-
Featured
- #81
This is going to be weird because my criticism is with what the original creator has done, and not the translator. Nevertheless,
The game is very pretty, at least the maps are incredibly impressive. The character designs in my opinion have a dull generic fantasy aspect to them. Not to mention the color schemes for most of the characters is blue, brown and green, without much variance from that. That's the smallest of problems. Sylvanor definitely put a lot of love into this project and it shows, but he still needs to work on his anatomy and shading. Characters are pillow shaded, or have a very dull contrast in their color schemes between lights and darks. Which is strange since the production art has slightly better contrast. In fact, I wonder if the tileart really was done by Sylvanor, or if he hired someone else to do the characters.
The art in the cutscenes, character art and production art is not consistent with the character art. The tilesets have lucidly cool colors overlaying complex backgrounds with bright lights and lots of pastel-like layered detail. The character art is flat, slightly abstract and anime-ish in the cutscenes. The backgrounds blur together beautifully and believably, yet the character and cutscene art is so sparse and dry. Lastly, text in cutscenes goes by far too quickly, and should be replaced with the ability to move forward at the player's leisure or lengthened.
Speaking of cutscenes, while they're technically impressive the level of detail is very inconsistent with the tilesets. Characters move with an awkward stiffness, especially noticeable in the opening cutscene. It reminds me of an early Lucasarts adventure game but drawn by a beginner. The anatomy is alright, but the characters, again, are very stiff and broad. Shots are cluttered and could be better. If you're going to have a cinematic style and use cutscenes in this manner then better shot choices that lead the eye, are properly balanced and have a good use of positive and negative space is a must. Which, again makes me think the background artist and lead artist are different people because the backgrounds are extremely well balanced.
Moving on, the character art (in game, on the maps and in battle) are horrible. No shading, no smoothness in animation or tone. Very bland and stiff. And I can't believe whoever made this also made this. The menu art is gaudy and hard to read, usually cluttered with too much text. The font should be something less flowery that can work with the limited detail allowed in the game. Even the most fantastic of games uses simple and easy to read fonts. And with a game as text heavy as Aëdemphia that is very important. Furthermore the text in the cutscenes is hard to read. It's anti-aliased and large. If it must be anti-aliased, a black border should surround them so as to distinguish light letters from light background colors.
Lastly, the story is godawful, which is sad since a lot of effort obviously went into this game. The story begins with a story about a girl and her ruined homeworld, then becomes a story about this girl in a war of some kind, and finally the girl waking up in a strange place. That's three separate stories in the span of the first 10 minutes of the game. Each of which has enough character growth and backstory that it should either be unexplained until a later date, or given the time to develop on its own instead of being rushed past the player right at the start. It's important in games to show and not tell. Things have more meaning and are more fun when the player encounters them naturally, which brings me to the next problem.
The game's opening sequence is far too long for its own good. It stumbles, is extremely cluttered and awkwardly told with the storyline stopping every two seconds to remind you what menial task Sylvanor has accomplished on his own in big giant silver gaudy fonts. I don't know why Sylvanor didn't just say "a game 100% created by Sylvanor" first and then a second screen crediting all the music used (which is a little sad when you actually see it, as all music is credited to one guy who's name is in big silver letters of a gaudy font, and then several other musicians underneath him which have names too small to read. I'd hate to be a game musician in France.) Not to mention Sylvanor seems to understand the constant name-dropping is annoying and distracts from the story, but he does it anyway. But I digress.
In the end I wound up not caring about the story as it's centered around a bunch of generic looking anime-ish characters with unpronounceable names (even in my inner-mind, which made it impossible to remember anyone's name.) There's too much backstory you have to go through to get to the story. Game designers: STOP DOING THAT! If you want to make a movie then make a movie. There's no reason I couldn't have control of Irzyka or Ufa during their plans for war. Why "show" me what they do when letting me do it would be more fun and enjoyable? This is the core problem of a lot of games where story takes precedence over gameplay. Always remember the player is a part of your world, and is there to inhabit it, not see it. As a designer it's essentially shooting yourself in the foot. Not even Kojima can get away with long cutscenes, so stop it. It easily gets to a point of unnecessary showboating and ego stroking.
In the end Aëdemphia has the most beautiful maps I've seen in an indie RPG, but suffers greatly in every other aspect of game design. I applaud Sylvanor for trying to hard, and having the fortitude to continue to work on his game for so long, but I wonder if the game's long incubation period is what caused all of these pitfalls.
Lessons to be learned from Aëdemphia:
-Use readable fonts. Function over form.
-If you use cinematic techniques study cinematography.
-Keep a consistent art style.
-All proper nouns (people, places and things) should be pronounceable and easy to remember. Cellar Door.
-Show, do not tell.
-Overall, work towards a fluid gameplay experience. Gameplay supersedes all other aspects of production.
-Do NOT have cutscenes over 5 mintues.
-DO NOT have an opening cutscene over 3 minutes.
Those last two are malleable depending on the game I'd say. In the end Sylvanor is far too demanding of his own audience, which leads me to suspect he does not care for the audience as much as he does the story and game he has created. Furthermore his tendency to handhold the player goes too far, and tutorials are overly verbose and long. Sometimes they don't even have to be expressed at all.
And while it may sound like I'm accusing Sylvanor of stealing the backgrounds or something, that is not the case. I think he is the creator of the wonderful backgrounds, but I don't understand why that talent isn't consistent in all aspects of the game art. Why dull characters and vibrant backgrounds?
K', I'm done. :grin:
The game is very pretty, at least the maps are incredibly impressive. The character designs in my opinion have a dull generic fantasy aspect to them. Not to mention the color schemes for most of the characters is blue, brown and green, without much variance from that. That's the smallest of problems. Sylvanor definitely put a lot of love into this project and it shows, but he still needs to work on his anatomy and shading. Characters are pillow shaded, or have a very dull contrast in their color schemes between lights and darks. Which is strange since the production art has slightly better contrast. In fact, I wonder if the tileart really was done by Sylvanor, or if he hired someone else to do the characters.
The art in the cutscenes, character art and production art is not consistent with the character art. The tilesets have lucidly cool colors overlaying complex backgrounds with bright lights and lots of pastel-like layered detail. The character art is flat, slightly abstract and anime-ish in the cutscenes. The backgrounds blur together beautifully and believably, yet the character and cutscene art is so sparse and dry. Lastly, text in cutscenes goes by far too quickly, and should be replaced with the ability to move forward at the player's leisure or lengthened.
Speaking of cutscenes, while they're technically impressive the level of detail is very inconsistent with the tilesets. Characters move with an awkward stiffness, especially noticeable in the opening cutscene. It reminds me of an early Lucasarts adventure game but drawn by a beginner. The anatomy is alright, but the characters, again, are very stiff and broad. Shots are cluttered and could be better. If you're going to have a cinematic style and use cutscenes in this manner then better shot choices that lead the eye, are properly balanced and have a good use of positive and negative space is a must. Which, again makes me think the background artist and lead artist are different people because the backgrounds are extremely well balanced.
Moving on, the character art (in game, on the maps and in battle) are horrible. No shading, no smoothness in animation or tone. Very bland and stiff. And I can't believe whoever made this also made this. The menu art is gaudy and hard to read, usually cluttered with too much text. The font should be something less flowery that can work with the limited detail allowed in the game. Even the most fantastic of games uses simple and easy to read fonts. And with a game as text heavy as Aëdemphia that is very important. Furthermore the text in the cutscenes is hard to read. It's anti-aliased and large. If it must be anti-aliased, a black border should surround them so as to distinguish light letters from light background colors.
Lastly, the story is godawful, which is sad since a lot of effort obviously went into this game. The story begins with a story about a girl and her ruined homeworld, then becomes a story about this girl in a war of some kind, and finally the girl waking up in a strange place. That's three separate stories in the span of the first 10 minutes of the game. Each of which has enough character growth and backstory that it should either be unexplained until a later date, or given the time to develop on its own instead of being rushed past the player right at the start. It's important in games to show and not tell. Things have more meaning and are more fun when the player encounters them naturally, which brings me to the next problem.
The game's opening sequence is far too long for its own good. It stumbles, is extremely cluttered and awkwardly told with the storyline stopping every two seconds to remind you what menial task Sylvanor has accomplished on his own in big giant silver gaudy fonts. I don't know why Sylvanor didn't just say "a game 100% created by Sylvanor" first and then a second screen crediting all the music used (which is a little sad when you actually see it, as all music is credited to one guy who's name is in big silver letters of a gaudy font, and then several other musicians underneath him which have names too small to read. I'd hate to be a game musician in France.) Not to mention Sylvanor seems to understand the constant name-dropping is annoying and distracts from the story, but he does it anyway. But I digress.
In the end I wound up not caring about the story as it's centered around a bunch of generic looking anime-ish characters with unpronounceable names (even in my inner-mind, which made it impossible to remember anyone's name.) There's too much backstory you have to go through to get to the story. Game designers: STOP DOING THAT! If you want to make a movie then make a movie. There's no reason I couldn't have control of Irzyka or Ufa during their plans for war. Why "show" me what they do when letting me do it would be more fun and enjoyable? This is the core problem of a lot of games where story takes precedence over gameplay. Always remember the player is a part of your world, and is there to inhabit it, not see it. As a designer it's essentially shooting yourself in the foot. Not even Kojima can get away with long cutscenes, so stop it. It easily gets to a point of unnecessary showboating and ego stroking.
In the end Aëdemphia has the most beautiful maps I've seen in an indie RPG, but suffers greatly in every other aspect of game design. I applaud Sylvanor for trying to hard, and having the fortitude to continue to work on his game for so long, but I wonder if the game's long incubation period is what caused all of these pitfalls.
Lessons to be learned from Aëdemphia:
-Use readable fonts. Function over form.
-If you use cinematic techniques study cinematography.
-Keep a consistent art style.
-All proper nouns (people, places and things) should be pronounceable and easy to remember. Cellar Door.
-Show, do not tell.
-Overall, work towards a fluid gameplay experience. Gameplay supersedes all other aspects of production.
-Do NOT have cutscenes over 5 mintues.
-DO NOT have an opening cutscene over 3 minutes.
Those last two are malleable depending on the game I'd say. In the end Sylvanor is far too demanding of his own audience, which leads me to suspect he does not care for the audience as much as he does the story and game he has created. Furthermore his tendency to handhold the player goes too far, and tutorials are overly verbose and long. Sometimes they don't even have to be expressed at all.
And while it may sound like I'm accusing Sylvanor of stealing the backgrounds or something, that is not the case. I think he is the creator of the wonderful backgrounds, but I don't understand why that talent isn't consistent in all aspects of the game art. Why dull characters and vibrant backgrounds?
K', I'm done. :grin:
