BOX ART FROM ANOTHER DIMENSION

Hello everyone. I recently uploaded a game called Dakota the RPG, and I've been thinking about ways to promote it. I was asked about my social media presence and was reminded that I don't really have one. At least not anymore.

I used to though, in the days before hashtags and tiktoks. I would make paper models that you could download, print out, and build yourself called Boxpunx. Do a Google image search for "boxpunx" or "harlancore" if you would like to see what I used to do. And for a while it was a lot of fun, but one day I felt I had reached the summit of what was possible with that project, and not only did I stop making papercraft, I kind of bailed on the internet in general. I was exhausted. Boxpunx was alot of work.

Plus I kind of just wanted to play video games for a while.

The other day I set up an instagram account so I could post new artwork relating to my game and to re-establish that presence. But instead of just posting screenshots or sprite work, which I probably will still do eventually, I thought what could I post instead?

I had been playing around with an AI image generator called PICSART. Initially I thought I wouldn't use any of those images for anything, but some of them were just so cool and interesting I thought maybe I could incorporate them into what I needed to do for instagram.

So the BOX ART FROM ANOTHER DIMENSION project was born. Not an entirely orignal idea, I know, but still it was something fun to do and would give me some things to post on my instagram page and my blog and wherever else I could think of.

I thought I would share the first six here for your potential amusement.

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This one of course is based on the Nintendo black box style, with some alterations to the color palette. For the unaware, "Spectrographx" is an imaginary game console inspired by the Turbographx, hence the spelling. In Dakota the RPG you will encounter a variety of these imaginary consoles.


In the eighties there was a company called IMAGIC that made games for the Atari and the Intellivision. This box art is based on their iconic design. The artwork was created in PICSART, but I added the little cowboy and dog. It represents Dakota and Idaho at the world's fair, an event that happens much later in the game. The MX-98 is an imaginary computer inspired by the MSX and PC-98 Japanese computers.


The classic Atari 2600 style. I don't know why I find the orange version of this design so striking, but I do. Again, the artwork was created with PICSART, with very little modification. The scene depicts Bolt Town, a location in my game that is basically a village of robots. It's not an exact representation, but it's fairly close.


Spoiler alert! So, in Dakota the RPG, there is actually a fully complete RPG based on oldschool games from the 80s. It has a different visual style and plays a bit differently than the main game. It's supposed to be a surprise kind of thing, but I figure if you are reading this, then you deserve to know. Dakota must complete Bitstream Saga in order to progress. The primary reason I released my game early is because I finished the Bitstream Saga portion. So yeah, each segment of the game that I release will have a sort of mini-rpg in and within. My intent is to release three segments total.

I love how this box art turned out, btw. I added the knight in the corner. Bitstream Saga is about a flooded world and yes, there is a scene with a rainbow at the top of a mountain.


Box art from the 1800s? I really just wanted to make an advert for the Worlds Fair that takes place towards the end of the game. I drew the font for the exposition logo. Yes, the Crystal Palace appears in the game. Will it burn to the ground? Maybe. This one was a lot of fun trying to get just right. The Mega-drive and Super CD-ROM logos really complete the image, I think.


Lastly, we have an imaginary Dungeons & Dragons module from way back in the day. What if Dakota the RPG was a tabletop RPG from the 70s? The image depicts a scene from Bitstream Saga. This one was also fun trying to get it to look just right.

That's it for the moment. If anyone else has done anything like this, I would love to see. Take care and thanks for looking!

author=kentona
This is fantastic! The Atari 2600 especially struct a chord with my memory.

Although, not sure what PICSART is but it looks nice.

Thanks for the comment. Picsart is a browser-based layout app that includes an AI image generator. I used it to create the 3 paintings, which were then touched up in Photoshop.