Concept Art

[Yodra]

Hey everyone! I've been dreaming of making a pet site for ages now and I'm slowly, slowly moving towards that goal. Below I've posted two examples of concept art for the game. I'd love to get some feedback on what people think!

Also, which matters more to you: that each pet is unique, or that the art is higher quality and has multiple poses?

You can check out an extremely simple prototype of the color system here: Bloodlines

 

[Yodra]

Still working out the kinks of producing more complex patterns!

 

[cpvr]

I’d like to see each pet have multiple poses as this concept is more unique.

 

[Yodra]

Whew, something worth showing! Here's a small sample of the pets created:

All with Mendelian genetics! Ever pet that's not a solid color is entirely unique!

 

[SunnyRats]

I really like your creature concept and markings. Personally, I like a unique pets. ChickenSmoothie and Wajas do a good job of the "same pose, unique design" route. I think multiple poses could be potentially fun, if you encorporate them in a 'genetic' like way, like passing on a sitting pose or leaping pose. The problem there comes with redrawing all the markings and coding it so the jumpers would always have jumper markings. But I think the traditional breeding style vps can go a long way on its own without the need for special poses. It opens up a world of endless mutations, markings, special effects and so on.

To me, I don't think HQ art/multi poses is a big deal, even tho multiposes is a concept that seems to be getting a bit more out of style and I love to see it. My favourite games of petsite past had "substandard" or "same face" art, but the experience and fun and the creativity of the in game world was what I personally cared about.

I'm looking forward to more! Do you plan to encorporate real life animal markings, or will they be fantasy based?

 

[Anoua]

I love multiple poses. That's what I did for my game, but it is a lot of work. Especially if you do any separate parts and all the markings needing to match. It has made it harder to get more creatures though which is a big trade off. In my case immersion and feeling connected to your creature was more important to me.

That is one of the things I used to love about neopets back in the day. They still have the moods now, but it's just the face that changes. But the full pose change was great and I would rather have the poses back and skip the decorating system myself. But a lot of people like decorating and they seem to get a lot of money from it. So it really just depends on what you want to focus on with your game and where you want to put your resources. Since while poses are nice, it's obviously going to cost more resources to actually have each pet have multiple poses. And depending on your game it might not be worth it or feasible.

As for unique or not, it really just depends. I do like a decent level of quality in general though. I don't tend to enjoy the completely unique collect em style pets as much (such as chicken smoothie) but it is fun to see what comes out and look at all the options. And a lot of people do enjoy that system and wouldn't want it any other way. I personally enjoy the breeding systems that let you get pretty much unlimited options though. But those pets aren't unique in the way chicken smoothing would be.

Overall I think it just depends what your goals are and what audience you want to attract as many different options will work.

 

[Yodra]

Thanks for the feedback! On review, I think I want to stick with the unique-but-breedable pets idea and scrap the multiple poses. The tricky part is figuring how to turn the pet generator into an actual game!

So far the markings are entirely based on real animals, but I'm considering some fantasy-style markings.