Indie games in a nutshell
>>727682669The fate of every series that keeps getting endless sequels.
>>727682669thats literally about remakes if its about anything
>>727682669>dude, it's actully indie devs who are graphics obsessed! Not trible-a! *hits bong*
>>727682896>thinking it's about graphicsLow IQ
>>727682896It's not about graphics, your IQ is below 100
>>727682669Deltarune and Undertale
>>727682948AAA games are even less innovative with gameplay than indies
>>727682971If its talking about only what people see on the surface level to be easily impressed by then its definitely just about graphics. you'd have to bite into a game for anything else
>>727682669youre not supposed to eat that part
>>727683076It's not about graphics, stop exposing your subhuman intellect
>>727683076A combo video for an action game is just as much surface level garbage.
>>727683076You can infer a lot of things beyond graphics quality upon first glance at a game, you reprobate.
>>727682971>>727682948>UMM, LOOKS IS NOT ABOUT GRPAHICS! *pops more ketamine*Y'all need to do less drugs before posting.
>>727682669Onion posting
>>727683276No, that's an apple.
Artfags really expect me to figure out some deep philosophical meaning behind their shitty paintings.Bro I just want to look at anime tiddies I don't care if the artwork was done by some demented old guy going through depression when he made it, or if it was done by some coomer who typed a few words into an AI model.
We need an apple whose core houses a million seeds. Suicide apples.
>>727683310slop enabler
>>727682669>indie games look like SHIT>uh....actually if they look good it's because they're still shityou AAA fags are hysterical
>>727683123>>727683193>>727683196You keep ignoring graphics is the most obvious, literal interpretation. Just because your delusional mind can come up with other, more strained interpretations doesn't mea they are correct. It doesn't mean you're smart, it means you have not developed the theory of the mind.
>>727683340Faggot
>>727682669which book is that one from?
>>727682896Actually, almost everyone is obsessed with top end graphics
>>727682669wdym? Don't you like the >psychological horror, simulator, deck builder, rougelike, co-op, boomer shooter that was made in UE5, utilizing AI and stolen assets and requires more that somehow requires at least a 4080 to run?>its unfair to criticizes the developer you know? He's just a single autistic Ethiopian coding on 15 year old laptop he stole from a tourist and using starlink to watch jeet youtube tutorials on how to make games with sole purpose of trying to feed his entire village with the game revenue? oh and ignore the obtuse easter eggs that contain dev's fetish material for no fucking reason ok?
>>727683386No, you're just a retard that treats games like interactive movies. Interpretation of video games is the same as interpreting a board game.
>>727683106I do
>>727682669You must read this into context. It was the 90s, the new comics being made were Dark Age edgelord shit that flaunted its spiky overdetailed art style but most of the times had very poor writing.
>>727683467No, just AAA and AAA pretending to be indies.
>>727683298Since when apples have layers?
>>727683404making comics by scott mcloud seems like. i remember reading it in high school. was very interesting
>>727683527No it's not. Ask your tardwangler.
>>727683298Well, lah-de-dah, we have an expert in food over here!
Boy, I love when people who don't play indie games attempt to "criticize" indie games.
>>727683575The inner layers stand for substance. Since pretty much nobody eats raw onions whole without even peeling them, the methaphor wouldn't work with onions. Also apple seed standing for idea is a nice symbol, even if fruits don't really work that way.
play nip indies
>>727682669>Ideas are poisonouswoah.... deep.......
>>727683106the core is the actual "fruit" part of the apple, botanically speaking, so it's pretty important to make the whole thing tasty
>>727682669>food analogy
>>727683627I love Noa.
>>727683947It's the reason it exists, even
>>727683890Yes, indie games are proof of that.
>>727682669Considering the core of the apple is inedible the new guy is objectively a better product for the costumer.This is a bad analogy.
>>727686248You know what we do with apple peels? We feed them to pigs.
>>727683540>had
>>727682669>>727683106The cyanide poisoning is just big Apple trying to get you.>>727683890Yes, this is why big government mandates that all art is made parthenocarp by copyright, to prevent the spawning of new ideas that could threaten government.
>>727686350Isnt that apple cores? Because they are inedible to us but pigs are fine with it?
>>727686248Holy fucking COPE
I can split my head apple and see all the layers without paying an artist.
>>727683076I'd argue it is about general aesthetic and tone and advertisement which absolutely includes graphics but also things like writing and music. Basically it is the trailer. That is the best way to describe it. The trailer and the screenshots on the steampage. Those can be colorful, exciting, have fun music and pop and then you play the game and it sucks.
>>727686507How is that cope? If they wanted to say the lack of core is bad they should have chosen a food where the core is the most important part, like a dumpling, or if he had to keep it a fruit make it a coconut or something, not literally a product where the center is poison to people like an apple.
>>727686915>The American must contextualize everything as eating every single component and divining its nutritional valueWithout a seed or real central idea, there is no way for the work to proliferate, it is completely one and done with no impact.He is also saying that there is absolutely nothing beneath the surface, not just that it's lacking the typically inedible components.
I have anti Indie fatigue.
>>727688618Nothing in the image implies the impact thing, and if it did, it would be hilarious since the biggest game of all fucking time was an indie that even inspired AAA to make copies of it.>He is also saying that there is absolutely nothing beneath the surface, not just that it's lacking the typically inedible componentsI got that, anyone would, and i said its a bad analogy since he chose an apple for it when there are better foods, even other fruit, for it.
>>727689274>>727688618I think both of you you are overthinking a simple metaphor of a well known object that has layers. IT doesn't help the secondary meaning that a seed is what something grows from albeit that not being what the apple has grown from in this case. The point is just that the idea maybe small but it's focal to the piece of work.
>>727686248The idea is inedible as well, you can only eat what it produces, the game, not the dev's brain
>>727692479ZOMBIES BTFO
>>727692479
>>727683627I want that apple to sit on my face
I've played an abundance of indie games this year, some brand new, some on sale from a release a few years prior.All except one was 8/10 at worst. It's been a great few years for releases.The doomers around here really do make their own AAA hell. I can't even recommend lowering their standards, because half of what I've played is also better quality than AAA has produced in years as well. So I don't know what to say, except 'lmao you-problem'.
>>727693104This anon started playing games in 2012
>>727686450You peel an apple and then eat the peels?
>>727686607Why can't pirate-vegans shut the fuck up for five minutes? Nobody fucking asked.
>>727682669im not reading all this shit
>>727683627WAN WAN WAN WAN
>>727693552That's because you're illiterate.
>>727693552>all that shitIt's just a few lines.
>>727683310Soulless consoomer, your existence is offensive to humankind
>>727686657That's also wrong, I don't think you need to involve any visual elements at all How I would apply this to indie games is>devs before had grand ideas for games that they had to condense into what the hardware allowed>indie devs only saw the results without realizing there was an extensive and thorough process behind those results >indie devs start developing by targeting those limited results rather than targeting a grand idea and having the game be the final results of how much of that grand idea they can execute For example every creative part of Chrono Trigger started life as "how would we do this if it were a book, an anime, a game without tech limitations" and then it was pared down until it could be an actual game on hardware at the time, that's what gives it substance, if you dig into it you can see hints of all the things they wanted to do but couldn't Whereas every creative part of Sea of Stars was made by only looking at those surface level results of Chrono Trigger and thinking "how would we do this in order to be like Chrono Trigger", it's hollow because there are no hints to anything below the surface, because there was no vision other than trying to replicate an old game and modernizing it a bitIt's like an uncontacted tribesman seeing a house for the first time and going back to his tribe trying to replicate it, without realizing it needs foundations (an element below the surface) in order to stand
>>727695031Undertale is also a good example because most of it exists primarily as a game first, there was no other greater idea in the dev's head that had to be bent into the shape of a game, what you see is what he imagined
>>727695509Not defending undertale but you know all Earthbound mechanics are derivative of dragon quest. Its just a “what if dragon quest but another setting”. They didn’t bend any idea into the shape of a game, its just a clone of older games, no matter how much you like the setting.
>>727696312No, it was more like "what if we made a western kids' comic/cartoon like Peanuts into an RPG" whereas Undertale is "what if I swapped all the characters from Earthbound with my OCs"
>>727696458But it doesn’t play like Earthbound at all? Nor even the plot or setting is similar.Chrono Trigger poster had a point, but you seem incapable of distinguishing “turning ideas into a game” to “picking ideas from other games and putting it in my own” if its about a game you like. Earthbound still had that stupid gamey “command menu” in the overworld sections that was present in DQ1 but not in any other contemporary rpgs, just because the dev wanted it to be a copy of what he liked at the time. You’re just being disingenuous.
>>727695509Correct. And a lot of the things like manipulating the file system is a sign of failing to do more.
>>727696962There are far more similarities in form between Earthbound and UT than Earthbound and DQ
>>727697097Surface level similarities you meanThe only thing unique about Earthbound gameplay wise is the HP meter, and that's not there in Undertale
>>727697097That is moving the goalposts, undertale is a game that 90% of its dialogs and scenes are references to something. Its simply a “remember that from X game/show/etc?”. But we were talking about gameplay and hammering ideas into gameplay to fit the game, not just dialog. In Earthbound the ideas weren’t shaped into gameplay, they were thought as a traditional rpg from the getgo, with archaic mechanics even. It is as referential to older rpgs as Sea of Stars is to Chrono Trigger.
>>727683393You probably can't rotate an apple in your mind lmao.
>>727697097Hmm I’m getting Boss Baby vibes from this
>>727695031Good post, I was wondering how OP's comic was related to indie games but your analysis made it clear.
>>727697424>>727697646>>727697814Earthbound subverts DQ and other RPGs by using an unexpectedly different setting as the grand idea to bend into the shape of an RPGUndertale subverts Earthbound and other RPGs by replicating its surface, arbitrarily mixing in the surfaces of other games, and doing some subversive meta stuff as the "shiny new skin" part of the appeal from the OP comicIf Itoi or someone like him had the idea for Earthbound today for the first time, it would be executed in a vastly different way, whereas if someone was making UT today for the first time, it would be executed in the exact same way, due to the target > execution phenomenon in >>727695031
>>727698223>thing I like subvert, thing I dislike copyYeah man we get it you made it apparent already. You’re not interested in discussing the phenomenon in >>727695031 at all.First of all Undertale isn’t a modern setting rpg nor its surface is similar to earthbound, I don’t understand why people want to conflate both together so much. The only thing I can think of is a story of a boy in a weird world with wacky enemies, thats the only similarity with both. The combat system is completely different, one is a traditional rpg (copy of dq) the other is a rpg with minigames (akin to a mario rpg with active dodging and attacking, but with danmaku patterns). Both are derivative in this aspect. Earthbound is the story about defeating a great evil that came from nowhere (the most generic story ever). Undertale is a story about going back home (also generic and derivative).Both of these games didn’t have ideas that got condensed into hardware, they took pre-existing gameplay ideas and copied them. Thats the point of the OP post and >>727695031The main difference between EB and UT is that in EB the gameplay is just a thing that exists, unrelated to the story, whereas in UT the gameplay is, in part, the story, its self serving, and that gives you the ick
>>727695031Developers then just generally didn't have existing media that was analogous to their own due to ongoing technological development, whereas modern devs have had almost direct analogs at their tech level for the last 20-30 years.Something like Chrono trigger was adapting a bunch of different influences to reach its final state, and most people just don't know most of the games that served as inspiration for their more widely known successors, so it's not like older games were made from whole cloth either.Ultimately the modern indie also has limitations, primarily on their motivation, their talent, their budget and their time, so they will seek something that fits those limitations using today's more freely available and powerful tools and hardware. This would be less of an issue if copyright was made less overbearing and mods, conversions and romhacks were more normalized as something that can seek monetization, which would let someone just focus on whatever they are good at and can do within a realistic timeframe and budget.>Oh paid mods, that totally failedAnd it failed because the implementation of it was completely non-functional and engineered almost exclusively for the purpose of Valve and Bethesda raking in most of the money while doing nothing.
>>727699102You missed the point againThe characters and places and events in Earthbound existed as ideas before they were part of a game, meanwhile everything in UT exists explicitly only as a part of a somewhat-Earthbound-like game, and the gameplay and the meta experimentation all heavily depend on that fact, they make no sense unless you think of them as exclusively surface game elementsUT did not spring from its own core, it just played with the surfaces of other games, you could say that self-awareness about the game being a surface has creative merit, but I would say it only has merit to those who think of games as nothing but surfaces in the first place, like a supposedly "anti-war" movie that ends up glorifying and lionizing war anyway and appealing to pro-war audiences
>>727695031Do you think video games are inherently lower than books and movies, and thus shouldn't be a source of inspiration?
If funny to see anons full of shit talking about Earthbound when they have no clue how much Earthbound straight up stole from other things as much as Undertale did.
>>727701778Inspiration sure, target no
>>727688819I have anti Indie fatigue fatigue
>>727683310I'm sad to hear that anon. There's nothing better to find an artists who's pieces resonate with you to the point where it's permanently etched into your brain, and you're drawn back to it time and time again, with it making you as hard as the first time.I hope one day you find someone who's art is able to touch both your cock and your soul.
>>727686248Anon, that's not what inedible means. You can 100% eat an apple core.
>>727695031>How do we do this within the limits of what we haveI agree that this is the embodiment of soul, but it's worth noting that those limits are defined not only by technical capabilities, but also individual skill. Having limitless tech capabilities still puts you within the confines of what you, the creator, can actually make.
>>727682669>inner core is worst part of apple which you throw in trash>it's being missed is somehow bad
>>727700006UT exists explicitly only as a part of a somewhat-Earthbound-like game, and the gameplay and the meta experimentation all heavily depend on that factCan you go in depth with this with clear examples? Have you even played Earthbound or are you just repeating stuff that other people say, that since Earthbound is a quirky modern rpg any other quirky not medieval rpg is also an Earthbound-like?UT is a story about a kid that finds himself in a weird land and wants to go home, and ends up not just going home but saving a kingdom from a reality bending villain that can turn back time (called saving in the game, but it can be seen as a non-game idea). I see absolutely no similarity with Earthbound story or setting in the way that Sea of Stars does with Chrono Trigger, basically being the wojak pointing meme saying “look its just like chrono trigger!!!”.I’m not saying it isn’t filled with references, but the references are on the same level as “Ooh they’re referencing Apple!! The beatles!!! Oh its just like the Blues Brothers!! Johnny B Goode!!” That you’d do while playing Earthbound. Maybe when you played Earthbound you were young and couldn’t get all the references but any 16~20something year old could point them out at the time it was released.
>>727707821even unreal tournament is better than whatever dogshit you're describing
>>727695031To be fair indie developers sort of have to limit themselves nowadays because the technology is so much greater, trying to flesh out a grand idea will lead to massive scope creep (that's also likely janky) and a subsequent burnout. People still make passion games with ideas but they often go generally unnoticed on a larger scale, like Little Witch In The Woods which IIRC first started out as a social media post and extrapolating on its idea of a cozy game, or maybe I'm confusing it with the one about making it Disco Elysium-like. That's the bigger issue, the games just go unnoticed, retro games had the excuse of there being far fewer games and the games were generally shorter so people had plenty of time to play anything and many things looked interesting, nowadays there's plenty of games and plenty of time taken playing them and people have formed their preferences for what they generally want to play and standards to compare games to.It's also important to note that in the past the development teams for those games were numerous, even Doom had at least a dozen people working on it, indie studios nowadays are usually even smaller so development takes even longer to be on par with the productions of larger studios quality-wise.
This comic distinguishes between "craft" and "surface" in artistic work. Craft represents the deep, substantive work—constructing the piece, applying skills and knowledge, problem-solving, and actually getting the job done. Surface, in contrast, refers to production values, finishing touches, and polish—the aspects most immediately apparent on first exposure to the work. The comic illustrates this concept through a layered diagram resembling an apple's cross-section, showing art as composed of concentric layers from innermost to outermost: idea, form, idiom, structure, craft, and finally surface. In all the arts, it's the surface that people appreciate most easily, like an apple chosen for its shiny skin. An interesting generational divide emerges: the latest trends often look better at a glance than older work because newer artists tend to focus on surfaces, while older masters who created the foundational ideas and idioms were less interested in surface polish. This creates a visual paradox where technically inferior but highly polished work can appear more attractive than deeper, more substantial pieces. The comic then uses the apple metaphor literally—showing three apples representing the old master, the master's student, and the new kid. While the shiny new apple looks most appealing, biting into it reveals it's hollow inside, lacking substance. The narrator observes this is "a cycle as old as art itself"—the recurring pattern of prioritizing appearance over substance, where attractive surfaces seduce viewers away from deeper artistic values. The warning is clear: surface appeal without underlying craft, structure, and ideas produces empty work, no matter how polished it appears.
>>727707821To go back to the apple analogy in the OP comic>Earthbound has an idea (Peanuts-style setting) which takes a game form (DQ-like RPG)>Chrono Trigger has an idea (time travel fantasy epic) which takes a game form (SNES RPG)>Sea of Stars' idea is being an RPG like Chrono Trigger, there is no substantial idea found at the core, it simply imitates the surface of CT >Undertale's idea is mimicking the surface of an Earthbound-like RPG, but then surprising players by acknowledging the fact it's only a game-like surface and playing with it>however this still doesn't give it a substantial core If Sea of Stars is a hollow apple, UT is a hollow apple whose skin is edible paper mache instead of real apple skin whose point is to fool you into thinking it's apple skin, whose insides have "gotcha!" written on them UT's main premise is basically worthless without old JRPGs 1) existing and 2) being well known among players, like how Spaceballs would make no sense (and wouldn't be made) if Star Wars didn't exist, meanwhile Earthbound is a subversion of DQ but it would make sense even if it were the only game someone played
>>727682896>instantly and irreversibly destroys OP’s argument
