u/SuperButters64

Hey guys! Been working on this Earthbound inspired indie game about depression... (bet you never heard of that before!) Upon playing the new Earthbound Beginnings remake and remembering how sick Earthbound's iconic backgrounds are, I decided to try implementing something similar in my game too! I think these came out pretty cool, but I wanna hear your guys opinions if they carry that Earthbound vibe to them! Or what I can do to improve them to match that feeling. Right now, it just randomly generates backgrounds so some of them will look kinda ugly. I'm gonna edit the ones it generates that I like then pick from those to be actually used in the game. If the game looks like your kinda thing, then check out STRIKEOUT and leave a wishlist!
Unrelated question, but now that I'm done EBB I wanna replay Earthbound itself. It's been a long time, should I play the Mother 2 DX hack or just stick with vanilla? I haven't played it in years but remember most of it.

Hey guys! A few months ago, I made a post on here wondering why I had gotten barely any wishlists on my baseball themed RPG inspired by Earthbound and Undertale. I got a TON of feedback on it, with a lot of it being very harsh... But fair. People criticized the games name for being very generic (room rpg), the game being way too harsh to look at (the game used a two-tone palette that was rather grating on the eyes), and the game seemingly having no story or reason to play.

For reference, here is the old description:
"room rpg is an action-packed turn-based RPG incorporating both skill based mechanics and in-depth RPG strategy, featuring high octane bullet battles and skill customization allowing you to perfect your build for whatever situation may come and for whatever dastardly, strange foe you must pummel. Starring Michael Softwindows, the worst baseball player at his middle school, a complete failure on a quest for redemption. He would really rather go back to sleep, but with his trusty talking baseball bat anything is possible. Including even more debilitating failure."

The game is very story and character driven, and I made a stupid mistake in thinking that not advertising it heavily in that aspect would pleasantly surprise players when they discover that themselves and that people would want to play anyway due to the battle system. That was a dumb mistake and I'm not sure what I was thinking. One of the games major themes is how hard it can be to put your soul out and be able to genuinely display your heart and not hide behind an ironic mask, and ironically enough that's exactly what I was doing by not advertising that part of the game. I wrote the game's story about myself and my struggles, so you can see that it's something that I still struggle with. But I want people to get interested in that part and play it for that. I'm still scared about if I'm able to execute that part well or not or if I'll just look silly, and try to not talk too much about it. In fact, the other team member (musician) thought that the game was 100% shitpost joking too and didn't realize that there was a genuine underbelly to it because of how afraid I was to put that stuff out there. I'm trying to get better and more confident with that, which is something the protagonist has to do as well, so it's a deeply personal story that I was doing a disservice by not mentioning at all. I didn't touch upon this too much in the description, but I hope it's enough to intrigue people. Let me know if you think this is communicated well enough and interesting, or if I should go heavier on that.

In regards to the art, you can still see the old style in the trailer (I need to make a new one.) I converted all of the hundreds of sprites into full color, which I think makes everything significantly easier on the eyes and nicer to look at. When I showed off some of the art, people said that I still was very bad at color composition so I'm trying to improve on that too... I personally think the game looks for the most part rather nice, but would appreciate any insights on that front too.

A big thing people noted was that the name, "room rpg", sounded very generic, unconfident, and tells you nothing about the game. The idea was that the games setting is all in one boy's childhood room. This was a spin on how Earthbound subverted the common fantasy setting of RPGs of ye olden times, but now that subversion is all too common place. Modern day America is no longer a unique setting, so I wanted to take a new twist on it where I make every area a part of his bedroom, which allows you to learn more and more of his past as you explore it. I think this is still pretty unique, but it's way less instantly understandable than "oh this is an RPG about baseball." So I changed it to STRIKEOUT, which conveys the baseball theme and gameplay, and also feels like the vibes of a name like Earthbound. People told me I should call it "HOMERUN" instead, but there's a million games already with homerun in their name, and also the character is actually really bad at baseball... so I think STRIKEOUT fits better. Plus, striking enemies out is a key gameplay mechanic too.

The biggest complaint was with the thumbnail/capsule art. I did it myself and it was ROUGH, and likely the main reason why I wasn't getting much traction. I changed it to be just a simple logo and characters that makes it pretty obvious that this is a pixel art Undertale-esque RPG, at least in my opinion. I'm probably going to pay an artist to draw one, but for now I think this is significantly better.

Thanks for taking the time to read, and if you have any feedback please leave it here! Would love to make it even better, and I'm still not sure if it's any good. I'm a bit afraid that still after doing all this work to try and fix it, it's still not particularly interesting or something people would like to play. But it is what it is if so. I love the game and I think it will be something that can be special to people, and I hope the way that it's packaged now shows that off a little better.

Link to BEFORE/AFTER images!

Hey guys! A few months ago, I made a post on here with the steam page to my game room rpg , a baseball themed Undertale-like RPG, asking why the game wasn't getting much wishlists or traction. A lot of people had a lot of different things to say, but primarily the criticism was about the artwork being rough to look at with the two toned color palette I was using. I thought that this made the games art unique and cool... But was it really unique in a good way? Or a bad way...
It had me thinking... Would **I** want to play a game with that art style? And I'm not sure if I would... I believe I have a really good to great game on my hands and that the style IS holding back a lot of people from wanting to check it out.

So I've went back over all of the hundreds of sprites in the game to add full color to them, which I think looks significantly better and much more readable. I'm not quite done yet, and some stuff in the images I have put may have aspects that I haven't quite gotten to, but I am pretty happy with the updates so far. I think the game looks quite nice now, and many more people would be down to try it.

HOWEVER... Quite a few of my small community and my friends have said that they prefer the original look of the game, finding it more unique. Which leaves me a little bit torn... So I wanted to ask outsiders which is better. More stylistic/Unique, or more generally pleasing/readable?

There was some other feedback from my original post which I am going to follow, particularly that my steam page itself was.. Well, bad, frankly. And that the game name, room rpg.. Sounds generic and uninspired. I am listening to all of that too, and the game will have a full steam page do over and a new name that I think will be much more appealing! But I'll do all of that once im fully done with implementing all of the new art.

Really curious what you guys think, and if you saw the old style you wouldn't have checked the game out but now you would be more inclined to.