Why are so many indie games retro-styled?

[Graf Zahl]

3 hours ago, Noiser said:

Again, I think Dusk success debunks your theory. I mean, I agree it's not a mindset that works on the mainstream\AAA industry. As you said - it's an alien concept to them (which is understandable, that's not what they are looking for). But there's a more diversified public on the indie scene and I think that's the biggest difference from the late 90's and now. You ported a game that doesn't used those limitations with any artistic purpose (and people from that time doesn't had any perspective on that either), so the backlash was more than expected. Now that retro graphics are optional and not a matter of compulsory limits, people can look at them with another eyes and explore all the possibilities that would be unthinkable back then.
 

The thing is, a few years ago a lot of people said that pixel art would not survive on the indie scene. And here we are, it's stronger than ever - with some successful cases even on the big industry (Megaman 9, Sonic Mania). Now we are seeing the first games inspired by the late 90's. I think it's all fine as long as you understand your target audience and have an awareness of the scale of your game. Yes, it will not please everyone and in that sense I agree with you. But that's the case for most indie releases to be honest. Some games also have optional settings to disable or enable effects so that's cool. 

 

All true, you won't get me to disagree here. It's just that the PS1's aesthetics are an utter red flag for me, back in the day I had developed a few games for it myself and worked on one PS1->PC port and as a result developed a strong dislike for Sony and the PS1's technical capabilities in particular. I also found Tomb Raider on the PS1 one of the ugliest games I've ever seen and this is what stuck for me with that platform. So, trying to replicate that aesthetic instead of going where PC games were at the same time (hey, even the Build engine looked better!) just doesn't click with me. Give me all the 90's style games you can make and I'd be a very happy gamer -  but please use something a bit more mature as the baseline - the Q1 engine is from the same year as the PS1 and has aged a lot better.

 

If I'd ever have to see that texture warping again in a newly purchased game I'd request an immediate refund.

 

[ketmar]

oh, the times… i remember the times when we were buning through all tricks in the book and more to make perspective-correct texture mapping work, and now some people are doing the same, only to make it NOT work. it's a… strange feeling.

[hybridial]

36 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

If I'd ever have to see that texture warping again in a newly purchased game I'd request an immediate refund.

 

You've made some good points but clearly your distaste for that is influencing your thinking. Also you probably wouldn't buy it in the first place because, gameplay footage and trailers is a thing, plus if a Dev did this intentionally today they would put it forth as a selling point to a particular crowd.

 

I think the only game on my wishlist that is pretty deliberately going for a PS1 look is Effigy, but I think that looks really cool. I think it helps that it's not just a straightforward FPS, it's being sold as more of a first person adventure game which is still relatively uncommon among these revivals. I don't think it has warping textures though, but it definitely has other elements. What its doing jives for me, it wouldn't jive with everyone but I mean, these games don't have to appeal to everyone to be viable. 

[lazygecko]

45 minutes ago, Graf Zahl said:

 

the Q1 engine is from the same year as the PS1 and has aged a lot better.

 

 

The PS1 first came out in late 1994 in Japan. They had to make affordable consumer-grade 3D hardware with the standards of that era.

[Graf Zahl]

13 minutes ago, hybridial said:

I think the only game on my wishlist that is pretty deliberately going for a PS1 look is Effigy, but I think that looks really cool.

 

Yeah, this definitely looks like PS1 - but sorry, no, these aesthetics don't click with me. Like I said, even the Build games look better than that - including the more obscure ones.

 

[scalliano]

On 9/11/2021 at 2:04 AM, Nikku4211 said:

Y'know what should happen more?

 

People actually making games for real old retro systems.

 

There's not enough SNES homebrew games. The SNESDev Game Jam did just end yesterday, so I have yet to check out what the people had to offer after 3 months of development.

There's loads of those. Granted, SNES is a bit thin on the ground but the old dogs are being kept alive in earnest.

[DJVCardMaster]

-Nostalgia
-Easier to make (comes along with new technologies, now it's easier to transition from 2D to primitive N64/PSX 3D)
-Makes devs think outside the box even more, and get creative at making something "new" (They don't have a major AAA "label" pointing a gun to them telling what to create)
-nowadays it is a money printing machine for sure (but don't pay taxes)

[Noiser]

8 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

So, trying to replicate that aesthetic instead of going where PC games were at the same time (hey, even the Build engine looked better!) just doesn't click with me.

That's fair. To be honest, the few instances where I like the warp effect is on horror games (or purposefully weird games as LSD Dream Emulator). The effect can look very out of place on other genres, in special those who tries to be more realistic.

Edited September 15, 2021 by Noiser

[Nikku4211]

4 hours ago, scalliano said:

There's loads of those. Granted, SNES is a bit thin on the ground but the old dogs are being kept alive in earnest.

Yeah, I already know they exist, but I wouldn't quite go so far as to say there's that much.

 

Though for Game Boy and Colour, GB Studio did expand its homebrew library tenfold or something.

Edited September 15, 2021 by Nikku4211

[Noiser]

On 9/15/2021 at 5:17 PM, Nikku4211 said:

Yeah, I already know they exist, but I wouldn't quite go so far as to say there's that much.

 

Though for Game Boy and Colour, GB Studio did expand its homebrew library tenfold or something.

There are more games for the Sega Genesis. This one was released very recently:
 

 

There's also Irena Genesis Metal Fury, Phantom Gear, ZPF, The Cursed Knight and the 16-bit version of Odallus being developed. Paprium and The Curse of Illmoore Bay got released very recently as well.

Spoiler

My favorite is still Xeno Crisis though. What a beautiful game!

Edited September 17, 2021 by Noiser

[Marisa the Magician]

19 hours ago, ketmar said:

oh, the times… i remember the times when we were buning through all tricks in the book and more to make perspective-correct texture mapping work, and now some people are doing the same, only to make it NOT work. it's a… strange feeling.

The same could be said of the people who insist on replicating cheap CRT visuals or shoddy VHS quality.

[Graf Zahl]

Two other things I'll never understand.

Or that grain filter in Blade of Agony.

 

On the same note, I never could accept that layer on dirt that was plastered over the "Planet Terror" movie as artistic. I found it just distracting. Fortunately the BluRay also has a scratch-free version.

 

I think it has become clear by now that I cannot see much merit in deliberately trying hard to replicate visual degradation caused by limitations of old tech. But apparently there's enough people who find this "charming" or so. It's something I'll never understand, I prefer the kind of retro that acknowledges how games were made in the past but then tries to present them as best as it can be done in 2021 without betraying their roots, not try too hard to make it look like it was right out of the (early) 90's with all the warts and bumps included.

Edited September 16, 2021 by Graf Zahl

[ketmar]

@Graf Zahl but bi/trilinear texture filtering in Doom still looks terrible. ;-)

[Graf Zahl]

Go to the menu, switch it off... :P

 

[ChopBlock223]

3 hours ago, Marisa Kirisame said:

The same could be said of the people who insist on replicating cheap CRT visuals or shoddy VHS quality.

I don't care in the slightest for that, I never found distortion like that appealing back then, and I don't now. Aside from the non-smooth rewind and fast forward, DVD immediately stood out to me as beyond superior to VHS.

And maybe it's because I was mostly playing N64 and PC games in that time period, but I seriously don't understand people desiring wobbly polygons as an intentional aesthetic, it's just crude.

 

I can see wanting to emulate CRT visuals though, as many games had their graphics intentionally designed around the effects of stuff like composite, even though it's not something I care for (I like visible dithering, it never really looks like a checkerboard to me).

[ChopBlock223]

2 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

On the same note, I never could accept that layer on dirt that was plastered over the "Planet Terror" movie as artistic. I found it just distracting. Fortunately the BluRay also has a scratch-free version.

That was somewhat distracting, though I'll say that I really like the grain on old films. If you ever saw the original release of Predator on Blu-Ray, the movie was quite remarkably sullied by careless use of Digital Video Noise Reduction, making Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers look like they're made out of wax in some scenes.

 

I honestly wouldn't mind the use of film grain as an aesthetic choice for a modern work, though it feels pretty slapped on with Blade Of Agony. There's more than just the grain on the film which makes older movies look like they do, too.

[Graf Zahl]

3 minutes ago, ChopBlock223 said:

That was somewhat distracting, though I'll say that I really like the grain on old films. If you ever saw the original release of Predator on Blu-Ray, the movie was quite remarkably sullied by careless use of Digital Video Noise Reduction, making Arnold Schwarzenegger and Carl Weathers look like they're made out of wax in some scenes.

 

Agreed here. but that's natural film grain vs. intentional image degradation of a pristine digital source. That film really looks great with a clean image. I know it wasn't intended to be shown that way, but still...

That version of Predator was an utter disaster, though. It's also image degradation, just in the reverse direction. But the end result is comparable.

One other film where I have seen something similar is Dark City. That one (at least the version I bought many years ago, no idea if there's a better remaster by now) has also been DNR'd to death. What's interesting here is that there is one scene fading in where the filter took a few seconds to kick in, so we got a beautifully natural image reproducing the film grain during the fade, but after that it's that flat lifeless image again. Ugh...

 

 

3 minutes ago, ChopBlock223 said:

 

I honestly wouldn't mind the use of film grain as an aesthetic choice for a modern work, though it feels pretty slapped on with Blade Of Agony. There's more than just the grain on the film which makes older movies look like they do, too.

 

Yeah, that's always the problem with such effects. One needs to understand where they come from to properly emulate them - but then, is that really necessary? More often than not it's a sign of people getting too caught up in details instead of seeing the bigger picture.

[magicsofa]

3 hours ago, Graf Zahl said:

...people getting too caught up in details instead of seeing the bigger picture.

 

I feel like you're getting caught up in your own gripes with certain aesthetic choices. You claim that PS1 is the worst ever, and yet people on itch.io are frequently participating in PS1-themed contests. I personally haven't played any of the games, so I don't know if they have texture warping going on, but the point is that enough people enjoy the style for it to not count as shooting yourself in the foot. Don't get me wrong, I think retro styling can be misplaced and "slapped on" decisions are usually not going to make something great. If it's really failure by design, then let's go back to the actual topic: Why do developers make this choice?

Aside from being easier on the production budget, I think retro styling has its own merit beyond what is popular or economical. Low res graphics look grainy and chunky, and some people like that. And, while not directly tied to the resolution, retro games tend to have a bit less clutter on the screen, whether that's in the HUD or the game world itself. Devs go for retro for a lot of reasons, and yes sometimes they just do it because they want to jump in on a fad. However, I think the main reason other than not having the resources to go hi-fi, is that it looks nice. At least to some of us.

[Wadmodder Shalton]

Many retro-styled 3D games have graphics that resemble the fifth generation consoles and even early 3D accelerated games for the PC from the late-1990s. That's why the compressed texture quality matches that.

For 2D games, most resemble the third & fourth generation game consoles, mostly Action RPGs and 2D Platformers, and are usually programmed in RPG Maker, Game Maker or Unity.

[Graf Zahl]

1 hour ago, magicsofa said:

 

I feel like you're getting caught up in your own gripes with certain aesthetic choices. You claim that PS1 is the worst ever, and yet people on itch.io are frequently participating in PS1-themed contests.I personally haven't played any of the games, so I don't know if they have texture warping going on,

 

Playstation 1 is the worst from a technical standpoint. With the amount of RAM that thing had it was virtually impossible to do a game without making any compromises in quality. Been there, done that several times, the fight against the limited resources always took its toll on the result.

 

I actually developed on that thing, and I admit that this surely affects my memories of it.

 

[lazygecko]

For a 1994 era machine I think the PS1 really held its own remarkably well as the years went on and it had to compete with the N64 and PC. The contemporaries it competed against as it was being designed was the 3DO, Jaguar and Saturn, and it outpaced all those machines in critical aspects with how the market shifted from the mid 90s. Most of the best PS1 titles coming out towards the latter end of the decade didn't really look that far behind the competing platforms. There was a pretty significant jump in technical quality of PS1 titles after Psygnosis released their superior devkit which Sony adopted as the official one.

[Graf Zahl]

Publishers may have gotten better at squeezing more out of it, but even by 1995's standards, 2 MB of main RAM and 1 MB of video RAM (minus the two screen buffers) was already laughable. It couldn't even run Doom without stripping the game down first and then had to use some colored light to make up for the loss of level detail.

 

Yes, it was certainly better than the other consoles you mentioned but during its 6 years of shelf life PCs' capabilities managed to get lightyears ahead.

 

 

[LexiMax]

 

1 hour ago, Graf Zahl said:

Publishers may have gotten better at squeezing more out of it, but even by 1995's standards, 2 MB of main RAM and 1 MB of video RAM (minus the two screen buffers) was already laughable. It couldn't even run Doom without stripping the game down first and then had to use some colored light to make up for the loss of level detail.

 

At the same time the system was sold incredibly cheaply and the library of PSX games absolutely dwarfed their contemporaries.  You could do better with a PC, but a gaming PC was way more expensive.

 

That wide reach is how you get a generation of gamers-turned-developers who participate in game jams that replicate the look of PSX games without any of the era-specific limitations.

Edited September 17, 2021 by AlexMax

[Man of Doom]

So I’d like to start with kind of a personal anecdote:

 

Back when I was really crazy about YoYoGames because it was basically like one of those free games websites except it was basically like a testbed for Game Maker (I was in middle school back then), even at the time, I came to notice that like less than 0.00000001% of all the games there would be featured (even less so when it came to games that involved 3D, especially FPSes).

Plus, most of the stuff I played was essentially babby’s first Doom clone (and like 6 times out of 10, it literally would be a Doom fan game of some kind or at least use sprites from a 90s shooter that wasn’t full 3D like Quake). Most of it wasn’t very well-made, but I very much enjoyed most of them.

 

And due to the limitations of something like Game Maker at the time, the graphics of these types of games often had to be retro in some way.

 

What I’m trying to say is that since making a game has become easier, or more importantly, more accessible over the past several years, of course there’s going to be a glut of retro-styles games and of course it turns out that only a handful of them end up getting noticed.

 

Not only that, it’s not uncommon for these kinds of games to be completely made by one person or even a handful of people that can be counted on one hand. Plus, most of these fledgling often tend to be young adults if not literal teenagers trying their hand at making a game.

 

And that’s not even getting into the effort that even goes into game development itself, a huge component being the graphics and I’m not even talking about just games that go out of their way to look photorealistic (which can take years even for a full game development studio to make). Case in point, I remember Death Trash being in development since like 2016-2018 and it wasn’t until like last month that it went into Early Access.

 

Hell, the big example of a retro-like FPS being massively successful is Dusk, and guess what? There was like only three people who could be considered a dev team, but only one of them pretty much did all the heavy lifting of gaming development as the other two either produced it or made music for it.

Hell, it turned out that the sole game dev for the first Project Warlock title was literally only 19 around the final stages of development prior to its release.

 

 

And it’s not necessarily just the retro FPS being “in vogue” as of now; during the latest Realms Deep, I saw a ton of titles that aren’t even just first-person as there were plenty of platformers, side-scrolling shooters, and even point-and-click adventures.

 

 

So yeah, I’d take this “retro renaissance” of games as less of a “fad” and more of a sort of sub-genre.

 

TL;DR- It’s very much not worth shitting on someone’s first game especially if it’s in the style of a retro title, especially because most of these game devs behind them often skew young who often don’t have the resources or manpower to make a game with Crysis-tier graphics.