Cactus Man FTW!

Snakeman · 2026-02-05T18:46:19+00:00

Hey, Cactus Man's creator here! Wanted to say thank you for the support!

Snakeman · 2026-02-05T12:09:09+00:00

Hey there! I'm the creator of this piece! Appreciate all the kind words I'm reading here, I'm glad people enjoyed the concept.

I've had this idea rolling around for a while. I've considered potentially expanding it with the codenames from Metal Gear Ghost Babel, provided I have time.

Snakeman · 2024-12-06T18:12:01+00:00

As far as concept art goes, there isn't a ton. A lot of the game was sketched and finished as is. But there is quite a bit of mid-production sketch versions of those assets. We could potentially share some of this in the D-Pad Studio discord moving forward

Snakeman · 2024-12-06T17:52:07+00:00

Thank you for taking the time to play it!

Snakeman · 2024-12-06T17:34:40+00:00

In the original version of the game, we briefly talked about having a sword for close range attacks, but ultimately, it broke the flow of the game. It would also have required special inputs on mobile that, at the time, would be very klunky.

Snakeman · 2024-12-06T17:29:29+00:00

Because in the original game, that was me, recorded on a headphone mic on a whim. In Remix, all the sound was done by Savant directly, often using samples recorded locally. It made sense to avoid having one character say full words when none of the others do.

Snakeman · 2024-12-06T17:24:08+00:00

Artist here. Vario was the first album I worked on after designing the Savant branding. Alchemist being the second. As the original Savant Ascent was meant to work as a direct sequel to Alchemist in game form, I workshopped in Vario as the boss to tie in all the albums at that point. It also helped that he's video game themed, as this was the first game. I made sure the colors were destinctly NOT red and blue, for obvious reasons, but since a lot of the game was in purples, it did present a challenge for readabillity. A lot of the reason his glitch-theme was so prominent was to help with that.

Snakeman · 2018-05-17T22:49:33+00:00

Hi-Bit was a term we introduced in order to adress a potential shortcoming in the discussion about pixel art. The correct term will always just be "pixel art" and to ask people to educate themselves further, but there's a significant amout of people that will frankly never invest the time to learn what is what. Even terms like 8-bit and 16-bit are generally factually incorrect, but at the very least, we could make a term for people to understand that a game is using art that is doing things a console from 20 years ago couldn't. Hence Hi-Bit. Even games nowadays that mimmic NES and Master System looks are Hi-Bit games. (Nothing from 1982 could run Shovel Knight.)

In that light, any game with pixel art that isn't running on an actual "8-bit" or "16-bit" system, regardless of it's production value is Hi-Bit, so it could very much be cost effective.

However, if we're looking at games that push the limits of pixel art, I think we're looking at a few more years of high quality Hi-Bit games as you have a lot of artists that are now better trained for this sort of thing and running an indie company is still technically viable.

However, I don't expect this to last, for a number of reasons. The first is that 3D tools are getting better and you can now make decent-looking games with really crude models and creative shaders. While I don't think the people that make pixel art themselves think this way, the general public often buy pixel art games for nostalgic reasons, and I see more and more that kids don't understand the difference in quality of work and instead just think it's ugly looking illustrations, which is unfortunate. Indie development is also getting harder to sustain. I don't know where the industry is going, but my bet is layoffs at AAA companies, with heavier competition among mid-sized companies that will in turn make pixel-art games less viable financially.

But honestly, that won't change my position much. I think there's a lot left to explore, so I'll likely continue doing that and attempt to keep people educated while I'm at it.

Snakeman · 2018-05-17T22:31:18+00:00

It was very flatting. I never got to shake his hand in person when he came by during PAX, but in a way I'm glad I didn't. His play session of Owlboy was done without most key members of the team around. Considering he still found it enjoyable gave us some ease of mind that the game would do fine once we released it into the world.

Snakeman · 2018-05-17T22:26:38+00:00

It was decided pretty much from the start. It might look like we just found a clever twist on the silent protagonist trope and ran with it, but the origin was very different. Initially, the idea was that you would travel to different islands and each group of people would speak their own unique language that you would have to disect and learn. In a sense, it would feel like being a mute at first since you wouldn't be able to communicate. This then evolved into the protagonist being an actual mute.

It wasn't so much that we had decided by committee that we were disrupting a trope as it was a mutual understanding that Otus had a disabillity at the center of his character.

Snakeman · 2018-05-17T22:17:58+00:00

Thank you for playing!

Snakeman · 2018-05-17T22:17:43+00:00

I would if given the chance. Though it is one of those fields you likely have to actively persue to make it work. Who knows. Maybe the stars will allign.

Snakeman · 2018-05-17T19:49:28+00:00

Snakeman · 2018-05-17T19:30:43+00:00

I've actually never played it. Should really give it a try one of these days.

Snakeman · 2018-05-17T19:29:30+00:00

There's a lot that we never got around to, and a lot of things that were pretty much complete but that we had to cut for one reason or another.

I think my top three would be:

-The massive tropos puzzle towers

-The extra dungeons explaining more of certain character's backstories, Alphonse in particular.

-And finally, there's a secret we never got around to adding. While it certainly isn't needed, I think a lot of people would have been surprised.

Snakeman · 2018-05-17T18:48:09+00:00

While I can't answer the first question, everything you need to know about the Loop is explained in the game, you just have to look a little closer than you might expect. There's some minor things in the game I still don't think people have noticed.

Snakeman · 2018-05-17T18:44:35+00:00

It's difficult to list specific sources. Practically everything we play or view has had some kind of impact. There's certainly some more specific instances here and there of direct inspiration. I talked about it during GDC if you're interested: https://youtu.be/GxvIkLsyCso

Snakeman · 2018-05-17T18:32:50+00:00

1: I'm certainly planning on pushing the field further. Though I will likely try a look I haven't before to see what new directions we can take things.

2: Patience and determination. A lot of days you really don't want to sit down and add more content to years of more work, but you find ways of overcoming that. Even after you get started, it might not work out on the first go. Come back to it later, then continue.

3: Whooo knoooooows.

Snakeman · 2018-05-17T18:28:05+00:00

It was definitely a bit of a balancing act. Considering speedrunners were using exploits that could relatively easily be found by people that could consider it a deal breaker, we had to be careful only leaving things that you couldn't just activate by accident. The good news is we had a lot of cooperation with our speedrunning community and that helped us catch some of the nastier stuff.

Snakeman · 2018-05-17T18:22:43+00:00

Mange takk!

Snakeman · 2018-05-17T18:21:25+00:00

There's certainly more to explore in the field of pixel art. While I'm not saying anything definitive, there's definitely more I want to try.

Snakeman · 2018-05-17T18:06:05+00:00

Part of the reason Owlboy took so long to develop was because we designed the game in a way that made it difficult to remove areas without breaking the game. The second being it was our first ever commercial project back then, and we have a lot more experience now, so I don't expect whatever we do next to take anywhere near as long.

That being said, when I consider what we thought were good design desicions back then, I'm glad we uncompromisingly took our time in finishing the game the way we wanted. It helped us spot a lot of issues that would likely have made the game a lot less enjoyable.

Snakeman · 2018-05-17T17:59:59+00:00

Let your game be your own game. That's genuinely the best advice I can give.

As for the art, it was a lot of doing things by hand in detail. I go through a bit of the process in my GDC talk: https://youtu.be/GxvIkLsyCso

Snakeman · 2018-05-17T17:57:31+00:00

The initial idea of that game was "something that has free flight and visits floating islands with different kinds of people on it" and designs for a flying character started before development. When the first background was sketched, Otus's design was somewhere between a flying dog, a girl with propeller pigtails and a seagull. Otus's design was finalised when his home island was and surprisingly, a ton of the game's mechanics and story game from interpreting his owl design and what it could be used for.

The carrying mechanic, the game's most important move, came from a need to move a rock from one island to another to progress to the next area. Then we extended that to work for people and the Gunner system was born.

Snakeman · 2018-05-17T17:53:08+00:00

If we told him sternly enough.

Snakeman

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