What is indie cancer?

Clunkyness

while not an explicit genre, games that try to provide some kind of 'commentary' or subliminal critique of something tend to be shit. they push the message at the expense of gameplay / plot

>>322672607
Are you saying commentary on game play, or commentary on social issues?

Don't use cliches and then have the game make some joke about having done so.

I doesn't make up for the cliches

>>322672695
both can be bad but i'd say commentary on gameplay/games can be worse when done wrong.
honest to god not baiting or trying to start something but to me undertale is a game that suffers from dependence on the "npcs are people too! being violent in videogames is bad!" commentary
it comes off as pretentious

> What we want to know is, what does /v/ consider cancer in indie /v/.

Don't ever ever ever rely on anon for real advice. Anon is fickle and will turn on you at the slightest provocation for literally no reason. If you go on to fall flat on your face, anon will say "I told you so" as if they were some sorta tastemaker. If you go on to success despite that, anon will blame normalfags or SJW's or <insert other group here>. You can replace "anon" with any other community of gamers, so that means no reddit, twitter, Neogaf, or whatever else either.

Just make whatever game you guys want. Do what makes you guys happy and what you can be proud of at the end of the day.

>>322672950
ehhh, i don't know if i agree with your undertale commentary. Having played it, I think the issue more is how the puzzles are all so piss easy that the game provides no real challenge. Their may be one or two sections you don't know how to do the first time you try it but by the second time its all to easy.

I like the idea that people react to you being villainous. But I do agree that this is like only thing the game is concerned about

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>>322673540
>asking for opinions and gathering information
>blindly doing what you are told

>>322673540
We agree with this, BUT we also think its important to hear outside opinion. We don't all play a ton of indie games, so we can't say we are well versed. It was more a less a shoot in the dark to find something we didn't think about and make sure to avoid it if we feel that it would lessen the overall game.

>>322674000
>Having played it, I think the issue more is how the puzzles are all so piss easy that the game provides no real challenge

I didn't mind that about the game. There are plenty of other games I can play if I'm looking for a challenge. I can respect making the game (mostly) intentionally easy to make sure that players experience as much of the narrative as possible and don't get stuck.

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>>322674156

>>322674319

Just as long as you understand that what you're doing is soliciting an outside opinion at most and are not somehow collectively harvesting the hivemind of gamers everywhere by asking on 4chan.

>>322674000
i can respect your position, and i feel you on the puzzles.
i think that there's a lot more that could have been done with the narrative beyond 'violence is bad'- not that that particular narrative would even have to be dropped, but having something even beyond that would be interesting.

pixelshit is just "I don't have an actual artist on my team" and it's kiiinda undestandable, but making the same shit over and over like stupid metroidvanias is fucking obnoxious

There's nothing wrong with pixel art as long as it's not just an excuse to have bad graphics.

>>322675078
Yeah. agreed.
Perhaps put something unobtainable without killing? Provide a real dilema to the player besides "hur hur best ending is no kills". The attacking portion of hte combat was dull so there was almost no real reward for fighting anyone anyways. The health wasn't that useful

inb4 "you cant experience the sadness of the story without killing people"

why are indie devs so scared of 3D?

>>322675553
>>322675619

Agreed with pixel commentary, but I think everyone is generally turned off by pixel quality in a world of vectors and high poly models. I think its rarer to find someone willing to play a pixel game because its pixel vs it has something interesting in the game play.

>>322675643
not to push the 'meme character' generalization that's been plaguing /v/, but i do think that boosting the personality of the characters and increasing the player's bond with em would help too. the only character i felt bad fighting was papyrus, and he had some build up to his character. the rest of the monster bosses made their first appearances AS bosses, and offered no apparent incentive NOT to fight them, since their characterization wouldn't have been seen yet

I've been wanting to make a murder mystery game in the style of Corpse Party, with just a single protagonist who can astrally project and interact with ghosts and use light telekinesis.

There are plenty of games with a similar premise, but they're in the hidden object or adventure genres, rather than say, an SNES-era looking puzzle game.

>>322676008
Having attempted 3d myself, shit is tough. 2d is very straightforward. You've doodled in your freetime, so you understand how to develop things in 2d.

3D modeling programs are beasts themselves, fairly non intuitive, and time consuming. Its also alot easier to make something decent quality in 2d than it is to make something decent in 3d. I can make a box or a barrel but characters can look bad VERY fast in 3d

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>unreal is free and has a lot of documentation now
>hurr durr let's make this shit on RPG maker

>>322676115
I do agree with this generally. You are given a moment with toriel before fighting her, as well as a buncha monsters giving you some info about Dremurr (even though you also hear he fucks shit up too).

But yeah, i think some of the idea was "even the bland monsters are people too", but the more important characters are not given time to "feel for them".

also the hypocrisy from the fish gurl, cuz she tries to kill you but if you kill someone, she hates you forever even if you spare her.

>>322676452
>unreal is free and has a lot of documentation now
I don't like games with three-dimensional navigation. It's disorienting to me, and I get lost easily. If it's like Strider or Path of Exile, then it's fine. But either of those could just have easily been 2D.

>>322676889
:S This sounds like an issue with any game vs just indie. I think its preference, as well as level design.

But, having watched my dad/sister who dont paly games trying to learn how to use two joysticks at once, i can see your concern.

>>322676889

>>322678274
Follow up from this post.
I think this will be solved with VR. once we have controllers/movement closer to how we move normally (control camera by moving/rotating head, move forward by moving feet) this will get solved.