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JefferySimpson |
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A screenshot from Wanderer by Red Cloak Games.
Red Cloak Games was part of the same round of the Square Enix Collective as our Legacy of the Copper Skies. Their game Wanderer is a beautiful pixel art platformer and has been launched on Kickstarter. Please help support the independent game scene and our fellow Square Enix Collective studio by taking a look at their campaign.
Interested in the world of indie game studios and want to know who’s making what in the Toronto (and Ontario) area? Then check out Toronto Game Devs a blog and podcast covering the scene.
They’ve also been good in covering us both during our time in the Square Enix Collective and more recently.
Among the tools in a game developer’s tool-kit, one of the most complex is feedback. It’s seductive to think that your first idea is your best idea, and hearing that some people prefer things another way can often be hard. Yet insightful feedback can help make games better, and as much as everyone would like to think they’re a genius, nobody gets everything right.
A screenshot of the original perspective of Legacy of the Copper Skies.
Up to this point everything we’ve shown for our first game Legacy of the Copper Skies, has been shown from our original design of the game which was going to be an isometric perspective. Our thoughts behind this were that this perspective helped to distinguish the game in an immediate visual way from the adventure games that had come before.
We are justifiably proud of our strong showing during this year’s Square Enix Collective’s feedback phase. Indie game fans seemed to find what we had planned for the game was something they wanted to play. Along with all the excitement and compliments were suggestions on how we could improve the game and one of the most frequent was a suggestion to change the game’s perspective to a more traditional top down one.
As we reviewed all the feedback we’d received from the voters and fans, a change in perspective seemed to make sense. Though we are certainly inspired by the great pixel-art adventure games that have come before us, there is so much new and different about Legacy of the Copper Skies that helps it stand out from what’s come before that we felt comfortable going with a traditional view.
The new top-down perspective for Legacy of the Copper Skies.
Exploring this new perspective lead us to see the advantages of the change on the development front chiefly that we can now iterate quicker and respond to feedback and changes in a more agile way. We’re also loving how great it looks now and we feel that it’s going to allow players to focus in on the story, control and gameplay elements that we’re bringing to the adventure game, rather than just a tilted perspective.
Another look at Legacy of the Copper Skies’ new perspective.
Once again we’re grateful to everyone who took the time to vote and give us feedback during the Square Enix Collective’s feedback phase. Feedback is a great tool and we’re thankful that it’s already making Legacy of the Copper Skies better.