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If you're looking for a fantastic (adventure-puzzle) game with a very unique graphical style, I recommend Return of the Obra Dinn, by Lucas Pope (of Papers Plea

If you're looking for a fantastic (adventure-puzzle) game with a very unique graphical style, I recommend Return of the Obra Dinn, by Lucas Pope (of Papers Please). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_of_the_Obra_Dinn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_of_the_Obra_Dinn Truly, truly unique gem that implements detective work really well, and has a mind-bendingly disorienting art style. Spoiler-free trailer with some example gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILolesm8kFY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILolesm8kFY

Quikinterp 6y ago
Lucas Pope is a one man army. He even did the music for that game, which is just as good as the other aspects.
- the_af 6y ago
  Also check out Helsing's Fire for devices. I don't generally rave about this kind of puzzle games, but like everything Pope does, the attention to details is outstanding.
  - the_af 6y ago
    I meant "for iDevices" but my phone's autocorrect got in the way :(
- franknine 6y ago
  He kept a very detailed devblog on TIGSource, documenting all the aspects of making the game including sound, modeling and shader programming. https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?action=profile;u=3073;sa=showPosts https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?action=profile;u=3073... Also there is an interview from Ars Technica talking about his story from Naughty Dog to Indie and why he like to work as one man team. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/01/from-uncharted-to-obra-dinn-lucas-pope-dishes-on-his-illustrious-game-dev-career/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/01/from-uncharted-to-obr...
  - musiccog 6y ago
    One of the things that really pops out to me in the interview on arstechnica is his love of writing 'tools' - so do I.. I had a similar issue when I was working on educational CD's back in the dark ages - 660MB just wasn't large enough for all the voice-over we needed to fit the script we were given. We couldn't go lower than 16-bit/22k/mono without making it painful to listen to, had to come up with another idea.. The key was to work out that the v/o artist we used had 7 phrasings/cadences, and as there were ~7 questions per section she was already phrasing the lesson correctly. So instead of having to use an entire intro+question+correct/incorrect recording I could instead splice the intro and correct/incorrect responses (mostly) depending on their location in the lesson. To just substitute based on position in lesson didn't work though, so the 'Audio Matcher' tool was born. Allowed us to get over 3+ hours of natural sounding questions & answers audio onto a single CD. (..loved writing and using that tool) (..and yes of course we could have simply gone to production with 2 CD's - but that would have cost 2x as much, required installation and not have been anywhere near as cool)
codetrotter 6y ago
Also for anyone interested in the technical side of the dithering in Return of the Obra Dinn, be sure to check out this forum post by the developer https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg1363742#msg1363742 https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg136374...
- MrGilbert 6y ago
  I can really relate to this commenter on the thread: https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg1398577#msg1398577 https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg139857... Often times, you only see the final product, thinking "that can't be that hard!", only to realize that there is a ton of things that had to be done before. I, personally, like reading devlogs. It helps me staying sane over my personal projects.
- scrollaway 6y ago
  Thank you for linking this. What a treasure.

Quikinterp 6y ago

Lucas Pope is a one man army. He even did the music for that game, which is just as good as the other aspects.

the_af 6y ago
Also check out Helsing's Fire for devices. I don't generally rave about this kind of puzzle games, but like everything Pope does, the attention to details is outstanding.
- the_af 6y ago
  I meant "for iDevices" but my phone's autocorrect got in the way :(
franknine 6y ago
He kept a very detailed devblog on TIGSource, documenting all the aspects of making the game including sound, modeling and shader programming. https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?action=profile;u=3073;sa=showPosts https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?action=profile;u=3073... Also there is an interview from Ars Technica talking about his story from Naughty Dog to Indie and why he like to work as one man team. https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/01/from-uncharted-to-obra-dinn-lucas-pope-dishes-on-his-illustrious-game-dev-career/ https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/01/from-uncharted-to-obr...
- musiccog 6y ago
  One of the things that really pops out to me in the interview on arstechnica is his love of writing 'tools' - so do I.. I had a similar issue when I was working on educational CD's back in the dark ages - 660MB just wasn't large enough for all the voice-over we needed to fit the script we were given. We couldn't go lower than 16-bit/22k/mono without making it painful to listen to, had to come up with another idea.. The key was to work out that the v/o artist we used had 7 phrasings/cadences, and as there were ~7 questions per section she was already phrasing the lesson correctly. So instead of having to use an entire intro+question+correct/incorrect recording I could instead splice the intro and correct/incorrect responses (mostly) depending on their location in the lesson. To just substitute based on position in lesson didn't work though, so the 'Audio Matcher' tool was born. Allowed us to get over 3+ hours of natural sounding questions & answers audio onto a single CD. (..loved writing and using that tool) (..and yes of course we could have simply gone to production with 2 CD's - but that would have cost 2x as much, required installation and not have been anywhere near as cool)

codetrotter 6y ago

Also for anyone interested in the technical side of the dithering in Return of the Obra Dinn, be sure to check out this forum post by the developer https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg1363742#msg1363742 https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg136374...

MrGilbert 6y ago
I can really relate to this commenter on the thread: https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg1398577#msg1398577 https://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=40832.msg139857... Often times, you only see the final product, thinking "that can't be that hard!", only to realize that there is a ton of things that had to be done before. I, personally, like reading devlogs. It helps me staying sane over my personal projects.
scrollaway 6y ago
Thank you for linking this. What a treasure.