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Retronator
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It's been a hot minute, I should really spend more time back here.
(Saying it today so if I fail, it's a (bad) joke. 😬)
In the meantime, here's some fan art I recently made.
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Reflecting on it a bit more, I think I put my bar up quite high for what to post since everything appears on the front page as a newspaper article. But I really want to post more just casually. Maybe not everything needs to be a proper article/review/whatever. More like back in 2010 when this whole blog started.
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The art of Wargroove 2 is wonderful! Chucklefish's second original IP (after Starbound) finally got a sequel today and oh, it's a lovely world to dive into. Instead of being developed in-house as the original, the second installment of the tactical turn-based strategy is brought to us by one of my favorite studios, Robotality, whose shading-bending game Pathway was previously published by Chucklefish.
The collaboration between the two developers clearly paid off as Wargroove 2 gets the trademark mood lighting of Robotality's art director Simon Bachman on top of the original Wargroove cuteness. The shading is not as crazy as Pathway's fully dynamic engine—instead, Wargroove 2 enhances the visuals of the Halley engine with subtler animated halos around characters, both in-game and in the many story cutscenes.
The game stays smartly close to the original by keeping everything you loved while introducing more content, more factions, more units, more strategy, more everything! As a big fan of Advance Wars back in the day, I had a great time, but there are plenty of other 9/10 reviews that can more sufficiently speak of Wargroove 2's gameplay goodness.
If you're up for some cozy turn-based tactics (as cozy and wholesome as a war-themed game can be), you can get the game on Steam ($20, Windows only) or Switch.
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Lily pads
Starting a new series of paintings called Sweden (since they'll be landscapes from around Spelkollektivet where I live now).
Mostly done with Pixquare—the iPad app I reviewed a few posts back—plus some Aseprite and Blender for heavy lifting on the reflections.
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Things are getting real! My game, Pixel Art Academy, designed for learning how to draw pixel art, now has a Steam page!
In particular, the version I'll release on Steam is called Pixel Art Academy: Learn Mode. It's a standalone, single-player artist simulator where you actually learn to draw! You'll go through interactive tutorials, complete challenges, and make art for different projects (mostly pixel art video games).
If this is the first time you've heard of Pixel Art Academy, it's a game I started working on 8 years ago with the idea of making a text/point-and-click adventure/RPG where you play as an art student. The kicker is that to improve your character's skills in-game, you gain them yourself in real life!
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Even though I've been working hard on this project for many years, it's far from finished since it's very ambitious and I'm mostly working on it alone. There are some parts that are already polished and work well, in particular the learning core of the game. That's what I'll be releasing as Learn Mode. You'll skip all the character creation and go straight into pixel art, something many have been asking for (to just learn as fast as possible). Hopefully, it will become exactly that: the fastest, most fun way to learn drawing in the form of a video game.
If you like the idea, check out the new Steam Page. Wishlists are of course hugely appreciated!
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I never played Karateka in the 80s, but as a big fan of Prince of Persia and Jordan Mechner's journals, I was stoked to hear that an interactive documentary about Jordan's prototypical cinematic platformer was in the works by Digital Eclipse.
Released this week, The Making of Karateka on the surface looks like any other game you buy through Steam ($20, Windows-only), GOG, or whichever favorite store or console you prefer (available also for Xbox, PS4/5, Switch). Once the thing loads though, you really get 3 things: a documentary, the original Karateka, and a new remaster.
The documentary part is an audio-visual slideshow retelling Jordan's development story starting with his teenage years pitching his earlier title Deathbounce to the publishing house Brøderbund. It's an interesting look into the iterative process, seen through correspondence letters, journal entries, and many playable builds at various stages of completion. After we reach the eventual rejection of that title, Jordan comes back with a prototype of a visual-narrative experience unseen on home computers. We get to follow Karateka's full life cycle from pre- to post-production, ending with the conception of its sequel (which eventually turned into Prince of Persia). It's a real treasure trove! Fellow pixel artists will appreciate the many graph-paper sketches and interactive overlays of final game sprites compared to rotoscoped outlines and filmed footage. There are also video segments, from a comprehensive breakdown of the music to interviews with other developers reflecting on the impact Jordan's games had on their careers. You'll even encounter a fan letter signed by the one and only "John Romero, Disciple of the Great Jordan and worshipper of the Magnificent Mechner!" (I kid you not, you can't make this stuff up).
Perhaps just as crucial for an interactive documentary like this, you can launch any of the floppy disks in the emulator, trying out various iterations and ports of Karateka.
The emulation is fantastic and lets you fiddle with display settings (monochrome or color display, scanlines, pixel perfect or zoomed) as well as enhance the frame rate. You can even rewind the many deaths you will face if you've never played the game before (like me). If you spend some more time obsessing over the weird artifacts of the Apple II hi-res graphics, you might even go down the rabbit hole of realizing that on the Apple II you didn't really paint colors as much as you used different monochrome dithering patterns that the graphics display would then turn into 4 different hues. A fascinating learning experience if you include some of your own research online!
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Add to this the Commodore 64 and the Atari 8-bit versions to compare how the graphics got adapted across the earlier ports and you have a nice way to relieve the mid-80s with a bit of help from modern emulation (I did beat the C64 version without rewinding though!). I'd love to see more art from the other remakes, especially the 16-bit Atari ST port, but I understand their decision to omit playable versions of those due to the lower quality on the gameplay side of the translations.
This brings us to the final part of the package, the modern remaster. Unlike the 2012 complete reimagining of the game (with 3D graphics and all), Digital Eclipse approached the remake as the ultimate port of the original to an imaginary system along the lines of a 90s VGA PC.
It's well done. Some of the fully-redrawn scenes are a bit overpainted for my taste (I'd prefer a pixel art rendition of the castle than a blurry photographic collage, although there were many games in the 90s that did take this approach), but the in-game graphics are really in style, including the smooth animations that are like one would imagine granted a beefier CPU. It's also a sort of director's cut with previously unseen scenes added, in particular, the battle with the leopard as a clever action-puzzle in the middle. The AI is unfortunately even less challenging than Jordan's implementation. As great as the 6-move fighting system could have been, you yet again resort to simply kicking away opponents as they tirelessly crawl into your range. There isn't even the nuance from the original where you were the one who had to approach some enemies with skilled timing. On the other hand, you now have optional goals and achievements that make the repetitive/easy combat work in your favor (stringing various combos, beating opponents or the level under a time limit …). As the Digital Eclipse president Mike Mika admits at the end of the welcome commentary mode, they didn't manage to achieve their perfect port, but they did come close.
In conclusion, I thoroughly enjoyed playing both the original as well as the remake and while the combat system lacks any sort of depth beneath its stunning animations, Karateka is instead a monumental experience for its presentation. Big characters with personality and realistic motion are displayed through cinematic camera cuts and story vignettes (3 years before Ron Gilbert came up with the word "cutscene"). There are details like animating the unfortunate falling off the cliff at the start of the game, or respectfully bowing to the first guard as they bow in return. Jordan's creative work is precious and worth the attention this release gifts it.
I highly recommend The Making of Karateka to all retro gamers and/or game developers for its immersive documentation which provides an experience that goes beyond the usual video documentaries. It's interactive—just like the subject it's talking about—something I want to see more in the future. And if the $20 by any chance seems high to you, consider that the original retailed at $35 (and that was in 1984 dollars).
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It's been a while since a new pixel art editor joined the top ranks. Aseprite is the current go-to recommendation for desktops, while Pixaki (now in its 4th iteration) has always been my favorite on the iPad.
It's time to add another worthy alternative for the owners of Apple Pencils, Pixquare, which is probably the closest you will get to Aseprite on iPadOS. Son Nguyen, the app's developer, says he was inspired a lot by Aseprite, both for the UI and functionality. This is perhaps the most evident in the layer/animation system with the cel grid and of course support for importing and exporting .aseprite files.
I reviewed the app on my latest Twitch stream and it's not (yet) as polished as Pixaki (just one example: pixel grid rendering is not pixel-perfect), but it had all the tools that I needed and more. Among unique capabilities are pressure sensitivity (great for more expressive pixel painting) and importing of Lospec color palettes (on the other hand, you can't yet import palette files).
The biggest switching reason for me is the ability to export a timelapse (which I would say is an expected feature of iPad drawing apps at this point—thanks, Procreate!). For those of us who double as artists and content creators, being able to post a timelapse is very useful. This has been on the feature request list of Pixaki at least since 2021, so it's been refreshing to see Son just go ahead and do it based on the beta test feedback. Going forward, now that v1 is fully released in the App Store ($10, or free Lite version that is limited to 2 files) he wants to continue developing the app based on user feedback, so also join his Discord if you decide to give it a chance.
One more timely thing, you have until the end of July to create an artwork in Pixquare (paid or Lite) to get a chance at winning $200 or $100 (plus app codes to share with your friends). Full details on participating in the contest are on Twitter.
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This post has been 9 months in the making. 1 day for playing the wonderfully-illustrated city builder that is LakeSide by Massive Galaxy Studios, 1 day for trying to capture pixel-perfect GIFs, and 9 months for agonizing over the fact that it's sometimes impossible to capture or post pixel-perfect GIFs, therefore, it's better to not post anything at all until you feel so bad for your blog hiatus that you say enough is enough, get over it, and post this beauty of a game and talk about it because, really, that's what matters. Apologies to Gonçalo Monteiro, the main developer, for waiting this long.
LakeSide is a bit of a rougelite in that you're not building one eternal city over many sessions. Instead, it offers quick turnaround and replayability as you receive different building upgrades each time and experience random events. It's currently in Early Access on Steam ($11 at 25% off right now, Windows-only) with new features coming out regularly, most recently the addition of armies and sieges. Oh, and if you're wondering why the game looks this pretty, it's simple: art is made by @kirokazepixel.
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Haven't been around much, so here's a sort of catch-up post with y'all.
Most of my content lately has been on YouTube with the Pixel Engine devlog. It's going strong with a video every two weeks (on episode 14 at this point) and I keep them short and sweet, about 5 min or fewer.
This blog has been very dormant this year. Having two jobs—neither of which is a walk in the park (making your own video game or running a physical school)—takes all of my creative energy. In my ‘free’ time on the weekends, I prioritize making the YouTube devlog. I wish I could do both, but to keep my life sustainable I have to draw the line somewhere and this year it's been mainly in front of the blog.
I'm currently thinking of new ways how to get Pixel Art Academy out to more people, mainly a standalone, single-player version that jumps straight into the interactive learning parts. I'll be working on this next year and closing the current pre-orders in my online store. If you wanted to play the current alpha and buy it in one go (instead of a Patreon membership), now's the time to do it. Plus I'm having some big discounts before the pre-orders end:
— Basic game $5 (67% off)
— Full game $10 (60% off)
— Avatar editor $5 (50% off, upgrades from basic to full)
Note: Alpha access is not required to play the current version of the game, but will apply in the future.
I'm taking the next two weekends off, going on a retreat to recharge and plan the future. I wish you a lovely end of the year too and a happy 2023 when it comes. I'll see you there!
p.s.: If you're on Discord …
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When Evil Licorice approached me to try out their new game Retro Gadgets, how could I refuse something that literally has my name in it!?!
It’s much like the fantasy console PICO-8 where you draw in a built-in sprite editor and write Lua code to make your own old-school-looking games. Except now you also get to design the hardware itself and choose your own specs! Want an egg-shaped tamagotchi? No problem. Remake your favorite calculator? You betcha. Use an LED matrix for playing a game of snake? In fact, I did all these when they commissioned me to create a few gadgets to show in their announcement trailer.
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I love the skeuomorphic UI experience of it, tinkering at your workbench rendered in lovely pixel art. It’s just so cozy and if you put some vaporwave music to make retro gadgets to in the background, well, then you’d be living my life over the last few weekends and evenings, drawing dog sprites and trying to figure out the best way to calculate mathematical expressions in my WIP graphic calculator.
Unfortunately, you can’t get your hands on it just yet. The game’s demo will come out as part of Steam Next Fest on October 3rd so make sure to add it to your wishlist till then.
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I’ve been adding support for drawing artworks into Pixel Art Academy and made this quick, half-res PICO-8 doodle to celebrate the new Monkey Island!
I also started a new Pixel Engine devlog where I go behind the scenes of developing my game. You can see the above artwork being drawn in the third episode.
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A bit late celebration of the 40th anniversary of the one and only, the ZX Spectrum!
Made this fan art quite some time ago for a project that took a different turn so it has never seen the light of day. Polished it up today for you to enjoy finding all the games in there!
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Well, this is unlike anything I’ve covered on the blog before. Press Start is a series of gamebooks where you … play video games? Basically, you get to choose your own adventure in the local arcade and play one of the three games: Ghasts ‘n Gremlins, Shugendo, and Games of Death II (I’ll let you figure out yourself which titles these are inspired by).
The books are in the last day of their crowdfunding campaign (which is already funded), so act quickly if you’d like to get a printed version ($19 for a single book, $49 for all three) or a digital download ($21 for all three).
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You know I can’t resist to talk about a point-and-click adventure, even if I don’t finish nearly as many of them as I enthusiastically support on crowdfunding platforms.
Beyond The Edge Of Owlsgard is the latest such gem, developed as a passion project over the last 4 years by the german solo dev Hans a.k.a. WatchDaToast. His pixel art skills and affinity for Saturday morning cartoons are self-evident, and what is great about this project is that it’s pretty much done. It’s aimed to release at the end of this year, with most of the remaining effort and the call for funding going into a fully-voiced experience in both English and German.
If you want to help make this dream come true and get a copy of the game on release, give Hans at least $23 over at Kickstarter. And if you’re not sure yet, first play the demo on Itch (Windows, Linux), and then do what’s good for you.
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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!
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What is the name of the font, the bold one you use in titles and the thin one in other place? Greetings from a fellow font enthusiast!
Hello, font enthusiast! Here’s a full list of typography used in my game (which this blog is part of).
The title font you’re asking about is Acme 9 by Nikos Giannakopoulos. The font for the text body is my custom one made specifically for Retronator Daily (this blog).
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Kingdom. Two Crowns. Norse Lands.
Kingdom has for a long time been my favorite pixel art game series, ever since its debut as one of Raw Fury’s first two published games. I wrote about all that in The fall and rise of Kingdom for Retronator Magazine. Good old 2016!
After the amazing sequel New Lands, Kingdom Two Crowns—the third title in the side-view strategy/tower defense series—brought co-op multiplayer and extra biomes including Shogun and the later-released free DLC Dead Lands. Long-time fans were also delighted about the more difficult Challenge Islands intermezzo, and now it’s time for the 4th full campaign!
Kingdom Two Crowns: Norse Lands is the first paid expansion for Two Crowns and boy is it worth its money. I mean, did you see the screenshots above? The gameplay is as good as ever, but they’ve really outdone themselves in presentation. As if the always-reflecting river wasn’t at maximum eye candy already, I feel like the pixel art watercolor explorations by Franciszek 'Franek' Nowotniak (the environment artist on Norse Lands) really left a mark on the art style. The shading is done with big, chunky clusters so that the glorious background scenes combine with the forest hills and foreground trees into screenshot paintings worthy of being 5K wallpapers (which is exactly what I did for you here). The style is so consistent it’s sometimes almost at the detriment of gameplay as it took me some time to get better at noticing how many payable items a certain building has left. Not a problem for us Kingdom veterans however.
Not only does overachievement in presentation apply to the visuals, the soundtrack is also instrumental at making Norse Lands worthy of being a premium chapter. The music permeates the landscape wider than previously, delivered by the folklore-inspired band Kalandra. I don’t know how music can do that, but the four Norwegians make you feel the morning mist or the evening calm, as well as give you chills with atmospheric vocals and unexpected instruments. You’ll know when the blood moon is upon you more than ever before.
I'll stop selling the game now, I mainly just wanted to add the amazing art to the blog. Do download those wallpapers. And if you need a mystically-cozy (and at night scary) world to dive into, get the game on Steam ($7 for DLC, $9 for Two Crowns at 50% sale currently, macOS, Windows, Linux) or other devices.
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Only a few days left till the shmup Hyper Echelon, formerly known as Thyrian Defenders (which has nothing to do with the shmup Tyrian, hence the name change to avoid confusion), launches its Titan star fighter onto an unsuspecting alien horde of the Cyan Galaxy.
The artist on the game is none other than Raymond ‘Slynyrd’ Schlitter whose excellent pixel art tutorials I’ve been meaning to tout since forever, but haven’t gotten around to yet. As a long-time supporter of his Patreon it’s been nice to follow his journey, both with the learning resources as well as the ramping production of Hyper Echelon assets, which are an embodiment of the art style and approach from his tutorials.
In his latest Patreon post we finally also received the release trailer in the anticipation of the November 11 launch on Steam (macOS, Windows). I’ll let it speak about the gameplay for itself.
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