In the last devlog, we heard from one of the girls on the design team. After that update we had lots of people asking what we meant by “Explosion”. The Steam page wishlist experienced growth that even startled our design team.(Last Devlog: The Birth of The Big Eye Crown - The sense of design in a Roguelike)
Seeing that the result was so good (the wishlist grew, and we crushed our KPI) ，I decided I might as well risk my life and make a post like the girl from our design team.
A 2D Cute Girl's Adventure
During the earliest Demo of the Game，the art style was quite different from what it is today. However, as we moved to a new art style we ended up creating a more cartoonish art style similar to animated fans. The reasons for this were simple, the team has lots of Bilibili fans on it...
Dun dun dun dun, The early shots and style from the game emerged
It’s true, from the very early stages of the games development we tried many different things for the art style. We looked at other Roguelike games and their art styles. We came to the conclusion that our game’s style should be happy and relaxing. From this foundation we decided to choose a young girl for our lead character following some things we found from the current Roguelike market. We felt this would be the best way to stay within the framework of Roguelike games in the market as well as remain true to our guiding principles for the art style.
This is an early art style we considered for our female lead character
This is another
We also had some ideas for a more Tomboy style desig.
We hoped to create a female character that looked strong and capable of taking on any challenge that she might face in the dungeon and that she was also a little mysterious.
Cute girl came close to looking like this
At the time of our Demo the games are style looked like the pictures below, it’s quite different than the current art style, right?
Did you notice how the floor looked more like a chessboard?
This was an early demo version, but you can still see some of the core elements of the gameplay such as the elemental interactions and the ability to change the environment and effect gameplay by buffing or debuffing areas and characters.
Even in the early art style of the game you can see that we wanted to maintain the hand drawn feel of the items and textures.
Familiar containers
The creatures, and monsters from the early art style of the game
When every thing was ready we prepared a Demo of the early version of the game, however the players felt that the art style was a little lackluster and didn’t really capture their interest or attention from the get go. With most responding that there wasn’t anything too special about it.
Changing the art style with a focus on a hand drawn style
The art style didn’t match our expectations and we felt it didn’t help our game to stand out enough from other games. We wanted to make sure we could showcase the best aspects of the game and we decided that a cartoon style is not the same as the “Sister Meng” style. So we focused on making sure that we achieved a more textured visual and game experience for this most recent demo version of the game.
Of course we know that its very difficult to make a real hand animated game. It’s been a difficult challenge for our team. But we want to make sure we deliver the best game to the players. So we’ve worked to maintain the lines, color blocks and frame animations.
The first death animation! Because this is a Rougelike game and the player’s death is an important part of the game.
The new scenery appearance
We will continue to develop the game along this basis. Now , the game like this：
We also included the chessboard like feel
In this animation the fire barrel explodes and interacts with the environment which is pretty cool while still maintaining the cartoon feel.
At the same time we’ve carried the 2D art hand drawn art style over to the rest of the game.
Even though this will take more time to implement we’re sure the result will be much better.
Hand drawn Main Character
Hand drawn cartoon style NPC enemies
Continuing in the tradition of cute girl
This is a short gameplay video, you can take a look and check out what the gameplay and game art style is like in action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXYj6D9RIAw
===================================================
After reading all this, wanna play Crown Trick? You can go to itch.io or Gamejolt.com . We’ve put out an open beta version of the game that everyone can try and then join our
Discord and share your suggestions.
==================================================
Last Devlog：
Last Devlog: The Birth of The Big Eye Crown - The sense of design in a Roguelike