SEERIC'S PROFILE

I wanted to make some enemy sprites for VX Ace, but I am absolutely atrocious at understanding shading and pretty bad at drawing in general, so for the last two days I decided to start with something simple while still creating some challenge for myself by making a small 'Retro Pack' limited to the NES palette and general sprite color limitations. I also decided that sticking to smaller canvases would be a good place to start, so even the biggest enemy of the lot initially fit inside a 40x40 pixel canvas and I simply resized them for VX Ace (Pyxel Edit is a wonderful program and made this extremely easy to do without any undesired effects).

A lot of the enemies in this pack have both a standard and a 'Classic' version and (in most cases) this just means that the Classic version has absolutely no black in the actual sprite because it's intended to be used with a pure black background to fill in the gaps like in many actual NES games. I also wanted to try to go with a 'modern setting' feel and a 'cute but weird/gross' look for the enemies in part because I simply really like that setting and style and in part because I've been very nostalgic for the Mother series lately.

At any rate, enough rambling, here's some pictures of the enemies in this "Retro Battler Pack":

Can you please explain what this game being in 'alpha' means? I see you've marked the game as complete, but is it not actually finished or do you mean that the main storyline is done, but it still needs some bug testing and/or that you plan to continue adding side content to the game or something else entirely?

I'm definitely on board for this version of the event. I have no faith whatsoever in my ability to make any songs/graphics which aren't utterly atrocious and my schedule's going to be somewhat busy in the near future, but it's still a fun and meaningful way to get some practice in.

It seems like most people are entirely fine with one or two parts of the creation process, but not necessarily the entire thing, so maybe the solution is to turn this into more of a communal event?

Basically, everyone who participates would have to make a full game of some sort using only the assets created in this event, but there could be a collective pool of assets.

For example, everyone participating would need to create at least one sound effect and at least one song, but they would be able to use songs and sound effects submitted by others as well as their own; this would mean everyone still does something outside of their comfort zone (ex: make music) and at worst nobody ends up using the assets.

As for the graphical segment, each person could be required to submit a minimum of X amount of at least one 'type' of graphical asset (ex: 1 full tileset or 10 enemies or 5 animations or 5 character sheets or some other relatively low balance of numbers); those who are particularly good at creating graphics might submit a bit of everything while those who aren't artistically inclined still would need to provide a decent amount of assets for the community to draw from in at least one category. However, one thing to note is people would definitely need to announce what type of graphical assets they plan to provide in advance since otherwise there would be the risk of ending up with something like everyone submitting enemy sprites and absolutely no tilesets.

With this system, everyone still needs to participate in every major aspect of making a game, those who want to do absolutely everything on their own still can (though they should still submit their assets to the community pool), it becomes a mixture of a community and an individual undertaking, and everyone moves out of their comfort zones by creating at least something for each segment while still having a safety net of sorts by being able to draw from the collective resource pool created by everyone participating.

So, after getting the good ending in this game I have to say that I honestly think Stones of Destiny - The Final Return may have been unjustly overlooked and possibly written off far too early.

It's very difficult to tell if this game is an intentional, methodical deconstruction of an RPG down to its most basic aspects or if it is just random and accidentally happens to be rather clever; I am currently leaning towards the former if only because there is such a deliberate, consistent feel to the way the game plays out, which tends to be absent in the types of games this game initially presents itself as.

The characters are beyond paper-thin, dungeons tend to consist of at most three small rooms, combat is extremely frequent and rarely revolves around anything other than spamming your strongest attacks, saving frequently and in multiple slots is more or less mandatory, and all of this works to the game's advantage. There are several parts to this game which seem to be the result of legitimate carelessness or laziness, such as many item descriptions and several skill descriptions not being translated into English and at least one room where it is possible to walk off into the darkness surrounding it, but these are overall relatively minor concerns.

The entire game can be finished within 5 hours and is probably well worth it for anyone looking for something both very unique (or is it?!) and very bizarre. The true ending alone is worth it.