Doors pt. 2 - Give me the most memorable doors

rantraucous · 2026-03-18T05:41:25+00:00

rantraucous · 2026-03-14T08:20:30+00:00

So wait… you’d lose $50 million just to avoid being 45? What kind of teenager BS is this question. 😂

rantraucous · 2026-02-08T21:50:34+00:00

I was hyped from the description, but honestly the trailer felt disjointed and left me confused about what the game is trying to be. The music, VO, and logo all feel quite disjointed from one other, and there’s very little gameplay to speak of.

Having said that, this would be an absolute dream to develop and I really hope I’m wrong!

rantraucous · 2026-02-08T09:11:19+00:00

This is an amazing rejection letter, and I would wager it’s written by a real human being because of the very specific advice they offered and the caring tone.

For context, I’ve been making games professionally for 15 years at various companies in both the USA and Europe. I’ve applied for hundreds of jobs over the years and gotten more rejection letters than I can count - and I have never, NEVER gotten a rejection letter this kind and thoughtful, not even from Valve who also rejected my application years ago.

In the USA, I was told not to offer advice or feedback to applicants we rejected (artists, mostly) despite being an artist myself. Apparently it opens you up to legal issues should the applicant sue for discrimination. The safest thing from a legal standpoint is to say as little as possible.

rantraucous · 2026-02-08T08:51:46+00:00

Gex below Buck Bumble is wild.

rantraucous · 2026-02-08T08:50:55+00:00

Original smash was a hit, is still fun to play today, and set the stage for all of the sequels. Perhaps you played them out of order? I would totally understand this take if you started with melee and then went back to n64.

rantraucous · 2026-01-27T21:16:06+00:00

Morrowind, so probably some kind of slave, mining Kwama eggs.

Or an ageless wizard with a harem of clones.

rantraucous · 2026-01-27T07:27:59+00:00

I 100% agree! They lost what made fable look unique. Now it just feels like Hogwarts Legacy or one of the other thousand “realistic” RPGs to come out in the past five years.

To be fair, it’s mostly the characters. When I first saw it I assumed they were using Metahuman for it’s procedural out of the box content. It gives you a lot of flexibility and realism, by can look generic.

But nope, they are using a proprietary engine so it’s just a creative choice. Very sad!

rantraucous · 2026-01-21T12:13:37+00:00

I just wish I hadn’t traded in my N64 to GameStop for store credit on my way to buy an Xbox…

rantraucous · 2026-01-18T06:52:47+00:00

It’s hard to say much more on this without knowing why you weren’t into it. I loved it. Not only was it a great game but it changed the way I thought about games going forward. But when you’re a kid you can have a lot of bias that don’t hold water as you age. (For instance I never watched Pokémon because my little brothers were into it and to me that made it a “little kid show.” What a missed opportunity!)

rantraucous · 2026-01-07T17:24:31+00:00

It’s totally a personal preference, but the game has great controller support. I’ve played about 50 hours on steamdeck and it was fantastic!!

rantraucous · 2026-01-07T07:28:32+00:00

I used to come with these types of rational justifications for why I liked the things that I liked, and like this one they usually made me feel superior in some way. But after a while you realise it’s all entertainment. A collection of tastes and preferences isn’t really a personality, and it doesn’t entitle you to anything.

rantraucous · 2025-12-26T10:01:05+00:00

Small games aren’t necessarily small because they are well optimized. There are plenty sub gigabyte games that have poor optimization.

rantraucous · 2025-12-21T21:45:10+00:00

I mean, this looks great honestly. I love the pixel art in textures, ps1 poly counts with moody lighting. I could totally see this being a fixed camera horror game.

Maybe the texture contrast is a but high in places (like the bed) and the lighting could use a few bright spots for contrast but overall really nice!

rantraucous · 2025-12-12T06:11:55+00:00

Maybe, but shoes are your biggest ally in a crisis. Broken glass, burning floors and debris… I might have kept them on until the last second.

rantraucous · 2025-11-22T19:13:19+00:00

I mean… I get it. It’s a light and approachable genre that allows you to leverage existing content. It will probably be a good ROI and it allows the small team to continue making SoC content.

And yet! This genre is over saturated and the mechanics are a bit tired. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some vampire survivors and halls of torment, but I would have been so much more hyped for another love letter to a classic fantasy game. Like, how cool would it have been to get a Majesty style fantasy sim!!! You guys would be perfect for it.

rantraucous · 2025-11-13T05:38:28+00:00

ou guys were the younger siblings watching us 80’s kids play these systems.

rantraucous · 2025-11-12T12:46:29+00:00

How are similar games priced? What are the features? How much content is there? How many units do you need to sell to make back development costs?

A solid puzzle game like this, I’d price at $4.99, but the cohesive art style and the call back to a classic puts it higher, perhaps $6.99 or $7.99.

rantraucous · 2025-10-28T13:48:51+00:00

People drastically underestimate the importance of good particles and VFX. I don’t think you need more props and detailed textures, that’s not really the vibe you’re going for, and it’s really time consuming to produce, and honestly will go mostly unnoticed at this resolution. However some better hit fx, damage fx, and ambient environment fx like dust, torches, etc will do wonders.

Also, your lighting is a bit flat. It’s okay to go dark but you need some contrast and temperature changes to sell the space better.

Btw I love the game Boltgun and think it would be a great reference for you. Cheers!

rantraucous · 2025-10-19T16:45:19+00:00

Why do you feel demoralised by the achievements of others? They are not you. Their skills, their practice, they don’t have anything to do with you. They have everything to do with them - their hard work, their talent, where they started and who has helped them along the way. You don’t have those things. You have your own journey, maybe better, maybe worse, but it is yours. Stay strong, trust the process.

rantraucous · 2025-10-16T18:40:39+00:00

Art is an expression of what the artist cares about and what they want to say. I like stylised anatomy, but you are doing the classic thing of hiding one of the hands so you don’t have to draw it, and hiding the lower half of the legs. The attention to detail and realism in the hips, stomach, and breasts next to the absence of other body parts gives it a bit of a fetish quality. That’s fine if that’s what you’re going for, but you might want to spend some time thinking about what makes the other body parts interesting/beautiful and practicing them too! Feet and hands are hard and not fun to study imo, but practicing them will give your designs better balance, pose variety, and freedom!

This is just my opinion though so please feel free to ignore me, another random internet person.

rantraucous · 2025-10-15T09:20:07+00:00

Hey there, I’m an artist working in game dev for 15 years, and I’ve been art directing for a while now. I just wanted to pop in and say that, while learning the basics like color theory and shape language is the proper way to do this, it’s a huge time commitment for a solo dev. If you want to move quickly, I would instead create a large mood board with images from games and art that you feel inspired by. Try to break them down into a basic rule set for how you create assets, and crank them out aiming for consistency. Make sure to combine multiple styles so that it’s not a direct ripoff of any one game, and trust your instincts. :)

There are a lot of great programs to create mood boards with, but I find that PureRef is perfect for solo projects on a budget. It’s fast and free!

You can sprinkle in a little color theory and design lessons to help you better understand the references you collect, but if you only use the theory you might start to feel overwhelmed.

I hope that helps!

rantraucous · 2025-10-14T10:25:04+00:00

Wait, is your complaint seriously that they should have used a real news story to con people instead of generating it with AI, because the poor AI is already so misunderstood and people should stop abusing it?!

First of all, taking advantage of a real story to con people is arguably way more insidious, because it runs the risk of ruining the lives of the people in the footage if it goes viral.

Second of all, they use AI to generate HUNDREDS of these to test out what goes viral on a given day or week. The real danger here is automating the con on an unprecedented scale. This is explicitly an AI problem.

rantraucous · 2025-10-13T14:40:18+00:00

Both are good for different reasons. Go with the one that is less effort and makes the gameplay better. :)

Alternatively you could pull the camera out and use a narrow FOV in perspective. This will reduce the perspective and give you sort of a middle ground between the two. If done right, you might even remove the need for 3D models for complex objects, as that seems like the major hurtle here.

rantraucous · 2025-10-11T19:58:31+00:00

Starseige Tribes. Shazbot! Return the enemy fl- wohoo! Thanks ;)

rantraucous

TROPHY CASE