Hello everyone!

It’s Monday which means it’s time for another weekly dev log! I am still on hiatus, so this week I wanted to discuss another part in the video game process that I don't really see discussed that often, and that's Game Assets. Without further ado, let's get into it.

Game Assets

Having an enjoyable game isn’t solely based on one factor alone. That being said, game assets are extremely important to the production of a video game as it is one of the first things that the player will quite literally interact with (if they aren’t blind). Because of this, I would say that indie developers find themselves in a precarious position when it comes to deciding what assets they want to use for their video games.

Being an indie developer requires you to wear many hats during the development lifecycle, and there are many benefits to this such as less corporate interference, and more clear creative vision. However, like most things, being an indie dev has its cons as well. Being a “jack of all trades” can very often mean you’re a “master of none”, or at the very least master of a few. Which means there are going to be some things that you’re better off outsourcing to other people, and that’s if you have the budget to do something like that in the first place. This was the case for me when it came to making virtually all of my assets for the game.

For GofRPG I originally wanted to create my main characters to be black. I felt that very often in video games, white was always set as the default or as the default skin, and I wanted my game to deviate from that and have someone who looked like me as a main character. I had created various characters, but admittedly I am not very good at pixel art. With no one to do any commissions for my art, I ended up buying default sprite assets from other creators who were more skilled at pixel art than I was. Unfortunately, the default skins for them were white, and that was what I ended up using. A very similar story can be told for the UI designs and the music/sound effects for the game. 

(This isn't shade on the creator of these sprites. One of the reasons I bought these sprites was because they were much better than the sprites I was making in terms of what I was aiming for stylistically.)

Sometimes you think as an indie developer you have the power to see your vision to the end, but that is not entirely true. Depending on the amount of initial skill and capital that you have, you will have to make sacrifices and compromises to your creative vision as an indie developer. It may not be to the same degree as someone working with a big game dev studio, but it’s something you should be mindful for nonetheless.

Not all hope is lost for an indie developer! For example, I may not have been good at pixel art then (I’m still not amazing at it) I have gotten better, and have been experimenting with creating dark-skinned characters in my Guardians of RPG game already. In the next update, I want to be able to change the main character’s skin to the way I originally intended it to be, since not a lot of people have played the game yet and thus aren’t really attached and committed to a design yet. Being an indie developer gives you that flexibility to change and update your game in ways that would be hard for a larger company, and I want to use that to my advantage.

Please check out my game Guardians of RPG v1.02 and let me know what you think! I am always looking for ways to improve, and getting feedback from players is one of the most useful assets I could ever receive as a game developer. Again I want to thank everyone who has been supporting me to this point. Your comments, likes, views, plays, and words of encouragement have really kept me going. With that being said, I will see you next week.