Stylized Ancient Egyptian drawings instead of sophisticated CGs?

[OrsonDeWitt]

I have a crazy idea.
I am working on a historically accurate (as much as it can be) visual novel set in Ancient Egypt right now, and before today, I thought I would make it look just like a regular visual novel with realistic CG, but I'm having second thoughts know, and here's my new idea:

What if instead of backgrounds and character sprites looking at the screen I would make the whole game play like an animation movie made up of individual Ancient Egyptians drawings? Like in the Ice Age cartoon (https://youtu.be/x_t6QAF98UU?t=42)

The idea would be to blend modern graphics with Ancient Egyptian drawing style, and this could also be used to denote different scenes (e.g. sunflare would give the impression that the characters are outside), so that would eliminate the need of backgrounds. The drawings would only change when you click to continue the story.

I made a mockup with pictures from Google:
 https://imgur.com/tWVUr01 
And another drawing style:
https://imgur.com/a/zwAU01K

The way I imagine it the characters would move their heads and hands, have emotions, take different poses and interact with each other (e.g. a character could be killed by another with a spear, etc.)

However, the question is whether it would be interesting to follow and wouldn't it be like too much movement for such a game (some people don't like things moving when they're reading, and these sprites would change with nearly every reply). 

Another thing I'm really concerned about is that it would look cheap. My current artist can draw the most beautiful environments that can captivate people, and reducing her to Ancient Egyptian drawings seems counter-productive. I mean, if you were to look at screenshots on steam, would you really consider buying such a game, even if the interface looked pretty, and the characters weren't too shabby?

Thanks.

[parttimestorier]

I think your mockups look really cool! If I just happened to come across screenshots like that, I would definitely be interested in playing something with such a unique style. But you would probably risk turning off some people who don't like it and are more interested in other art styles. Maybe you could consider some kind of compromise, where you use elements of that aesthetic combined with a more modern style. Or maybe depending on what's going on in the story, some scenes could look like that and others could be different?

[Preseva]

I think it depends on what kind of story you want to tell and how you want people to connect with it.

I normally see stylized art like that restricted to vignettes within the context of a larger story. Ice Age is one example; the beautifully animated Deathly Hallows segment from the last Harry Potter movie is another that comes to mind; and it's common enough to see such things used as prologues to games. I believe the Zelda series has done that a few times. I think the reason such things are reserved for telling only simple, broad-strokes stories is because it's the nature of stylized art: it's abstraction. It can communicate actions and events and moods powerfully, but it lacks the nuance and detail people want and expect from a modern story. At the end of the day, most people want to look at pretty faces and connect with the characters.

Normally, I'd say it's a bad idea for a visual novel, but looking at your mock ups, it appears that your game may have considerably more gameplay elements than a standard visual novel. If the game is stat-heavy and focuses on choices and management, and is more about the unfolding of events based on those choices than it is getting to know and explore characters individually, then using an ancient egyptian style could work brilliantly.

Using such a style will set your game apart from the rest and make it stand out, for better or worse. It's definitely an attention grabber. Based on your description, the big selling point for your game right now is, for me, "as historically accurate as possible." That's the novelty, that's what sets it apart and gets me interested. This kind of art would support that and work in its favor. It'd alienate the players that play VNs for the slice-of-life stories or anime babes - which is probably the majority of the VN player base, and there's nothing wrong with that, I like those, too - but it'd tickle the people looking for something new and different. You have to think about who you want your audience to be.

Ultimately, whether I'd download and play the game depends on how it looks like the story works with the art. If the story tries to work like a standard VN, with a focus on exploring characters intimately, stylized art is going to be tedious and fail. If it looks like it will be a gameplay heavy game trying to tell a story simply, hell yeah, I am going to buy / download / wishlist that game if I come across it, and I'm going to give it a look before I do other gorgeous VNs that resemble others I've seen before. Keep in mind that telling a story simply is not the same as telling a simple story. Greek myths, fairy tales, ancient epic poems like the Odyssey are all examples of rich stories that are conveyed in a simple manner.

If you do it right, it won't look cheap. Art doesn't need to be detailed to be good. On the contrary, as a lot of artists can attest, it often takes more skill to reduce a picture down to its bare elements than it does to make it detailed and realistic, because you have to really understand the basic principles that make a picture good, and conveying a lot of information with minimal work is difficult. In your mock up, the sun flare is a beautiful example of this done well.

As for wasting your artist's talent, something I've learned from making my own VN is that you have to do what is right for your game, and sometimes scaling back is the right move. Big and beautiful isn't always the right thing, even if you are capable of it. Is this a game where it is necessary to captivate people with big, beautiful backgrounds and characters? You've also got to know if your artist is capable of drawing in a stylized manner. Like I said, it's hard to get right and takes a different set of skills. If your artist can't pull it off and do it well, there's no point considering it.

Finally, I think that being concerned about constant movement is something worth considering, but I don't know whether it would be a problem or not. That's a question I've been struggling with as well. What I've been able to come up with is that I think the major factor is where the eyes fall? I know that I can follow a movie with subtitles just fine, although there is some visual information lost there. But VNs with subtle changes in facial expressions I cannot do. I end up ignoring the expression changes because they fall too far from my window of attention, which is the text. The best I can figure so far is that there has to be some balance, possibly by minimizing animation and reserving it for important shifts in mood. Try some mock ups and give it to others to play test, I guess?

[OrsonDeWitt]

I think your mockups look really cool! If I just happened to come across screenshots like that, I would definitely be interested in playing something with such a unique style. But you would probably risk turning off some people who don't like it and are more interested in other art styles. Maybe you could consider some kind of compromise, where you use elements of that aesthetic combined with a more modern style. Or maybe depending on what's going on in the story, some scenes could look like that and others could be different?

Thanks! The idea was to blend modern graphics with ancient drawings. Hope my artist will be able to pull that off
I was also thinking of adding traditional CGs for when you die or when the game is complete.
I guess it all just boils down to whether I will be able to tell the story in such a fashion.

[OrsonDeWitt]

I think it depends on what kind of story you want to tell and how you want people to connect with it.

I normally see stylized art like that restricted to vignettes within the context of a larger story. Ice Age is one example; the beautifully animated Deathly Hallows segment from the last Harry Potter movie is another that comes to mind; and it's common enough to see such things used as prologues to games. I believe the Zelda series has done that a few times. I think the reason such things are reserved for telling only simple, broad-strokes stories is because it's the nature of stylized art: it's abstraction. It can communicate actions and events and moods powerfully, but it lacks the nuance and detail people want and expect from a modern story. At the end of the day, most people want to look at pretty faces and connect with the characters.

Normally, I'd say it's a bad idea for a visual novel, but looking at your mock ups, it appears that your game may have considerably more gameplay elements than a standard visual novel. If the game is stat-heavy and focuses on choices and management, and is more about the unfolding of events based on those choices than it is getting to know and explore characters individually, then using an ancient egyptian style could work brilliantly.

Using such a style will set your game apart from the rest and make it stand out, for better or worse. It's definitely an attention grabber. Based on your description, the big selling point for your game right now is, for me, "as historically accurate as possible." That's the novelty, that's what sets it apart and gets me interested. This kind of art would support that and work in its favor. It'd alienate the players that play VNs for the slice-of-life stories or anime babes - which is probably the majority of the VN player base, and there's nothing wrong with that, I like those, too - but it'd tickle the people looking for something new and different. You have to think about who you want your audience to be.

Ultimately, whether I'd download and play the game depends on how it looks like the story works with the art. If the story tries to work like a standard VN, with a focus on exploring characters intimately, stylized art is going to be tedious and fail. If it looks like it will be a gameplay heavy game trying to tell a story simply, hell yeah, I am going to buy / download / wishlist that game if I come across it, and I'm going to give it a look before I do other gorgeous VNs that resemble others I've seen before. Keep in mind that telling a story simply is not the same as telling a simple story. Greek myths, fairy tales, ancient epic poems like the Odyssey are all examples of rich stories that are conveyed in a simple manner.

If you do it right, it won't look cheap. Art doesn't need to be detailed to be good. On the contrary, as a lot of artists can attest, it often takes more skill to reduce a picture down to its bare elements than it does to make it detailed and realistic, because you have to really understand the basic principles that make a picture good, and conveying a lot of information with minimal work is difficult. In your mock up, the sun flare is a beautiful example of this done well.

As for wasting your artist's talent, something I've learned from making my own VN is that you have to do what is right for your game, and sometimes scaling back is the right move. Big and beautiful isn't always the right thing, even if you are capable of it. Is this a game where it is necessary to captivate people with big, beautiful backgrounds and characters? You've also got to know if your artist is capable of drawing in a stylized manner. Like I said, it's hard to get right and takes a different set of skills. If your artist can't pull it off and do it well, there's no point considering it.

Finally, I think that being concerned about constant movement is something worth considering, but I don't know whether it would be a problem or not. That's a question I've been struggling with as well. What I've been able to come up with is that I think the major factor is where the eyes fall? I know that I can follow a movie with subtitles just fine, although there is some visual information lost there. But VNs with subtle changes in facial expressions I cannot do. I end up ignoring the expression changes because they fall too far from my window of attention, which is the text. The best I can figure so far is that there has to be some balance, possibly by minimizing animation and reserving it for important shifts in mood. Try some mock ups and give it to others to play test, I guess?

Thank you for taking your time to respond! And thank you for the compliment of my sun flare in particular.

The game is more of a blend of the two - you explore the consequences of your actions, and you also get to know your characters personally (but in the course of making choices, there are barely any exclusive "let's get to know each other" scenes). Though I do believe my game would benefit from player's emphatic connection with the characters. How else should a player be involved with the faith of someone? For example, there is a person that you get to know quite well throughout the course of the story, but then the person fades into a secondary position in the plot and you're faced with the question whether you can blame him for your administration's/army's mishap or not. In case I employ typical ancient drawings, this task is placed onto the text itself, isn't it?

There's enough resource management in the game, it's true. In fact, the premise is that the player should be on the edge at all times - for he has to keep an eye on the balance of things (upper right corner), lest everything crumbles.

Would you share your game you are talking about, the one where you scaled back? And how did you scale back?

Yes, I will talk with my artist and see if she can get me some different styles/animations to play with.

Thank you!

[Preseva]

In case I employ typical ancient drawings, this task is placed onto the text itself, isn't it?

Yes, I think that's probably true. The game sounds really interesting with what it's trying to achieve!

Would you share your game you are talking about, the one where you scaled back? And how did you scale back?

My own game falls into the genre of royal intrigue and fairy tales, with an emphasis on otome-like aspects of exploring the plot via romance routes. Some examples in terms of scaling back in my own game:

• Detailed and overwrought UIs with a lot of flourishes and gold scrollwork are standard for the genre I'm working in. I originally went with this kind of complicated and detailed style, and while it was beautiful, I realized that it threw a lot of unnecessary visual information on the screen that detracted from what was actually important, which was the text and characters. At a certain point, it was really just fancy for the sake of looking fancy. I scaled back and simplified the UI so that it kept the ornate feel, but reduced it down to its simplest elements, which I think ended up being the right choice, since emphasis was returned to the background and characters.

• Even though I had the budget for more sprites, I cut unnecessary characters that didn't have a strong enough role in the game by shifting the roles they did fill onto other existing characters. I believe that a cast can be too big, and mine is large even after the cuts. Paring it down made the story more focused and the existing characters stronger. I also restricted some characters to certain paths only. While I could have had them in every path, I put them only in the paths where they would have the most impact.

• I cut unnecessary CGs that I could have had. Originally, I was of the idea that the more CGs the better, but there were certain points in the story where progressing the story quickly and rushing past a moment, rather than emphasizing it with an illustration, worked better for the pacing. For example, a death scene that I'd planned to have a CG for ended up working better without it, since moving on without a CG made the death feel more abrupt and senseless. Even though it was an important death, not being able to linger on it and process it created a feeling of shock and disbelief that ultimately worked better.

[OrsonDeWitt]

My own game falls into the genre of royal intrigue and fairy tales, with an emphasis on otome-like aspects of exploring the plot via romance routes. Some examples in terms of scaling back in my own game:

Those are all very valid and reasonable, it's not easy to overcome the sunk cost fallacy. Great job! About the UI, though, I don't know what is typical of the genre, but the way I understood that you scaled back on the UI was that you made it look less distinguishable from the rest of the game? I have a pet peeve with Japanese games, as their UIs are always a clunky mess which makes me to not want to play the game. For example, God Eater 2. It could be a great game for all I know, but the UI looks so terrible that it would make my eyes bleed if I played it. So I didn't. What do you think about this?

[Preseva]

Those are all very valid and reasonable, it's not easy to overcome the sunk cost fallacy. Great job! About the UI, though, I don't know what is typical of the genre, but the way I understood that you scaled back on the UI was that you made it look less distinguishable from the rest of the game? I have a pet peeve with Japanese games, as their UIs are always a clunky mess which makes me to not want to play the game. For example, God Eater 2. It could be a great game for all I know, but the UI looks so terrible that it would make my eyes bleed if I played it. So I didn't. What do you think about this?

Not less distinguishable, just less busy. Looking at screenshots of God Eater 2, that's a lot of different information they've got scattered across every corner of the screen. I think UI -- how complex or simple it should be, whether it's transparent to keep the flow of the BG open or opaque to divide the screen firmly between text and visuals, what information is necessary enough to display, and where character portraits should be and whose should show, if any -- is a fascinating subject, but unfortunately one I know little about. For what it's worth, I like what you've got in the mock ups. It's a lot of information with the stats, but it's still easy to see and track.

[trooper6]

There are some people who only want typical anime style. I think there are a lot of them. They probably won’t pick up your game.

I am a person who is made interested whenever I see a VN that doesn’t have the typical anime style. Of your art looks different, I’ll be intrigued.

Will I buy it? I don’t tend to buy VNs unless the developer has a track record of putting out great work, there have been good reviews, or the concept is really, really different. The ancient Egyptian art would get me to look twice.