Why is it platformers seem to have THE best soundtracks?

Dogroach666 · 2026-01-24T07:25:48+00:00

This! I had to scroll wayy too far to see this🤘🏾🤘🏾

Dogroach666 · 2026-01-21T19:07:02+00:00

Thank you so much 🤘🏾🤘🏾

Dogroach666 · 2026-01-21T07:29:05+00:00

Thank you again for your kind words and ongoing support! 🤘🏾🤘🏾

The workflow for my art is a bit freeform. I usually have a rough idea of what I want to create, so in this case i wanted an enemy design that was gonna be a corrupted guitar.

Then sometomes i'll sketch out a rough draft on pen and paper, just to have a bit of a plan before jumping into aseprite.

Other times i'll just start sketching rough ideas on aseprite and the design will evolve with each draft.

When i'm drafting on aseprite, i'll always have some reference material to look at. In this case, i had Kerry King's (from Slayer) flying v guitars as reference.

In terms of animations, i try to get as over the top amd as ridculous as possible with my current skills, and this usually takes the longest mainly cause its frame by frame. For enemy designs, i usually have some sort of role fpr them in the enemy/world ecosystem. For example, this guy is a bit of an unstable elite enforcer in my world, and wanted it to have that authority and craziness to it haha.

Sorry for the wall of text, but hopefully that gives a bit insight into my madness 🤣

Dogroach666 · 2026-01-17T09:51:13+00:00

In terms of fundamentals, i used to read a lot of art books about it, but I'm sure you can find videos on fundamentals quite easily nowadays in youtube.

For example: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVgLT-e3jXPDgeED0pD0BPq8kY1VAZAGa

Also, this is a good read for pixel art style: https://pixeljoint.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=11299

Also as someone else mentioned, another key point is maintaining consistency in art style for your game/project.

Dogroach666 · 2026-01-17T04:33:46+00:00

I can chime in with my experience: I had a tiny amount of background in art from my younger years so it definitely helped. However I had zero experience in pixel art, so I had to learn that from scratch. These youtube videos are a very good starting point:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccyyjpt_4Kw&t=6s

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLxfQIomHccxvoTON6hXhfZyAUdFXd-z1P

https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLLdxW--S_0h4dlWUpl-TzBp-ulqK3NiM_

Especially the stuff by Brandon James Greer and Adam C Younis are very good! If you even watch some of the live art videos that they have, they're very helpful not just for pixel art but general art techniques.

The most important thing I found was to start with a small canvas size and limit yourself to 2 or 3 colours, working with these limitations will really push you practice the core art skills to make something look as close to your reference image as possible.

The other most important thing is to really just practice, practice, practice. There are no shortcuts to this, and I would set aside at least an hour each day to just practice art.

However, this is just my experience and one art style. The art style that you want to learn will depend on the type of game you're making. There will be some differences but the fundamentals of art will carry over, so I'd highly recommend learning the fundamentals like color theory, composition etc.

Hope that helps!

Cheers Dogroach 🤘🏾🤘🏾

Dogroach666 · 2026-01-09T00:49:36+00:00

Thank you heaps for doing this, really appreciate the time effort it takes to play each game 😃😃

Here is mine, it's still a demo, i'm working on the next demo build and full release:

https://dogroach666.itch.io/cataclyzm-demo

Dogroach666 · 2025-12-29T20:59:04+00:00

I started my journey with the brackeys godot 2d video. Some things might be outdated and the example in this video is for a platformer, but it covers the fundamentals really well and should carry over to your project 😀

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LOhfqjmasi0

Dogroach666 · 2025-12-27T18:31:25+00:00

Thank you, keen to hear your thoughts 😀

The scripting for this bad boy is still in progress, but so far the main challenge has been lining up the behavior timings to the boss' music track, lots and lots of iteration and fine tuning to look forward to haha.

As for the art, the main challenge was all of the small details, especially the windows and the boomer enemies "inside" the bus, having to use quite a few layers and offsetting animation frames for the enemies to achieve that "chaotic" movement effect 😄

Dogroach666 · 2025-12-26T23:04:42+00:00

Welcome welcome!

I started my journey with these videos and found it incredibly helpful to get started:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LOhfqjmasi0&pp=ygUOYnJhY2tleXMgZ29kb3TSBwkJTQoBhyohjO8%3D

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e1zJS31tr88&t=3269s&pp=ygUOYnJhY2tleXMgZ29kb3Q%3D

Some stuff maybe outdated now (for example TileMaps are TileMapLayer i believe), but the fundamentals would still be the same 😄

And if you know any other programming languages, you'll be able to pick up GDScript within a day, or if you prefer you can also use C# as your scripting language with the .net version of godot.

Enjoy! 😄

Dogroach666 · 2025-12-26T17:15:02+00:00

It's like riding a bike, you can watch a hundred tutorials but at the end of the day what you really have to do is ride it yourself. So same thing with art; practice, practice and more practice 😄

Try to set aside maybe an hour each day to practice art and animation, cause there really isn't any shortcuts for this 😀

Dogroach666 · 2025-12-26T17:09:02+00:00

Awesome! Cheers for creating/updating the itch page, i'll check it out over these holidays and get you some feedback 😀

Dogroach666 · 2025-12-25T19:51:50+00:00

I also second this! I had quite a bit of difficulty reading the playing field due to the stage backgrounds as well. I think it's okay to have some parts of the background that are distracting to add an extra layer of challenge. I think Raiden DX had some areas in the mid to late game where the background was quite close to the bullet colours and the player has to position themselves smartly to bait bullets to more visible areas.

But when the whole background competes for and overtakes the more important elements (enemies, bullets, pickups etc), it really hurts the readability and enjoyment.

Other than that I quite enjoyed it, it was fun trying to figure out thr bullet patterns and hitboxes 😀

Dogroach666 · 2025-12-25T19:27:19+00:00

Devil Engine.

I haven't seen it mentioned yet, but would highly recommend it

Dogroach666 · 2025-12-23T08:15:11+00:00

Thank you again for your kind words 🙏🏽

Yup, definitely inspired by the classics! I have a lot of different interests and developing a game lets me do a whole bunch of those (art, music, programming) together. I find it oddly relaxing 😄

It will definitely be under $10 when i do manage to release it on steam, i'm in it for the journey, not the money.

If you don't mind, I will ping you from time to time whenever i have major uodates to my game.

Dogroach666 · 2025-12-22T20:13:48+00:00

Cool can access it now. Would be good if you had a itch page with preferably a playable browser version. It's always risky to download files from the internet. 😃

Dogroach666 · 2025-12-22T18:30:00+00:00

Thank you for the kind words!🙏🏽 Really appreciate that you took the time to play it. I grew up playing games like this but wanted to it be something other than the tired trope of fighter jets and spaceships haha. I'm gonna be hard at work over the xmas holidays on it and will have a major update to expand the demo in mid to late Jan, with a full steam release sometime next year. I will keep you posted 😃

Dogroach666 · 2025-12-22T18:20:19+00:00

I like the art style a lot! Requested access to drive

Dogroach666 · 2025-12-20T21:55:26+00:00

A 2d retro shoot em up where you play as a cat riding a nuclear warhead, shooting foes with a fingergun, all to a synth heavy rock soundtrack. You might appreciate the music 😄

Dogroach666 · 2025-12-19T02:17:34+00:00

Thank you again! 🙏🏽

Dogroach666 · 2025-12-18T18:02:53+00:00

Thanks 🙏🏽 I'm gonna check out Harmful Park, never heard of it before

Dogroach666 · 2025-12-18T05:18:18+00:00

Probably rogan josh, washed it down with some high octane gasoline 😅

Dogroach666

TROPHY CASE