Hello, everybody! I hope you are having a great time. Personally, I do, because today I present you the result of many months of planning and drafting: my first-ever gamedev project, The Other Side of Despair.

This game is going to be a story-rich top-down pixel RPG with quests, dialogs, and combat. The game’s setting is a fantasy world of floating islands inhabited by humans and fairies. The player takes one of two characters under control, and the second one becomes a companion. Together, they dispatch on a quest to explore the world and, ideally, save it from a curse laid upon it.

The game’s engine is Godot, and the game itself will support mods. In fact, the default story with all the characters and plot is a huge JSON file that can be easily modified. I hope this feature will allow modders to create their own stories set in this game’s world (or something completely different).

Why 32x32?

In this devlog, I want to focus on why I chose a 32x32 pixel resolution. When we think of pixel top-down RPGs, we often think of Zelda-like retro stuff, which was 16x16 (AFAIK) or maybe even 8x8 if we go far back enough (no proof here, though). Many developers are consciously trying to fit into that aesthetics and make their games feel cozy. Open Itch’s “Game Assets” page and turn on some filters to see top-down tilesets and sprites. You will see that most things are 16x16 and cozy.

My headcanon here is that aside from the obvious decrease in production costs, game developers want to use the feeling of nostalgia for a time when we were kids and our lives were generally cozier than they are now. I dislike it for two reasons.

First, I don’t believe in that kind of escapism. Yep, things were probably brighter, and yep, we probably miss them. What’s next, though? The game, most likely, does not answer. A tiny, cozy pixel fantasia rarely offers more than (at best) an entertaining story and a warm feeling for a few hours. Is this really all the games have to offer? I believe in a different kind of escapism: the kind that doesn’t just switch you back 20 or something years but teaches you something about yourself and helps you realize that something important inside of you exists in both escape-reality and reality-reality.

Second, I don’t like the influence 16x16 has on development. Any tool used to create art influences it, and the resolution influences the art in the following way: the lower the resolution, the more you are tempted to neglect details. Few, if any, works of art have ever succeeded without attention to detail. Attention to detail is a form of love, and I want my game to feel like it was made with love (it was).

My biggest inspiration in that regard is the game “Flesh, Blood, & Concrete” by Io, whom I respect deeply. I don’t know for sure if the game’s resolution is 32x32 — it may be 48x48 with certain adjustments — but that’s not the point. The point is that the attention to detail in this game is immense, and I have never seen a 2D indie game that came even close to that. My game will not come close either but I want it to look up to FB&C.

Obviously, it cost an arm and a leg for Io to draw so much stuff — and I am perfectly aware that diving too deep into details too early will definitely result in a production hell for my game. That’s why I decided to use a pre-made asset pack by Szadi instead. It has an insane amount of props and tiles that cover most of what you see in a Medieval fantasy world.

Later, I will either modify it myself or hire people to do it. However, the base of this game’s indoor graphics will remain Szadi’s Fantasy Lands Houses. Outdoor graphics will be covered in later devlogs.

Stay tuned, and if you are interested, join the game’s Discord server: https://discord.gg/8buQ6myukB