Capcom's departure from 2D always saddens me, they mastered sprite art and now it feels like a lost technology. There's a whole bunch of indie games keeping 2D alive and yet none seem to ever match the fluidity of Capcom's 2D, e.g. their fighting games, Breath of Fire, Zelda Minish Cap, etc.
I wish those techniques were passed down a lot more.
The best adventure games are 2D because random walks there always return (Pólya). Not true in 3D, so puzzle games there end up either too easy or too difficult.
Lots to dig in to here — thanks for posting. Internet Archive says the site has been around since ~2010, which is a likely indicator that its current iteration is handmade :)
It had a charm the full game was missing. It reminded me of a puppet show and how large something so low fidelity can feel when filled out by imagination.
I think it was more the folks involved. Real story tellers and weirdos with great taste and somehow supported by organizations that got finished titles published.
Wasn’t there a dive on Freddy Pharkus up on FP recently?
These kind of folks still exist and still create. There is a lot more noise to sort through these days.
soulfulness has nothing to do with 2D or 3D, but more to do with mass market commercialization of games, where the creative vision is not from an individual artist (or very small number of them), but via design by committee, and various managerial interference for profitability and market appeal.
That's why you will find the modern AAA games (which is of course 3D) very soulless. However, the same soul still remains in indie games.
I’d have agreed until the indie gamedev scene adopted the retro/PSX aesthetic in earnest and, for me, it has become an indicator of soulfulness. It’s not nostalgia at all, it feels to me like going back to an era when AAA high-fidelity open world by-the-numbers games wasn’t even in the cards. It’s people making a game aware of their limitations, which is what people did in the 2D era of slow CPUs and doing the most with what you have.
This aesthetic will keep trucking on in the AI era of slop, which will eat pixel art, will eat vector art, will try to eat high-res 3D art (and fail miserably), while only indies will care about the PSX/PS2 aesthetic with its fake dithering and 960x540 viewport size.
I like how so much of this is interactable and has so many game like properties. Makes exploring the website and all the information actually enjoyable and intriguing.
https://cardgallery.tales-tra.com/cards_blue.htm
https://www.deviantart.com/abysswolf/gallery
Literally hundreds of characters. Between this guy and TFA, I feel spoiled.
I wish those techniques were passed down a lot more.
With an infinite expected return time...
https://xvibit.itch.io/xvibit
It had a charm the full game was missing. It reminded me of a puppet show and how large something so low fidelity can feel when filled out by imagination.
Wasn’t there a dive on Freddy Pharkus up on FP recently?
These kind of folks still exist and still create. There is a lot more noise to sort through these days.
That's why you will find the modern AAA games (which is of course 3D) very soulless. However, the same soul still remains in indie games.
This aesthetic will keep trucking on in the AI era of slop, which will eat pixel art, will eat vector art, will try to eat high-res 3D art (and fail miserably), while only indies will care about the PSX/PS2 aesthetic with its fake dithering and 960x540 viewport size.
are we sure that its not biased with older generation that grown up with such tech and have more nostalgic feeling in their hearth ?????
no bias comment here
Go look at the 2d-hd games that Square Enix is putting out