Mockup for indie game
Printed From: Pixel Joint
Category: Pixel Art
Forum Name: WIP (Work In Progress)
Forum Discription: Get crits and comments on your pixel WIPs and other art too!
URL: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=26753
Printed Date: 11 September 2025 at 6:28am
Topic: Mockup for indie game
Posted By: dhaimadoshi
Subject: Mockup for indie game
Date Posted: 19 October 2019 at 6:28am
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Hello there !
So as I said before, by ultimate goal is to start an indie company, and so to Ive been hard at work learning various things and preparing for my first game. So today I come to you to have a critic on a screen mockup I put together. Now keep in mind, most of the art is not from me, I just put that together to have an idea of the style I will pursue and how the final product may look like before investing precious hours developing the actual original art. So the game might be something of a cross over between traditional JRPG and card games. I pulled my inspiration mainly from Darkest dungeon, Artifact and dungeon of the endless for the mechanics. So the idea is to form a group of heroes that you can train and customize, much like what can be found in darkest dungeon. You will find yourself exploring dungeons and beating monsters. Heres what it looks like 
Explaination about the GAMEPLAY So the main difference with darkest dungeon is that besides putting together a bunch of heroes, you will put together a deck of cards (like heartstone ect...) Each hero can be equipped with a limited amount of skills. These skills have different minor effects but their main purpose is to generate mana on your hero so you have control over how much mana you want to earn VS how much utility you want to get from your free skills. (I thought draw mechanic might be very limited like in the witcher card game, you get a big hand at the begining and you have to be really strategic about when to use them) This mana will then be used to cast powerful spell from your deck. Once again, little twist, the map that you may find similar to darkest dungeon is actually a little more like the map in dungeon of the endless. Each time you advance in the dungeon, waves of enemies will appear. To defeat them you will have to split your party strategically on the map. Therefore, you will be able to cast certain spell only in a room where a hero with the right mana is. Therefore knowing which hero can generate which type of mana, which can really on backup spells and other powerful effect will be key. In between dunguoneering, you will get back to town, spending your aquired fortune to tincker with your heroes and deck before the next adventure. Keep in mind that heroes permanently die as well. Explaination about the interface Now I explain a little bit the interface: Top pane is a timeline, indicating who will act next. (you can only spend the mana of the active hero) Left Pane is the active hero information : you get his current life\mana crystals ect ... as well as his four personal skills to generate mana, the crystals on top indicate which mana is going to be generated. (icons are temporary and has no meaning besides being pretty) Besides hovering over stuff will pop up some help of course, describing what does what in detail. Middle pane is your hand : you can browse the available cards. The mana crystals indicate the cost of the card. If you hover a card, the right panel will indicate further information about it. Im currently thinking about how to show more information on the card itself without being too overhwelming and stay pretty. right pane indicate the map, I havent figure out how to show the important information yet, like where each heroes are ect ... I reckon Ill use some kind of colored crystal for it. Right now, I repurposed the mana crystal for it as for many things, but havent really thought about what it actually mean yet. I will have different looking symbols to make it easier to read. About mechanics of the map : If you click on a room, the main screen changes to show the characters in the room as well as what can be done\found in that room Criticism : Help GREATLY appreciated Ok first of all, thank you for reading !!! Now thats where you come in, if you want to help me out ! I want welcome any sorts of criticism and or comments \ encouragement ! But my main goal for posting this is to gauge the interest of the potential game : Do you think the gameplay sounds interesting ??? Do you think the art style suits ?? Do you think the mock up is readable, pretty and not overwhelming ?? Imagine this game is finished and on steam ? Do you feel like buying it ? Please let me know if you have any idea about how to make the gameplay more interesting, if you find any potential problem with it. Same for the art style, if there is some obvious flaws in the presentation, if you think I should definitely add\remove something in the art and or gameplay. Thank you for taking the time to read my post ! And if you are going to participate to the conversation, then let me tell you how much I appreciate your help ! See you around !!! PS : if this is against the rules as most of it isnt my art, I apologize deeply, I would put the sources but as I gathered the pictures I didnt really keep tabs on where they were coming from. Again this is JUST a mockup to try out my ideas quickly and by no means a final product. |
Replies:
Posted By: Paco1
Date Posted: 20 October 2019 at 5:11pm
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Hey dhaimadoshi, I'm afraid instead of providing answers to your questions I mainly increase the amount of questions, and they're not particularly concise either. Nevertheless, I hope that they provide some stimulus for further thoughts about your game. What's the difference between cards, skills and spells in your description? Is there one? Are there any other mechanics, maybe related to the distance or position of the heroes/enemies? You brought me to this question when you mentioned the inspirations from Darkest Dungeon (position mechanic for attacks) and The Witcher (the Gwent card game also has three "zones" on the field for melee, archer and catapult which can be influenced by certain cards). Can characters protect or shield another one, maybe... I tried thinking about what I would answer I could give regarding your question if the gameplay sounds interesting. But the fact is: in a card game the gameplay is in the cards and the mechanics allowing/limiting those cards' actions. So I think it's difficult to answer this question without actually playing the cards and reading more about the actual mechanics. In my opinion, the point about the gameplay being in the cards is so important that I'll rephrase it again: the game lives and dies with the cards. To be honest, I never played "the big ones" like Magic: The Gathering or Hearthstone, but I played other games like Netrunner, Dominion, Gwent,... The big ones are all developed by huge companies with dozens of people playtesting each card in many rounds. Just now Riot Games (League of Legends) announced Legends of Runeterra for example. Again, big company with almost limitless resources in the "playtesting" department... My point here is: test, test and test again. And if anything doesn't work, do not hesitate to trash/replace/modify it until it does. Then the gameplay will be interesting. Which group of players is your target audience? My point is, if the intended audience is mainstream, the UI may be too convoluted. In case you own a Nintendo Switch or Wii U a good example for this is the latest Zelda, in my opinion. The only thing you immediately see when you pick up a new weapon is one number (dmg diff to current equipment) with a green/white/red arrow to reinforce the comparison. In fact, while writing this I'm unsure if they even show the number while the weapon is still lying on the ground. Maybe they even show only the arrow. Does the player need to see all the character's stats all the time? Can the game automatically modify all values on the screen with the corresponding stats? Unless you are in fact targetting players who are used to juggling numbers and want to see all the nitty gritty details of your damage computations. In that case an action log might be helpful for those players too ("Blue hair hero hits Snake Druid Lady for 40 damage"...) Currently the game has a little bit of a JRPG vibe. These topics heavily influence the complexity and structure of the UI, I think. Another reason why I brought up the point above was that it provides more space for you to show off your art if you minimize the space which is reserved for the UI 100% of the time. Don't hide your art behind grey UI panels ;) A complete gameplay question: You said the player will have to split up his party in the dungeon because there are multiple rooms with enemies to clear at the same time. Which gameplay mechanic forces the player to split up the party? Is it still possible to clear room after room with the whole party? Is that desired? How will the "Initiative" (the order of attacks on the top) work when the party is split up? How can you keep the player feel in control of the situation? I think the current art style also reinforces my feelings about the JRPG vibe that I mentioned before. Is there an overarching storyline that ties all the dungeons together? If yes, that may also factor into the art style. Maybe. Did you make a mockup of a cave dungeon as well? Would that also look rather colorful? I'm just asking because some of the games you referenced (namely Darkest Dungeon, The Witcher) have a very gritty artstyle and story and Dungeon of the Endless' presentation also looks very dark with the black space between the rooms. The rest I didn't play, hence my bias in this question.
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Posted By: dhaimadoshi
Date Posted: 20 October 2019 at 9:47pm
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First of all thank you for you message!
I agree with you the card game play being important. You said it requires a lot of testing and is pulled off only by big companies. Although I agree with the difficulty of making a balanced card game, I think that it is especially true for competitive multiplayer games which is not what I am trying to do. About those other things, like protecting another character, positioning, I am thinking about those things, but I think these are details to be decided a little later as they are not central. But I definitely plan to introduce as much depth without making it too convoluted. Hopefully I can find a balance of mechanics that compliment and influence each other in a meaningful way. It is still the first draft. As for the target audience, I mainly develop this thinking about what I like and what I would like to see. I believe that I dont understand what motivates other people to play. I think that I only know myself, and if I can make something that I really want to play, I reckon others might want to try it too. For your later question, I think you hit it on the dot. I have been thinking a long time about how to implement those ideas together in a meaningful whole and I think I might have had a brilliant idea. I will write a second post to restructure my plan and thoughts to make it easier to understand. About the art style, I am quite unsure about it. I just put together some stuff that was somewhat coherent to me and how the perspective could look like as well as what information can be readily available. But nothing set in stone yet. I just feel comfortable developing in pixel art. Finally i just wanted to go back to what you said with the convuluted feeling. Im a little upset that you feel about that since I tried my best to limit it. I had to fight against putting even more stuff xD. I do understand that it is important though. What exactly makes you feel this way ? For example, comparing with darkest dungeon ? One of my problems is that I am limited by the pixel size. So I cannot include as much info as I want in in a small space, So I kind of need the panels for example. At the same time I still need to describe what each cards does and have them displayed on the screen as simply as possible to enable the player to make meaningful decisions... As I said I am going to rewrite my ideas in a more easy to understand form and submit again ! Thanks for the input it really helps ! If anything it makes me think about my ideas in another perspective which is both motivating and helpful !! |
Posted By: dhaimadoshi
Date Posted: 20 October 2019 at 11:59pm
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Ok so here's TAKE 2. Keep in mind the art is still not from me, the new picture I put together is from darkest dungeon. It is just to get an image going with what I say to help imagining the feeling of the game.
GAMEPLAY IDEA - take 2 The game will be centered around protecting a town against various monsters that inhabit the dungeons in the vacinity. To do so you recruit heroes that you send on missions. The game mechanics will be as follow : upgrade a town which dictates the composition of your deck. Recruit heroes which serves as mana generator (like in artifact) and send them to cleanse the dungeons. The gameplay will be divided into 3 phases.
Understanding the world To fully grasp the game play, one must first understand how the map works. The map is a collection of point of interest connected by roads. As the game progress, areas of the map, called dungeons are going to get agitated and produce monsters. For example, a necromancer might arrive in the cimetery, when that happens, he will gradually gain power and send increasingly powerful undead minions to destroy your town. Therefore, the minion spawn is linked to a specific area and follow a certain theme, so you get an idea of what theat you will face and how to best counter it. Phase 1 - Development - Spending resources During this phase, you get to spend the resources you acquired. To develop your town. As the town develops you get access to better pool of cards to include in your deck. Most importantly, You will spend resource to add cards to your deck. You cannot remove cards from your deck but used cards are gone forever. So by building your deck in this phase, you essentially prepare for the battle to come. You will look at the map to see which regions are dangerous to have an idea of what to expect (necromancer in the cimetery = lots of undead = white magic pretty effective ect ...). Lastly you can move your heroes on the map to try and quiet the threat that emerges from the different dungeons. You have only one deck and one hand that is shared between all your heroes. So by splitting your parties you they become weaker but can cover more ground. In other words,the game is about deck building to best counter your enemies based on the information you get from the map. You will get pressured by a tower defense mechanism, you need to protect your town and defeat the dungeons to get relieved from wave of monsters coming from this direction. 
Phase 2 - Enemy movement In the second phase, the enemy spawns from the dungeons. And move towards your town. Phase 3 - Combat Finally the combat phase. Every map area with enemies and heroes triggers a fight. During a fight, each unit activate in order depending on their speed. Each turn each unit activates once. When a unit activates it can spend its accumulated mana to cast spells from your hand. Then it finish its action by using a skill. Each units have a few (1-4) skills. Skill are much less powerful then spells, but are free to use and usually generate mana. Each turn you can draw 1 card from your deck. The battle ends when one of the party is defeated or after a few turns, in which case it will resume during the next combat phase. Pending battles can have reinforcements later on. The Combat phase ends when all the battles have played. Then we loop back to phase 1. During your next Phase 1, you get to fill your hand again (if you have enough cards left in your deck) and you get a mulligan.
As mentionned before, some of the influencial games for this ideas are :
Hope that this time it is easy to understand. I think this idea is starting to get pretty solid, Im exited about playing it myself !!! Let me know what you think !!! |