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Will we ever see indie games that'll capture the fifth gen era?

R

RP912

Banned
Most indie games nowadays has a 16 bit/8 bit charm to them. Games like The Binding of Isaac and Super Meat Boy captures the whole essence of gaming in the early 90s. I'm wonder will we ever try to tackle on fifth gen games from the ps1 era? I'm talking about blocky characters, bad camera angles, etc....or will indie games continue to focus more on 2d sidestrolling type of games during the 16 bit/8 bit era. Is it because of nostalgia or just simple to create, because it would be awesome to see a indie game try to take on games such as Final Fantasy 7, Crash Bandicoot, and even Metal Gear Solid.

What do you think?
 
I feel like as we are on the precipice of this happening. Its all about the people who grew up with those games wanting to make similar experiences, we just need more of those people becoming involved with Indie development and I'm sure we'll see a rise of these games.
 
What other reason is there to make a game with bad camera angles and blocky characters other than cashing in on nostalgia? At least "8bit" games can be beautiful (like Shovel Knight for example). It's an artstyle basically. I guess "blocky" could be one too though.
 
Eh, 8/16 bit games actually have a visual charm and timeless look as opposed to early 3D games. A lot of the early 3D games are just awful to look at now.
 
It wouldn't work without the nostalgia. Besides, it's just a waste of time when it's easier to make them look better.
 
It's a lot easier to make pixel art look good then to make low polygon art look good. It's not that it can't be done, but there's quite a chance that your game is going to look ugly. 2D games are as worthwhile as 3D games, but low poly 3D doesn't really have any unique advantage over getting your game to look as good as possible.
 
Nbz said:
I feel like as we are on the precipice of this happening. Its all about the people who grew up with those games wanting to make similar experiences, we just need more of those people becoming involved with Indie development and I'm sure we'll see a rise of these games.
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I agree. I'd love to see some creative low poly 3D platformers from indy developers. I have a feeling will be seeing some this generation.
 
There's little to no point making really blocky 3d models. Unlike 2d art, they are very hard to make look convincingly good. Basically, they suck.

And besides, unlike 2d sprite based games, which had quite a long lifetime, "blocky" models only really had a single gen of home console life, almost completely beginning and ending in the PS1 era.
 
I think the closest you'll get to that is chibi-esque models that are reminiscent of games like Bravely Default or the DS FF3 and 4 remakes. That artstyle seems to give off that Gen 5 vibe.
 
It didn't have crappy camera angles or blocky characters, but The Maw felt like an N64 game to me. It's disappointing that Twisted Pixel hasn't made a sequel to it yet.
 
Sendou said:
What other reason is there to make a game with bad camera angles and blocky characters other than cashing in on nostalgia? At least "8bit" games can be beautiful (like Shovel Knight for example). It's an artstyle basically. I guess "blocky" could be one too though.
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To be fair..there's some 8 bit games that have an insane difficulty curve to cash in on nostalgia. It comes with the territory of capturing games from that era. Some blocky games from the ps1 era still look gorgeous in it's own way like Spyro.
 
There are loads of low poly games now (which is the PS1 blocky era) and in the works. There are loads of non-pixelart indie games and indie first person games. Not that many 3rd person ones, though. Maybe you're just not looking hard enough.
 
268x268.resizedimage


?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3uG6ntdrDL8

Just the first one that came to mind, there are others.
 
Messofanego said:
There are loads of low poly games now (which is the PS1 era) and in the works. There are loads of non-pixelart indie games and indie first person games. Not that many 3rd person ones, though. Maybe you're just not looking hard enough.
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Could be that. Most of the games I seen on early access and from word of mouth are games that still capturing the 2D era.
 
Can we refer to that as the 32-bit/64-bit gen? I had no clue what the hell fifth gen was.

Anyways it would be pretty cool if someone did a Virtua Fighter style fighter, or even a first person adventure with flat shaded polygons.
 
I think the flat shaded art style is making quite the comeback right now since that look is fairly easy to produce and can look stunning in 1080p with nice lighting.

I'm working on a kart/arcade racer atm where I'm using that style.

When it comes to indie, it's always about bang for the buck. Pixel Art is fairly easy get into, as is flat shaded low poly 3d art.
 
If we're talking visual style, as other have said, we are starting to see the low-poly visual style start popping up. In terms of gameplay, like RPGs, platformers, racing game? Eh, I'm not too sure. Most of those genres have been well served in earlier and later eras in gaming, so aside from the visual style I don't really see anyone adopting early fifth gen era gameplay mechanics or improving upon them.
 
RP912 said:
This is what I'm talking about :D. Thanks for the link.
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Of course, on this project, that trailer is a bit old, the Kickstarter for the game went extremely well, so it's coming to PC, WiiU, one of the two composers on board is Grant Kirkhope (who did the music for the Banjo-Kazooie games and Goldeneye 64, among others), will have split-screen co-op on both consoles, online co-op on PC. Hub world area to connect stages.

Here's some recent music shown:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZxXZKcxiTA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRlMPcL-VZw
 
RP912 said:
This is what I'm talking about :D. Thanks for the link.
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A hat in time is quite blatantly 6th gen (wind waker) based. If your question was "will indie games ever go to 3d" , sure, that was easy to answer. A Hat in time skipped the really blocky gen for good reason.
 
Linkstrikesback said:
A hat in time is quite blatantly 6th gen (wind waker) based. If your question was "will indie games ever go to 3d" , sure, that was easy to answer. A Hat in time skipped the really blocky gen for good reason.
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I'd say it's stylized like a 6th gen game, but it's gameplay is very decidedly like a mixture of 5th and 6th gen, being a collect-a-thon and featuring the sort of hub-ish platformer style that was more popular in the 5th generation than 6th generation, but with some 6th generation improvements.
 
We need more games like Drift Stage!

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Hi res gen 6 graphics could be a gold mine. Kinda strange that some of us are nostalgic for the low poly look of games from that time.

Pre rendered backgrounds need to make a comeback as well.
 
Tizoc said:
What's the release for A hat in time? Been waiting forever for that game =X
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They haven't announced yet, still working on it. They post an update every few months, and it is playable in beta now, so they must be closer being out of alpha.

From the newest update they had new screenshots though, but this last update was in December:

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This topic reminded me to check-up on it, I know there's some other polygonal styled games and some games designed in the spirit of games from the 5th gen, but it's still a growing thing.
 
Trago said:
We need more games like Drift Stage!

tumblr_n80dawrRP61tfir0mo1_1280.gif


Hi res gen 6 graphics could be a gold mine. Kinda strange that some of us are nostalgic for the low poly look of games from that time.

Pre rendered backgrounds need to make a comeback as well.
Click to expand...

That looks more like a 3Difictational of outrun style 4th gen games
 
You'd think with rising game budgets, many devs would have jumped on this train. Maybe it's harder to nail that look? I'll bet it's hard to emulate something like those texture warping you see in a lot of PSX games.
 
What is kind of trending/tickling the fancy of in the indie scene in terms of 3D is low poly.

2D art in any form will always be popular and I think this low poly as well. Indies can't produce 3D assets like AAA because there just isn't the time for it and amount of people to do it. Art asset creation is the most time consuming and expensive process so indies really need to roll with what they can afford and be able to ship in a reasonable time frame. I think we'll see a trend going forward with low poly and minimal 3D models but that's it.

The problem with low poly is that it all begins to look the same in my opinion, there's only so much you can do with a constrained amount of faces/polygons so not all games will opt for it if they want a unique visual identity.
 
I'd love to see it happen. In my opinion, the main things that hold it back are:

1. Making a retro 3D game balance the line between "retro" and "crap" is a lot harder than it is with a 2D game (specifically, a 3D game with a very low polygon count that is intentionally and wholly replicating the style of early PS1, Saturn and N64 games, and not games where they JUST have a minimalist/no texture style, or JUST have a low polygon count)
2. Making 3D art and assets is a lot more time and effort than it is to make 2D art.

It'll happen more frequently for sure, though - Drift Stage is an awesome example of tackling something similar. Once people whose breakout videogame hobbies started with the fifth generation of games get more into games design, I think it'll happen a ton more.

thekonamicode said:
I'm still waiting on the indie scene to take on the Tiger Electronics handheld era of non-consoles.
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I'm sure you're joking, but years ago we made a game called One Man and His Dinosaur, and the bonus stages took place on Tiger Electronic-inspired stages. That was fun to draw. :D
 
the n64/ps1 kids just need to grow up and get passionate about making games similar to the ones they play during their childhood

it'll happen soon. during this gen, I'd say.
 
amnesiac said:
Eh, 8/16 bit games actually have a visual charm and timeless look as opposed to early 3D games. A lot of the early 3D games are just awful to look at now.
Click to expand...

Not to my eyes. I love how early 3d looks, also prerendered backgrounds, tank controls, static camera and all.
 
Yes and it is already happening. They look better but so do retro games now. I'm really interested in seeing more pre-rendered games. I hope any remake of FFVII includes that. I'm doubtful though.
 
Anth0ny said:
the n64/ps1 kids just need to grow up and get passionate about making games similar to the ones they play during their childhood

it'll happen soon. during this gen, I'd say.
Click to expand...

I doubt it's that. It has more to do with engines like Unity and UE4.0 becoming easier to use and people finding a style that's feasible for an indie production.

Even making lowPoly games requires you to make 3d models, do the UVMaps, texture them, animate them, etc. - the flat shaded style allows you to cut 2 of these processes out (for the most part), which already saves a ton of time.
 
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