Before actual work goes into making a new game, they often go through a phase of “preproduction”. That is a period of reference-gathering, brainstorming, planning, testing new tech, testing game mechanics on prototypes, etc.
Whether you plan on making an entry of your own or not, and even if you voted for the winning themes or not, now’s a good chance for everyone to participate!
When you think of “Cuteness overload” and “Demakes”, what is the first thing that comes to mind? What’s the cutest thing you can think of? Have you ever played a game where the cuteness really stood out to you? Which games on other platforms would work really well on the Pokitto? Share screenshots, links to artists’ pages, videos, anything that comes to mind.
Now is the time to get inspired and inspire others!
So to make a demake of the Breath of morning the Wild, you must reduce it to the pure essence. That is adventuring (?). No, I mean the pure essence. Kill the Ganon! Yes, make a demake of that.
An old staple that’s still going is Animal Crossing. Its original name is ‘Dobutsu no Mori’ (どうぶつの森), meaning Animal Forest. (I happen to have a copy of the original Game Cube version, complete with memory card.)
I’m not sure if it counts, but Dragon Quest XI, whilst being primarily 3D, features a 2D mode that renders the game world in a classic 2D Dragon Quest style.
For cuteness, there’s quite a lot of reference material if you browse things tagged as “cozy” and “wholesome.” Vagueness of the terms aside, they frequently use the aesthetic. Here’re the trailers from the most recent Wholesome Direct showcase: E3 Wholesome Direct 2021: All trailers only with timestamps - YouTube (I’d recommend watching at 2x).
As far as moodboards and screenshots go, I lazily slapped some together. From left to right, top to bottom: Here Comes Niko!, Cozy Grove, Yokai Inn, A Short Hike, Frog Detective, Button City, Garden Story, Ooblets, Snacko.
For demakes, I consider them a little easier. Pick a 3d game, make it low res, and distill the mechanics to the core loop. I don’t really have any good moodboard material for them, though, save for this Monster Hunter demake mockup that I grabbed somewhere off the internet a while back:
Edit: oh, but The Borderlands (no longer playable) and Super Sanctum TD are some notable demakes made by the IP holders.
Apparently Bethesda made a Fallout 3 demake in the form of a JRPG as a marketing tactic to try to win over the Japanese audience, but it seems it was a Flash game, so it’s no longer playable on most browsers.
Misread “ねらう” as “わらう” and was thoroughly confused. Now I’m just wondering what would happen if you chose the bottom-right option for an enemy that doesn’t have legs (edit: looking closer, he does have legs, the screen I’m viewing this on makes it hard to see). Pity they made the game in Flash.
edit: Dunno why I always typo the word “pity”. I blame Pitty.
I was under the impression that the archived page I linked to was only erroring because my browser didn’t have Flash, but upon inspection the actual game isn’t even there. For whatever reason it wasn’t archived in the first place.
A lot of things that come to mind are said already.
For cuteness it is of course the child schema, like with tamagotchi, hamtaro, and so on.
For demakes, yes it’s reducing it to the essence be it a fight element or the way a character gains experience or the typical look of the characters
Well the original prototype for note was an 8 bit game like the original Zelda would be neat to see something linke that on the pokitto just wish I could code lol. Though I’m learning with the microbit
