Is a Hat in time 16-bit styled? I know it's a 3D platformer, but...
I'm generally attracted to sprite based indie games, but the thing I dislike about most of them is that they're confusing technical tradeoffs of the past as an art style choice, when that's not the case. 8-bit and 16-bit RPGs of the 80s and 90s, for example, like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, had limited character animation and overly simplistic overworld graphics (no water to shore trimming, everything looking boxy) because of memory constraints. It wasn't an artistic choice to have things like that, it was a choice between using the most of their memory on their 64KB or 128KB carts for more game, or more sprites, so they chose the former. The artistic choices are in the actual drawing style of the sprites, in the chibi form versus realistic proportions, or "super deformed" look as Final Fantasy calls it. When you look at games from that era from other genres, like say fighting games, there's much more animation and stuff on the characters, because there's less "game" there. It's just two characters fighting it out in a closed screen. There's no overworld map that needs to be stored, or dungeons, or anything else but all the battlegrounds. Then there's the character animations, and game code. The remaining memory can then be entirely dedicated to highly animated characters. It seems like most of the developers out there aren't seeing this, and therefore hold their 8-bit or 16-bit styled game back artistically, from a misconception.
The few that DO get that separation, like say, Shovel Knight, really show they understand the difference between technical tradeoffs of the past and artistic choices. Shovel Knight's music is using chiptune instruments, but not using only 3 or 4 sound channels like the hardware limitations of the past. Shovel Knight's sprites are wonderfully animated, and there's lots of background elements like parallax scrolling, and not using janky animations and static backgrounds. And the end result is a very beautiful package that both looks and feels like a classic game, while making use of modern standards. THIS, I wish more indie developers would get, and make some really truly beautiful 8-bit and 16-bit styled games.
I do kinda feel like the market is oversaturated with them though. It feels like every other indie release is a game that claims to be 8 or 16-bit, but isn't actually in either look nor sound.
Edited by Koh, 14 June 2018 - 04:17 PM.