itch.io

This is such a good concept and the art is awesome.

Did you see the update? I added assets from our game using the theme so there’s some extra goodies for you to play with on your next project!

Heyyyy very cool to see this on the front page of itch and featuring my work. Congrats and excited to see more.

Haha no worries. Thanks for coming back to edit! You can use these in commercial games just bear in mind I don’t own these IP so I release fanwork for free just to acknowledge that. But at the same time, there’s an entire fanworks gray market where people are able to make money producing art and material of big IPs. There’s also that the translation to pixel art might be enough of an aesthetic change to cancel out the similarities to the original material, whether it’s an animated show like Edgerunners or a live action movie like The Terminator.

So, long story short, use your best judgment!

Ah, ok. Cool. You’re looking for basically the Harvest Moon template of tools and NPC archetypes. I can definitely consider that.

I meant to mention that I do have plans for an animation template pack that will be basically “blank” character sprites in a variety of animations with instructions on how to recreate existing sprites from RCC, RDC or NR or make custom sprites. If and when I do this, farming animations are definitely something I can add.

Hi! I’m so glad you like them! I’ve actually been asked to add some features to Nine Realms that would work for a farm sim style game. I’m slow with new stuff but I like to try and respond to requests like this.

By farmer using tools I’m assuming you mean something like the standard roster of tools from something like SDV. So: pick, shovel, hoe, watering can, axe, etc?

If you don’t mind, can you say more about what you’d be looking for from an NPC pack focused on farming? I’m assuming you’d want it to be compatible with the Nine Realms theme overall.

Thanks for your input! I’m definitely willing to consider this so the more detail the better.

Massive bang for buck here.

Ah. Cool. I’ve worked on autotiles in the past, specifically for RPGmaker. I wonder how much overlap there is between Godot’s system and that one. Autotiles are interesting. When I started out, a lot of people were using custom maps made with placeable tiles and props and then importing them to engine. Autotiles just didn’t seem all that in demand but I imagine projects that use procedural generation (or folks who need to make a lot of maps quickly) could make great use of them.

Yeah! Gamedev (and related pursuits) is hard! We gotta support each other when we can, I think.

As for assets… what kinda biomes we talking? I haven’t worked directly with Godot’s autotile format (I mostly make grid-based tilesets like digital lego I guess) but is there a place I can find out more about that? It might be worthwhile to create some stuff that autotiles but in the past it hasn’t really been great from a time spent vs. client demand standpoint. Things have probably changed as Godot becomes more popular, though!

Hey, we can all relate to delayed projects or having too many to deal with! I’m so slow! Haha.

Don’t be hard on yourself and thank you so much for the compliment. There’s more to come including new portraits for the added characters, revamps of all the other RCC character sprites, etc. I am currently working my way through the Gang Packs!

Also got a few surprises in store that I’m slowly putting together. Can’t wait to share them but wait I must haha. Til they’re ready anyway.

Adorable art!

No problem! Thanks for using my stuff! More to come!

Hi there. It’s PNG only.

Ah no worries! Thanks, also, for the compliment and the follow.

I just followed you to follow you. Your projects are cool. If you wanna send me a key (to what though?) then you can email me at hedgewizardgame@gmail.com

Thanks!

Yes. There is an update in the works. It’ll be free for anyone who has previously purchased the pack.

There is also an update coming for the Dwarven tileset as well as a Light Elf tileset to go with the characters.

Progress on Nine Realms content has been slow as I’ve been focused on other projects but I’m eager to update this theme as I love working on it!

This was a lot of fun. Thanks for using my asset pack and definitely a strong submission!

That’s understandable. I appreciate that you even looked into it for me. Happy to be part of what you’ve made and I wish you all the best!

If I understand your question correctly, I wanna reassure you that I don’t expect you to change to a link in-game. It might be fairly difficult for you to change the name as well, but if you could do that in-game that would be wonderful.

What I meant was just this page. Since it is also hosted on itch, it would be great if my entry in your credits list above could link back to my store under the correct name.

I know the name of the URL is the old name, but that’s something I can’t fix easily so for now I am stuck with it.

The link is: https://evanwritesgames.itch.io/

I really appreciate that you’ve already given me credit, this is just about correcting the name and asking for a link.

Thanks so much.

Hi again! For clarity, in case anyone is not sure what ending they’ve got and doesn’t mind spoilers, I’ll include here (deep in our convo ahahaha) a little guidance.

**SPOILER WARNING for anyone reading this who has not played through the game and wants it to be spoiler-free when they do! **

The four flashbacks are: 1 in school, 1 in diner, 1 on roof of gas station, and 1 in the house. If you’ve seen flashbacks in all 4 of these locations, there is a particular ending you get. Most would call it the “good” ending. The other ending occurs if you have missed 1 or more flashbacks and most would think of it as a “bad” ending. Haha.

There is one additional secret in the game, a bunker you can access, but it’s got nothing to do w/ the ending or flashbacks.

Good points btw about the UI and the benefits of incl. that as part of general asset packs. For Dead City, we did want to make more use of the custom item menu and generally have a more point+click approach to items in the game itself. Didn’t really feel necessary in the end so we cut it down to what is there.

You are absolutely right that UI/X is underrated as a part of game design. Totally true. I think a big part of the problem is that UI is different from UX (this is poorly understood) and UI artists often are specialists at a particular kind of artistic expression/utility that doesn’t necessarily overlap w/ other forms of game art. And is often less fun for those of us who like drawing creatures, characters, etc. Then UX itself isn’t necessarily part of the expertise of a UI artist so there’s a lot of collaboration that has to be done (or one genius who gets it right and has a vision). At least that’s my take on it.

BUT pixel art actually does overlap beautifully w/ UI art and I think that somehow occurred to a bunch of asset sellers like me all at once a while ago and they all started adding it in.

Where I kinda fall in this is that I was challenged/asked (haha) to make RDC a pack that includes all the elements someone would need to start making an RPGmaker game (sprites, portraits, tiles, battlers and UI) w/o having to buy multiple packs or wait for me to get around to doing more extensive UI stuff.

So I did that and it was fairly painless, espec. if just a reskin, and now I am seeing, partly thanks to feedback like yours, that even if it is a separate pack, it ought to be a thing in every theme I do. So that means UI reskins for RCC and NR will be added eventually or rolled into existing packs.

Anyways. Thanks so much for your time and support. Good luck to you as well!

Heya! Can I make a small request re: credit?

I see that I’ve been included and that is wonderful! But some things have… changed and if possible, please use a link to my itch page under the name “Everlyspixelsandpens”. I would really appreciate this!

Thanks for the follow-up! I’m so glad you were able to progress. Did you finish? Both endings?

Thank you for the note about the UI. We weren’t able to make our custom menu all that relevant for this particular game but it was fun to try and do something different. Thanks to Manuel, we were able to find a plugin that worked for us and make some other small changes to the start screen, etc. That was all his area.

You may know this but so far the only theme I have that includes UI, which is really just a reskin of the default RPGMMZ UI assets, is the Retro Dead City theme. I think I should probably add similar assets to the other two themes I sell, right? A while back, a lot of asset sellers started doing UI elements all at once so it seems like something we might have collectively overlooked but that helps new creators immensely!

Hi! Thanks so much for trying it out!

The two endings are determined by how many flashback cutscenes you’ve found while playing.

If you’ve seen all 4, you get the “secret” ending.

If you haven’t, you get the standard ending.

At this time, both endings refer to the other ending as the “secret ending” which isn’t exactly correct but will be fixed eventually (after judging is over for the jam).

Hi! Thanks so much for trying it out!

So the note in the basement of the school is not necessary to complete the game but it DOES lead you to a key that unlocks the very door you couldn’t get past. Because of this bug, lemme give you a hint:

Search the Principal’s Office in the school (same for anyone else who encounters this – it will be fixed after the jam judging is over!).

Oh that’s very weird. Which version did you play, Windows .exe or Browser?

The dialogue boxes are definitely supposed to advance when YOU, the player, hits the button and not on their own in any way. Super weird.

If anyone else reading this runs into this bug, please don’t hesitate to sound off!

Fair criticism. Sound and music were one of the last things we locked in and it’s definitely something that we wish we’d had time to do more with.

We really appreciate you giving it a try and taking the time to provide feedback, especially as it seems you’ve found a bug!

Not sure what the dialogue box issue was. I have heard of a few bugs, like a hint note that is inaccessible in the school, but not any issues w/ the dialogue boxes. Please tell me more about this issue!

Thank you so much for checking it out and for the feedback!

Hi! No problem. I am gonna try and leave detailed feedback for every jam entry I try. We all do better when we all do better, right?

I will definitely look to finish when the judging is over and bugs get fixed. Our entry also had a few things that didn’t go as planned. Artistically, we had an advantage in using pre-existing assets but it still took a very long time to do all the mapping and custom stuff. I get how it is.

Is the mirror effect you pulled off a… secret? Hehe.

Hi! I tried Cardboard Town and wanted to offer some feedback. First off, I got stuck in Mikhail’s bedroom so I could not complete the game. I tried interacting w/ the bed and it just didn’t do anything. Saving/reloading didn’t help.

But from what I did play, here’s some feedback.

The art is solid with some exceptions. I think the trees and some of the portraits just don’t fit/work as well as the other assets. There are a few areas w/ layering issues such as Mikhail’s bedroom (the desk).

That said, there are a lot of nice touches here. I enjoyed the design of the car, the walk cycle, and the layout/design of the town. The mirror reflection is a very nice touch, I don’t think I’ve seen that in an RPGM game before. I also enjoyed the one instance I saw of a static manga-style image in the first scene w/ Mikhail’s dad.

The narrative is intriguing and well-written. It’s clear you know how to write dialogue and weave in plot and emotional beats organically. Sometimes I would be wondering when Mikhail would react to certain details or if he even noticed them and usually this paid off because he would (the piano bit is a good example of this), making me feel aligned with the character’s experiences.

The music is really good and fits well. When it kicks up later, as Mikhail’s situation becomes more scary, it really drives you forward to see what happens next.

Gameplay is simple but effective, however I think better indication for interactive elements would be necessary in a game that sometimes requires you to hunt around for the right object/person. The “!” above NPCs does the trick for dialogue, but something similar might help w/ scenes like the bedroom, which broke for me. I liked some of the smaller touches here, as well. For example, I really enjoyed that the game forces me to brush Mikhail’s teeth before bed and in the AM.

Overall, I really enjoyed this and hope to see more from you. If you have other games, I’ll be checking them out. I’ll also come back and finish this if you sort out the bedroom bug (normally I would drop the game over this because time issues, not out of irritation – these things happen – but I want to see what happens next!).

Thanks! Really appreciate your time to play and comment!

All the art is by me and most of it is purchasable as an asset theme on my store. I know B&W zombie stuff is niche but it’s there if people wanna use it!

Thank you so much!

Hi! Thank you so much. There are two endings, one has conditions and is “secret” and the other is what happens if you don’t meet those conditions. Unfortunately, we ran out of time to make the “secret ending” not indicate that the other ending is secret (the message appears for both endings haha). If you saw all the flashback scenes, you got the “secret ending”. If so, try again while skipping one or more flashback scenes and you’ll see the alternate ending.

Again, thank you.

Haha now I hate to say it but that’s the ONE thing we didn’t do much with for reasons that’ll make sense when you try the game. That said, I actually have quite a few designs for NPCs in the theme that no one’s seen yet so that’ll be coming along eventually!

That’s so nice and very encouraging to hear!

A little preview, just for you:

It’s a screenshot of the town map (overworld) of our game. This was WIP cap but the map’s finished now and mostly looks the same. You can probably see a lot of elements there that aren’t currently in the pack but most of it will be!

Hey there! My gamejam partner and I are also using this theme in our game entry, which is (maybe unimaginatively) called Dead City.

I will definitely check your game out!

And also if you like the pack get excited b/c after the jam it’s gonna receive a major FREE update w/ a great deal of the unique assets I made for the jam entry.

This pack currently overlooks a few things that should be there and has some “bugs” in the art that will also be fixed. In other words, roads and roof tiles are the least of the new content that will (finally, sorry!) be added to the pack.

This is really solid stuff but waaaay underpriced!

Like seemingly many others, I am no longer receiving payouts from itch.io in a timely manner. I understand it’s tax season but 40+ days is ridiculous to acquire income that I have earned. I am seeing posts where people have been waiting 90 days, 80 days, etc. There are posts on social media about it. There have been attempts to contact staff, admin, etc here, on discord, and on social media. No responses.

What is going on? This needs to be fixed.

You’re very welcome! Also, thank you for purchasing these!

I’ll have a look and add it to my “recommended” collection – I tend to do that for any project using my assets. Good luck w/ the reskin and lemme know if you need anything else!

Oops! There wasn’t one for the entire theme! Now there is! I had smaller ones for pieces of the theme, such as a tileset bundle, a portrait bundle, etc – not having one for the whole theme is an oversight so thank you for putting it on my radar!

Here’s a link:

https://itch.io/s/150031/retro-cybercity-theme-bundle

Oh gee, no! Nothing like that! I’ll respond to your email shortly. For now the reason for the delay was just an impromptu long weekend w/ my wife and not much time near a phone or PC. I should have probably mentioned that I am typically unavailable over weekends.

You’re not dumb! Just understandably worried about your commission inquiry! It’s all right and I really appreciate the purchase and we’ll sort out the other stuff you need ASAP!