Let’s see, Secret of Mana? No third party game engine
Chrono Trigger? No third party game engine.
Final Fantasy? Hmm, NO third party game engine!
Now its not necessarily the engines themselves that turns pixel art games into the same slop. Its the constant use of the inbuilt systems for movement and things like that. Thats what makes them all feel the same and not.like the games they are imitating. The movement is different because its a system built by the third party companies generically not hand crafted for the game. That alone works miles towards a game feeling unique.
Godot, Unity, and Unreal don’t provide that kind of stuff, they mostly just provide primitives for things like hit detection, lighting, and physics. Things like movement are generally done by hand, unless the developer is super lazy and buys premade assets from an asset store or something. But then the problem isn’t with the engine, but the developer, and they’d release trash even if they didn’t use one.
I’m not big into pixel graphics, I’m into good games. Here are some examples of good games I’ve played that happen to use pixel graphics, and the engine they used:
Darkside Detective - Unity
Oxenfree - Unity
Dave the Diver - Unity
Undertake - Gamemaker Studio
Celeste - MonoGame
Stardew Valley - MonoGame
Those three examples you gave were made by major studios before game engines were a thing. They used pixel graphics because that’s all they could afford (FF was notorious for being multiple disks).
I’m sure I could find examples in Godot or Unreal if I looked.
My point is that it’s not the engine, it’s the devs. Whether a game is good has less to do with the engine used and more to do with the passion, budget, and time of the devs.
Sanctus@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Thanks for explaining.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
As did you.
Sanctus@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Let’s see, Secret of Mana? No third party game engine
Chrono Trigger? No third party game engine.
Final Fantasy? Hmm, NO third party game engine!
Now its not necessarily the engines themselves that turns pixel art games into the same slop. Its the constant use of the inbuilt systems for movement and things like that. Thats what makes them all feel the same and not.like the games they are imitating. The movement is different because its a system built by the third party companies generically not hand crafted for the game. That alone works miles towards a game feeling unique.
sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Godot, Unity, and Unreal don’t provide that kind of stuff, they mostly just provide primitives for things like hit detection, lighting, and physics. Things like movement are generally done by hand, unless the developer is super lazy and buys premade assets from an asset store or something. But then the problem isn’t with the engine, but the developer, and they’d release trash even if they didn’t use one.
I’m not big into pixel graphics, I’m into good games. Here are some examples of good games I’ve played that happen to use pixel graphics, and the engine they used:
Those three examples you gave were made by major studios before game engines were a thing. They used pixel graphics because that’s all they could afford (FF was notorious for being multiple disks).
I’m sure I could find examples in Godot or Unreal if I looked.
My point is that it’s not the engine, it’s the devs. Whether a game is good has less to do with the engine used and more to do with the passion, budget, and time of the devs.