Joseph Acosta 3 days ago
Not looking hot for you guys without a sponsor, but I talked among my friends and showed them this(two of whom are artists, one of which is a music composer who's worked with virt and spoken with professional sprite artists, all generally retro RPG lovers) and this is what we agreed on is generally a major kill to any interest in the desire to play a game like this. Please take this as constructive criticism - it's extremely, extremely harsh crit, but it hits upon areas that are literally HUGE issues with what you have.
While your model is fine - "Gamisodes", provided proper content, aren't so bad. However, do you do all of your art in house? All the spritework, actual digital art, between the five of you? Because that's murdering the appearance of the game. You have no actual professional art team or even exceptional talent(please do not attempt to say you do). Your poster image is basically aliased lines with no shading, no sense of professionalism. Chrono Trigger's boxart? High-energy fight, crisp, clean lines and agreeable color. Yours? Flat colors, broken faces, and -aliased- lines.
On top of that, the spritework is nothing, nothing like the games of old. Heck, there's more oomph in the blockmouthed sprites of FF6 casting a spell than the motion of anything shown in your kickstarter pilot and the areas are absolutely HORRID. This is not the kind of thing you show off in a 200k Kickstarter, it's the kind of thing you show off a forum thread about a pre-pre-pre-Alpha. Judging from a picture, all your spritework is also in-house, and it's killing you, badly. I'm not trying to break up your team or 'commercialize' anything, but unless you're -EXTREMELY- talented, you're going to need to requisition some actual talent when making your first foray into indie games, especially with a project of this scope.
I'm not hating on your game. I love RPGs, but you're catering ultra hard to the 'old-school' crowd(and really, time gates, a sagely old man named Gaspar? Most old-school RPG players aren't gonna go OH MAN, LIKE IN CHRONO TRIGGER, we're going to go Really? Why? Can't you come up with your own dynamic?) You don't have to slap a game full of homages and winkwinknudgenudges to old RPGs so blatantly to bring about the good feelings, you have to evoke the retro nostalgia response and make it stand on its own two feet.
I urge you, beg you - don't just cast aside these critiques. Don't just say, "Well, that's your opinion.". If you don't address stuff like this, Tempus Chronicle is just going to be a bad RPG that wants to be more but fell down the stairs into a knifevat of shark acid. Like... look at the RPG system you displayed. LOOK AT IT. Now look a single battle of Lunar 1/2. Of Final Fantasy II. A God-beast battle in Seiken Densetsu III.
If you really love retro, if you really are committed - you'll know exactly where you're going wrong, and you won't take steps that end up insulting the memory of retro games.
I wish you the best.
, only a world pussy tour could rival such majestic project.
