposed to look like Chrono Trigger, it was just inspired by it.

The fonts are something we've been thinking about for a while now. We got some feedback on this issue before, and I think we have to consider unifying the font.
 
I like everything so far, the chibi style should get a little bit less chibi though IMO.

The menus and the portraits are great , the premise and the ambition is also pretty amazing.

I would easily buy this.
 

pekkak

Neo Member
I like everything so far, the chibi style should get a little bit less chibi though IMO.

The menus and the portraits are great , the premise and the ambition is also pretty amazing.

I would easily buy this.

Hopefully the chibi will look less chibi once we put more violence in the game.

Looks really interesting so far, although I'm not a fan of that time limit...

There isn't time limit, really. There are "turns" in which you can do stuff, but after it's finished you'll just start another turn. I personally hate games with too tight time limits and I really don't want to put them in the game.
 
Oh wow, I hadn't been keeping up with this thread, didn't know the devs were on GAF. Belated welcome to the forums! Your game looks and sounds so intriguing and complex, I'm highly anticipating it.

Read your blog, good luck with the exposure and appealing to those "other" gamers! Hopefully threads like this help as much as they can. Are you on TIGForums?
 

Enco

Member
Not sure if this would fit in the story but having to plan and carry out an escape would be amazing.

It could even be a separate mode where the objective is to escape. How you do it would be up to you.

Always wanted that in a game..
 
D

Deleted member 10571

Unconfirmed Member
While I'm not a huge fan of the character art at this point, the premise sounds really interesting, and the gameplay graphics look fun :)

I wonder though, will this be a story-driven game, or rather a sandbox-y thing? Do well planned prison escapes play a role?

If not, somebody please make an amazing prison break game.

Edit: heh, Enco mah bro :D
 

pekkak

Neo Member
Oh wow, I hadn't been keeping up with this thread, didn't know the devs were on GAF. Belated welcome to the forums! Your game looks and sounds so intriguing and complex, I'm highly anticipating it.

Read your blog, good luck with the exposure and appealing to those "other" gamers! Hopefully threads like this help as much as they can. Are you on TIGForums?

We have a devlog on TIG, but it's not updated very frequently. We mostly use Twitter (@Prisonscape), IndieDB and our own website for updates.


Not sure if this would fit in the story but having to plan and carry out an escape would be amazing.

It could even be a separate mode where the objective is to escape. How you do it would be up to you.

Always wanted that in a game..

The story of the game is the only thing we want to keep a secret at this point, but
wouldn't prison game be a bit boring without escape?

I wonder though, will this be a story-driven game, or rather a sandbox-y thing? Do well planned prison escapes play a role?

Story-driven. The main story is quite linear, but since the game has a lot of RPG elements, there are different ways of doing things. Here's a short blog post about this:

http://www.indiedb.com/games/prisonscape/news/getting-the-job-done
 

pekkak

Neo Member
We decided to do a small overhaul on the graphics and I think the game looks much better after this. Here are some comparison GIFs (click for larger image):

Cells



Rec area



Phones



Of course we are still far away from done and the environment looks really static. More inmates need to be added and they need to do something (talk to each other, play dominos, etc.) and the environment also needs some movement like flies flying around the garbage bins, rats running around TV's showing soap operas.
 

pekkak

Neo Member
Mixing different resolutions/pixel densities is a great way to look awful.

The difference is only between the UI and the gameplay graphics, but we've had so much feedback about this that we should probably consider changing the UI to same resolution...

Also you know what didn't have a movement grid? Chrono Trigger.

The first version of the battle system was very similar to CT, but it was quite boring so we decided to spice it up with grid and some strategic aspects. Here's a blog post about it:

http://www.indiedb.com/games/prisonscape/news/street-fighting-man-aka-the-fighting-mechanics-reprised

Other than that, looks good for something so early.

Thank you!
 

pekkak

Neo Member
I created a small album of images that introduce the basic features of the game.The screenshots are only from the first area of the game, which is the county jail where the player waits on sentencing. We're currently working on the second area, which is the actual prison. There are 4 areas or "chapters" in the game in total.

On our way

u8kUP46.gif


Not-so-warm welcome

JSygDHf.png


Taking advantage

Bigger and badder inmates will take advantage of you by stealing everything you got.

gcploeE.png


You're nobody

Inside, you are nobody until you do something noteworthy.

AB9mDHL.png


Credibility and reputation

Get some credibility by doing jobs for other inmates with power.

eeNkLSu.png


Jobs

Your notes will help you to remember what you promised to do.

JyImfdZ.png


Character screen

Develop your character by training statistics, skills and by gaining reputation among other inmates.

SzitAJ2.png


Inventory

Prisons are filled with items that are useful while doing time. Some of them are "hot" contraband and will be confiscated by the guards when found.

J26hHI7.png


Crafting

Gather items around the prison and craft them into deadly weapons or into handy tools.

vlVLFQT.png


Fighting

Fight other inmates to get credibility, to avoid snitching or just for the sake of it.

hajLkpe.gif


The Warden

Powers higher than you can make harsh decisions for budget cuts.

Dzc60rc.png


Training

Train yourself while locked up by reading and getting fit.

ejHTAen.png


Solitary confinement

Sometimes you just cannot avoid being sent to the hole.

pUxJIn6.png


Free time

All these activities can be done during free time in the prison... or you can just watch some soap operas or nature shows on the TV.

AYWSMfU.gif
 

pekkak

Neo Member
We've been working hard to get the alpha version out in the upcoming months and the basic features are pretty much done. Next we'll start a complete overhaul on combat system to make it more interesting and versatile.

We're also trying to get into EGX Rezzed's Leftfield indie showcase to get some extra attention from gamers, Here's one of the cutscenes from the game from which one can see that the game is not only about boring and repetitive prison life...

Ezws7RN.gif
 
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