When I was watching the trailer for Arco at Summer Game Fest, I thought to myself, those trees sure look like something Franek would draw. Sure enough, the environment artist from Kingdom: Norse Lands is indeed one of the 4 developers behind this story-rich tactical turn-based RPG, mesmerizing us with breathtaking scenes of grandiosity.

I played the demo on Steam (macOS, Windows) and enjoyed the unique fighting system, a blend of turns and active pause. You plan your moves based on telegraphed actions and watch the turn play out in real-time. As for the full game—potentially coming out this year—I’m looking forward to experience the Tarantino-esque intertwining of the “3 tales forged in bloodshed, laced with magic, and united by revenge.”

Noah Cai, better known as Pixel Architect on YouTube, has been posting inspiring devlogs of Chef RPG to his channel for almost 4 years now. As a former architectural designer, he brings a specialized set of processes to his ever-improving pixel art skills.

Chef RPG is clearly inspired by Stardew Valley, expanding it with many activities such as hunting and cooking mini-games as you manage your very own restaurant in a quaint, seaside town.

We just received a new trailer for the game along with a September 12 release date (Early Access). You can wishlist the game on its Steam page.

As a kid I went bonkers over any game with a built-in editor, from designing a pinball table in Macadam Bumper in the 80s to making tracks in Stunts (4D Sports Driving) in the 90s. I already knew how to program by the time Clickteam’s amazing tools started coming out (Klik & Play, Click and Create, The Games Factory, Multimedia Fusion), so my path took a different route, but I always kept an excited eye on editors such as Adventure Game Studio and Game Maker.

RPG in a Box is definitely a software I’d have my hands all over in my younger days—and even as an old-schooler fond of things like PICO-8, the voxel/pixel aesthetic definitely tickles my curiosity. The tool is a passion project of solo developer Justin Arnold, who released the initial version in 2015. He’s been able to work on it full-time since 2017, so the list of features keeps on growing.

So what’s in the box? A voxel editor, sprite editor, map editor, visual scripting, dialogue editor, sound FX generator, a bunch of camera modes … Yup, everything you need to make your first (and 2nd and 3rd) game with cozy tools.

Check the trailer below to see it in practice, along a diverse set of community projects. A demo is available on both Steam and Itch, whereas the full version will be a $25 investment into your (or your kids’) game development future!

Dwerve, the tower defense crawler RPG that I wrote about previously during its Kickstarter, just got a new trailer and a demo!

The fresh look into the game’s backstory of warsmiths comes from PAX West and is as smooth as ever (watch it above). Visitors of the convention are also welcomed to play the new Dwerve: Prologue, as are you (if you’re staying at home), since it’s available for free on Steam.

If this is your first look at Dwerve, it plays as an action RPG, except when battle time comes, you’re placing down turrets to do your bidding, smoothly transitioning the gameplay into tower defense. Give the demo a try and experience beautiful art from Pixel Pete, Enchae, and Sun Pixels while kicking some troll butt.

Here’s a quick shoutout to Rose of Starcross before its Kickstarter campaign runs out (last few hours as of posting this). There’s much to love about this action adventure/RPG:

• the pink/purple color palette that’s present literally in every shot of the game,
• the delightful chiptune soundtrack,
• the fact that it’s all developed, drawn, designed, composed by a single person (that would be Peyton Burnham),
• the self awareness that it’ll take 3 years to develop (estimated delivery date is December 2022) on top of the 3 years that have passed since the game’s first, unsuccessful Kickstarter (a.k.a. Behind the Rose),
• the fact that Peyton didn’t give up and kept at it to get to this point and finally get funded, including the learning journey that’s evident in the progress of the art and editing of the trailer …
  

Go check out the Kickstarter campaign to see if the gameplay also matches your video game taste and help another indie get closer to making their dreams come true.

I rarely stray from the confines of pixel art on this blog, but I’m too fond of 90s RPGs like Daggerfall to pass on telling you about the first trailer for Call of Saregnar (plus its UI is fully pixel art, and I contributed the current game title graphics).

I wrote about the game 2 years ago when its developer Damjan ‘Rhuantavan’ Mozetič started working on the game full-time. Even though he had to go back to working for the man, he’s been chipping away at the game’s features, crafting the low-poly, low-res textured world, doing photo shoots for digitized characters … all the good stuff that we nostalgically love about the 90s.

The trailer comes before the first public showing of the game at the Slovenian Games Conference, following which a demo will be released for the game’s Patreon members ($3+ tiers) early next year.

Fall Kickstarters

In today’s return to pixel art gaming news, let’s take a look at three projects currently raising funds on our favorite platform for making dreams come true.

Savior

Savior (a.k.a. Into the Rift) should be no stranger to you, if not on its own martial arts/parkour/pixel art merit, then since it was literally the last game I covered on the blog.

The Kickstarter campaign makes me extra happy, not just because we can help the developer Starsoft finally get to full-time development, but also because it brings an extended trailer—almost 3 minutes of top-level animation goodness that simply can’t leave you without opening your wallet.

I’ve been dreaming of a martial arts/platformer successor to the original Prince of Persia for years now and I can’t believe Savior is making all my dreams come true and more. You can reserve your copy (currently announced for macOS, Windows, and Switch) for $15 or more on the campaign page.

School Wars!!

I’m not entirely sure what I’d do if a magical kraken gave me time traveling powers while I was in high school, but I’m glad I’ll find out in School Wars!! Right after I take Broccoli Girl out on a date at the water park … Wait what?

If you’re into over-the-top anime characters, you’ll get exactly what you’re looking for in Happy Broccoli Games’ time-traveling adventure. The game creator Annika Maar fuses top-down pixel art with ridiculous(ly cool) comic-style character art, and if you’re not sure if her sense of humor fits your taste of bizarre, you can also try out the demo. All this and more (like backing the game for $11, Windows only) on Kickstarter.

Hyper Light Drifter: Tabletop Role-Playing Game

Here’s something cool I don’t usually write about: a game that can be played without a computer! Hyper Light Drifter: Tabletop Role-Playing Game is especially interesting as it is the first tabletop RPG featuring full-illustrated pixel art. Andreas Walters (as approved by Hyper Light Drifter’s developer Heart Machine) is creating two 150+ page books, one with the rules and another about the setting. The latter will detail a new continent in the Hyper Light Drifter universe divided into 8+ zones. Each will have their own story, points of interest, characters, adversaries, rumors, discoveries and more.

If that’s not enough, Disasterpeace (author of the video game’s soundtrack) is releasing Fragments EP, a series of unreleased tracks and concepts created during the composing process, gifted to all backers. The game book PDF otherwise starts at $15, the game+setting combo at $35, with physical releases at $50+. Get yours from the Kickstarter project.

Chained Echoes from coder/artist/designer Matthias ‘Ark Heiral’ Linda is a colorful delight to look at. The game combines your favorite anime subjects—fantasy and mechs—into a world of dragons and technology that you’ll navigate with classical JRPG fashion of exploration and turn-based battles.

The trailer itself is an animated treat with big illustrations that make you excited about customizing your robotic companion and steampunk airships. If this all sounds like a fantastical adventure to you, head over to the game’s Kickstarter page to reserve yourself a copy ($19, Windows/macOS/Linux). Only 4 days left!

I know, I know. I’ve been just posting Kickstarters lately, but I simply can’t let them pass by. I wish for everyone in the creative professions to be able to work on their own dreams, so contributing my humble shoutout to these projects is the least I can do.

@inkstainsgames are bringing on a rougelike RPG called Stoneshard. It’s all about customizing your character any way you want, from a fluid skill system without class restrictions, to over 100 weapons for hacking-and-slashing through turn-based dungeon battles.

Characters aren’t animated (quite probably to accommodate such a wide variety of equipment), but the game makes up for it in polished environments, brimming with rich details.

There’s more to love about the game, like a detailed injury system that takes into account even things like mental health, but I’ll let you explore all that on your own on the Kickstarter page. If you’re on Windows, there’s even a 2–3 hour prologue to play through.

Retronator & Friends

One bonus of spending this year in Slovenia is reuniting with my best indie-dev friends.

There are only a handful of pixel artists in our small country of 2 million people, but I’m happy that the greatest one lives very close to me. Primož a.k.a. Blodyavenger of Emberheart Games (3rd from the left) has the loveliest playful art style and is in the home stretch of making his action adventure Courier of the Crypts.

I just finished playing the Early Access version and it’s a very delightful and atmospheric affair. As a bonus, you’ll even see my name in the credits as I contributed some character art to it.

The second dev I need to mention is Damjan a.k.a. Rhuantavan (1st from the left) who is making a 90s-era RPG Call of Saregnar. Here too I pitched in something small, the current title logo.

I’ve been playing The Elder Scrolls: Daggerfall lately and Call of Saregnar is a throwback to exactly that game (and Betrayal at Krondor). It uses low-res, low-poly graphics which make me happy every time I look at them.

Rhuantavan’s devblog is on Patreon, so follow or contribute if you’re into old-school RPGs (or FMV character sprites). Photo credit of our beards goes to him as well.

Stories in games are more often than not excuses to kill enemies as you make your way from point A to B. Long Gone Days (@lgdays) promises the opposite: war gives rise to its story. OK, don’t be too excited, it’s still a battle-based JRPG (with some sniping sequences to break the mold), but there are no random encounters, so each fight pushes the story forward. The gameplay is focused on communication and quite literally so, as you have to employ interpreters to talk to characters of different nationalities. I dare say the whole focus on characters + dystopian military vibe even remind me of Final Fantasy VII.

The artist and creator Camila Gormaz came up with the concept already back in 2003, and it’s been her goal to make it happen ever since. Development really took off in 2015, with a demo and IndieGogo campaign following in 2016.

The art is a mix of pixel art and beautiful classical illustrations (for portraits and battle sequences), all done in obvious manga/JRPG style. As you can imagine, Camila’s art skills increased quite a bit since the game’s conception.

The game launched in Early Access today with positive reception on Steam ($15, Windows only), so why don’t just jump right into it.

Some time ago I said I have to tell you about a few new pixel art animations. After Boat Nomad and Black Crystal, here is Elvis & Dimmi. Equal parts loved and hated, the controversial animation comes from Ivan Dixon (on Tumblr known as @pug-of-war​) and Paul Robertson (@probertson). Paul is especially well known in the pixel art scene (here is my old feature of his work). Both of them worked on plenty of gigs for Cartoon Network and Adult Swim, but most probably know their pixel art recreation of The Simpsons intro.

So, what problem do people have with Elvis & Dimmi? First of all, just watch it above if you don’t want spoilers—gore and language warning though.

Back/still here? Alright. Apart from the obvious audience who dislikes gratuitous violence and swearing (they wouldn’t be happy with Adult Swim’s Korgoth of Barbaria either) the other negative comments come from people who expect that good always wins over evil. 

Elvis & Dimmi is a reversal of the usual black and white plot. The goblins here are the good guys compared to the unanimously dislikable duo of heroes. It’s a play on the tropes we take for granted in RPGs. We often think of ourselves as the heroes, yet we break into every house, open every drawer and chest, and steal every piece of gold we can find for our own advancement. Killing monsters is often just a mechanic to level up the player as well. But who is the monster, when a ‘hero’s journey’ is a plot device painted with breadcrumbs of dead bodies?

Dixon and Robertson successfully reverse the tables, but what most people can’t swallow is that the newly-recognized bullies get away with it in the end. Just like the underlying criticism of the hero trope, this too is very intentional as you can read in Ivan’s post:

“in the real world petty, stubborn, ignorant and powerful bullies win all the time. Again, we don’t endorse this. It would feel in-genuine (particularly in the current political climate) to have them receive poetic justice just because that’s what we crave.” 

Unlike the more problematic rape-filled Truckers Delight that gets away with a 90% thumbs-up ratio on YouTube, the Elvis & Dimmi video currently holds 2k likes and just as many dislikes. Both of the videos are at the pinnacle of pixel art animation, the newer contender even more so with its 12-minute length. Why does it fare that much worse though? Maybe it’s that the subscribers to the YouTube channel weren’t expecting something like this following the Simpsons intro. The 4/5 stars rating on Newgrounds points a bit in this direction. In my eyes the video is successful. It offers on-point criticism of unidimensional attributions of good and evil we so easily assume for our entertainment—and worse, by extrapolation, in the real world.

In any case, art and controversy were never strangers, and this most prominent step towards a pixel art movie certainly gave everyone some food for thought.

The big day has come for Don’t Sink! OK, not the big day, it’s not released released yet, but it did start its way in Early Access on Steam.

Don’t Sink is a great example of how good art changes your perception of a game. It’s hard to believe just a month ago the game was full of what we lovingly call ‘programer art’ (a disservice, really, to all the coders that also take the time to become amazing artists).

The coder/designer Sebastian Nigro tried their luck on Kickstarter back in September—unsuccessfully, and I’d dare say visuals play a big role in crowdfunding endeavors. 

Luckily teamwork is just as great solution as learning to draw to get your eye candy in place and Sebastian joined forces with Daniel ‘Thirteen’ Marques to complete the team, together with Chris Anselmo on the audio side. I love the art direction Daniel took (a bit of Ridiculous Fishing vibe) and the game looks absolutely inviting, helping to make its gameplay shine.

Don’t Sink is an RPG/town management game so I’d put it right at the side of Regions of Ruin that I had a lot of fun with last month. Instead of Dwarf Fortress and Kingdom-inspired fantasy setting, we roam the ocean alike Sea Dogs and Sid Meier’s Pirates! ARRRR! In the process we defend our ship, claim an island, and build up a town and its population—at least after first impressions. As its early access status suggests, Don’t Sink’s potential will develop over time.

If you want to be part of the journey, the game’s available for Windows on Steam for $9 (10% off).

Does this bring you any warm memories?