#pixel hero

What We Did Right

The three biggest compliments PHP: VR got were on the art, the comedy and of course the soundtrack. So let’s breakdown how each of those went...

The Art: The chibi-pixel style of Pixel Hero has become both unique and memorable, despite all of the inspiration being from much higher resolution games. I can’t recount the sleepless nights I spent with 12 tabs worth of wiki pages and image searches to get the right coloring and contours for characters. Perhaps the best lesson I learned was the power of iteration, nearly every sprite went through some last minute tweaks to get everything perfect. It’s one of the reasons the art is done first, and it’s a method that’s worked quite well.

The Humor: I’ve always tried to make Pixel Hero a “pick your own comedy path” with much of the hilarity being in the irreverent expressions of the characters and in the comedic timing. I wish I’d added more of this humor to Dark Sector instead of simply rushing it out the door. In fact, I think only the tutorial hit the levels of comedy bombardment that I wanted, with JHQ coming in close second. It’ll be interesting working on my next project where the protagonist wears a helmet the majority of the time, I also hope to take more time to truly craft the humor.

The Soundtrack: Chris Fonte was a God sent on this one, with the soundtrack being epic, catchy and atmospheric. There’s also a lot to also be said for Bryan Teoh’s catchy 50s tunes and the charm and hilarity they added to JHQ, something I don’t doubt you’ll see more of in the future.

What We Need To Improve

Story/Lore: Due to the nature of VR Missions much of the story was dumped in dialogue branches that (intentionally) the player could skip over. That said, this broke much of the flow of an otherwise high-octane game. That’s not to say I want Pixel Hero to be all laughs, a good example of a serious moment done right is Clarus’ goodbye at the end of Dark Sector. It’s cheeky, it’s cute, but also (especially if you’ve grown attached to his Darks Souls counterpart) it can be a bit heart-wrenching. Similarly, there were a few well timed slaps in the face of the player with oddly serious moments that quite intentionally took them out of the moment.

An example of a character that needed a lot more love and attention to tell the story of was PROTO. I wanted PROTO to be fun and cheery but genuinely conflicted. Initially he was going to be a companion and due to that being scrapped, the player had little reason to care to begin with. An example of two characters who I got players to care about and enjoy where Richard (due in part to his omnipresence) and Mr. Funk (who’s dialogue tress and character progression is still my best work to date, in my opinion).

So how do I fix this? Well in part, I shouldn’t wait 3 weeks before writing all the dialogue, planning is really key and now that (most) of the engine is done I’ll be able to work on story a bit more and have introduced more meaningfully and organically. Essentially we took the Fallout approach without thinking about how shitty the Fallout approach is.

The Combat: Oh lordy the combat! The abilities and items (with a lot of tweaking) look and feel great and have exactly the kind of crunch and satisfaction I was hoping, but the basic attacks still don’t work the way they should and lead to an obnoxious amount of wiffs. 

Currently I have two solutions and I’m leaning towards the first:

Option 1 - SP Builders: Those who have played games like City of Heroes, Champions Online or the Secret World will know what this is. A generally weak attack (will likely be equal damage to the amount you have in that skill doubled and subtracted by the same of your opponents for consistent damage) that generates SP for abilities. This would however mean that I’d want to fill out the player’s options for abilities as well, and it also (to a degree) gets rid of the Rock-Paper-Scissors (Or DEX-STR-WIS) combat system the original was going for.

 Option 2 - Stop Wiffs: Make it so the minimum amount of damage done will be 1. This mainly goes back to the original design philosophy (and the reason there is no block in the game), the challenge is not to outlast the enemy, the challenge is to kill them as quickly and efficiently as possible before they can reduce your health.

I’ll likely be implementing one of these in the latest patch for PHP: VR Missions, and it will probably be Option 1 if I can make it feel good. (though I might honestly do a combination of the two).

The Spelling Errors:

This is something I was aware of early on and continues to be a struggle to combat. I don’t want to waste development time slogging through all my dialogue, so I’m just trying to get friends to help look for the errors at every step of the way.

Cut Content

Ever wonder why Altair appears on the cover and not in game? He was cut content. There was going to be an ancient dessert library with Prince of Persia-esc Sand Monsters, platforming, a library full of lore and Siegfried from the Witcher. The pixelations are mostly done but I ran out of time to work the platforming out and do the overworld sprites, so cut the content was. Wondering where that sealed off door leads in The Room? Spencer Mansion, complete with Jill, Wesker and even a tyrant... only that got cut due to time constraints as well. WIREs were supposed to have a much bigger role in what was to be called the Glitch SECTOR. Cut Content. It was really a shame, but unsurprising and not whole disappointing as the game got done what it needed to in the Sectors it had.

The only disappointing cut content was the following:

Wolven SECTOR was supposed to have a hangar and an escape sequence after the final boss fight. If the player had tweaked with the helicopter in the hangar previously they’d unlock a new (albeit short) level that would be a recreation of the first Call of Duty Zombies map and serve as a survival mode after the game had been beaten.

Dark SECTOR was also supposed to have an additional companion (Sylvannis from the Warcraft franchise) and much more interactions between companions (much in the line of the ‘false light’ discussion). There was also going to be a secret boss (the Bell Gargoyle or possibly an Angel from Bayonetta) which would have unlocked the previously discussed Assassin’s Creed sector. 

Moral of the Story