Astronuts Indie Game Pixel Art
Summary
An extremely fun project with my indie game buddies doing the pixel art for a top-down shooter similar to blockhead (an old flash game from yesteryear). It’s a pretty basic concept and yet blockhead was super addictive. What made the game so unique is that it slowed everything down. Astronuts aimed to duplicate the shooting style but add new elements like multiplayer, a large map, and base customization. The first version of the game required artwork for the main character, enemies, environments, weapons, etc.
Game Style
Although we started with a very complex full-color palette, eventually we moved to a more curated palette with less colors but better contrast. I think it’s definitely more memorable and it honestly was a tough push to get me to simplify the palette down to 5 colors, but I ended up really liking it. The logo shown is a pixelified version of the fully rendered logo designed by Luke Davis. I worked on some other fun elements that could work in the background re-pixeling spaceship and weapon designs by Adam Banky and Blake Snyder.
Animation
Similar to other flash games from the past, I tried to keep the animations quick, and each one to around 5 or 6 frames each. Each Astronut turns in 8 directions and I really wanted them to bump up just a tad as they moved, especially since they would be moving generally slower to match the style of play.
