Inconnu Posted:
It might’ve been another nice variation on Bejeweled/Lines etc. if only you guys could make a better job on graphics. From what I see, three different designers were working on it without any coordination.
First designer was a typical contemporary glossy-shmossy type of guy. He created the multicolored bubbles in a typical modern stylistic.
Second guy was a steampunk fan, who created a pretty poor background setting. Sorry guys, steampunk is all about zillions of beautiful tiny details, and this is just a bunch of rusty cogs, which have neither the appropriate 3D lightning nor even the decent rusty metal texture. I thought if you guys do Maya, you should know that render is only 10% of the job, the rest is Photoshop magic.
The final guy was an artist who created the cat illustration, both sketched and colored versions. Well, cat look “cranky” enough, but the part where that static illustration gets from the bottom-left corner without any other animation isn’t too impressive, unless you specifically wanted to make that good old Mortal Kombat “Toffee!” reference.
The rest is the bunch of pretty random elements. The plaque in cat’s hands along with the antiqua font probably were temporary placeholders and never got changed to anything else. The art deco font and “vintage” looking frames probably have nothing to deal with designers at all — looks like they are just copied from another shutterstock gallery. Problem is, steampunk and art deco are totally different styles, from different centuries even, and unfortunately work pretty poor together.
The only part which is really good is gameplay. It’s quite innovative and pretty interesting.
I apologize for critique, that’s just my honest professional opinion.
It’s okay, this was actually a valid critique. Surprising, since we were all really impressed by the design, as were most of the people we showed it to. Maybe they were just being charitable. (Also, have you seen Forumwarz…?)
Anyway, there was actually one main designer for all the elements. He’s usually a 2D guy with an SFX background, and no Maya people worked on it. Personally, I like the contrast between the grimy background and the shiny game objects, but I can see why it might bother some. The “Toasty” cat popping in was the animation handiwork of our dev, who’d agree it’s crude and cheesy…but it’s kinda funny, so we kept it as is.
I also noticed the Deco elements, and that bugged me a little. I’m wondering how many steampunk purists will point that out. My explanation is that it’s steam new wave. If you had all these fanciful Victorian technologies decades earlier, then it’s plausible this game was in fact made in the ‘30s and they were just being retro-modern, see.