Hello everyone, today marks the big identity change (a new cover slash key art) for my very first game on Steam The Duck Amikaze Strikes Back (as well as its Demo version).
The new game cover is there! Hand-drawn, and pixelated, way more related to my game's artstyle as some people gave me in negative feedback for my first version. Now everything is perfect, when I look behind me, it's all shiny!
Initially my first game cover was made with the help of an AI, partially, especially because I didn't know I was good enough to draw it myself back then. But also because I felt it was fine even tho I agree that it wasn't great. And finally because making a game takes a long amount of time, especially the first one, so I wanted to reduce the overall time needed to make it to the end, and still doing a game to the best of my abilities at that point in time. But some players brought this to my attention as a negative feedback, and also that the cover itself doesn't represent the game, especially because it's a pixelart game so the cover should go into that direction. I realized than even tho we are in a world where AI is starting to spread everywhere without much control, people tend to avoid or prevent themselves to play or buy things related to AI. Even tho it was only used for my game cover, which was just a funny advertising/visual for me at first. But this still puts a barrier in front of some player which refuse to even try my demo which I think is a sad shortcut, but I also perfectly understand their point. No matter what it is, we all want to buy stuff that is as perfect as it can be, and nowadays the word "Hand-drawn" seems to be selling on its own. All that paragraph to say that my first intention with my very first game was to make the best game I could, alone, from start to finish, as good as possible, with as many features I could (achievements+leaderboard+remapping system to only quote those few), and as fast as possible. While also find a way that everyone could enjoy it, from beginners to hardcore platformer gamers.
-> With that new hand-drawn beautiful cover, now my very first indie game is as complete & clean & everything as it could be, to the best of my abilities. Maybe not a dream game yet, but it's definitely a great one! I hope you give it a fair try, and love it as much as I do!
Also I've:
- updated 24 achievements visuals so that they fit the new cover art style.
- made the 4 first levels (out of 16) way more accessible for the new players by:
- adding 2 new checkpoints in the level The Maple Woods - Entry
- adding 2 new checkpoints in the level The Maple Woods - Heart
- adding 4 new checkpoints in the level The Maple Woods - Exit
- adding 2 new checkpoints & moving 2 checkpoints at better locations in the level The Forest - Entry
- remove a microscopic bug, when you use the option "get back to the previous checkpoint" it always added 1 chrono tick, meaning instead of getting 00:00:00 you had 00:00:01. (a hundreth of second that was wrongfully added).
- updated 6 tiny background tiles that were sharp angle instead of smooth angle, in the level 'Crystal Cave - Entry'.
- the save background on the top right corner is now perfectly fit to the text it contains, before that it could be a little too tight for some languages.
Have a wonderful weekend, and see you around next time!
Alexandre