Pondering visual styles, would love some input.

My entire graphical style in all my game creation so far has been to lean into vector style neon arcade graphics, taking inspiration from the ‘golden era’ of arcade classics. This is because I had a huge soft spot for vector graphics from playing those games as a kid, there was always such magic looking at games like Asteroids, Tempest, Battlezone and then sometime later the absolutely mind blowing (for the time) Star Wars. But sprites dominated pretty quickly so there really weren’t that many arcade games made with vector graphics, sprite based became the overwhelming majority after the first few years.

That’s why I feel so drawn to create games in that style, as I want to make games that feel like they were a lost classic but then add modern bells and whistles in terms of sound, music, online leaderboards and much more advanced particle systems etc. But of course it’s very niche. It’s also helpful that in terms of implementing vector art it’s something that the AI can do pretty comfortably even from a while back when I first started.

Developing the latest in my vector series of games for Game Jam is something I’m excited about, but sitting back and thinking about it, I’m thinking that the style is very niche and may not resonate with a lot of people who will see it as too basic or not see the beauty in the neon glow that I do.

So I’m considering maybe switching to sprites, but at this point that would basically involve using sprites from free online libraries as I don’t have the time to be creating them from scratch (even using AI to help I know it’s going to need a big chunk of time to make the. To the standard I would like). So generic sprites from a library sprinkled with my own hand (AI) created backdrops? Will it look good enough? Is it a direction I should pursue even though my heart is in a completely different style. Now that I’m starting to take it a little more seriously and I’m looking at all store publishing is having such an ok school aesthetic simply going to be too much of a hurdle to get anyone to look twice?

It’s really the game jam that is making me question this. As I’m thinking even if I have something I’m genuinely proud of and that I think a certain group of gamers who love games of the late 70s early 80s with that kind of look and feel would go mad for, will anyone else even try it???

Answers on a postcard please.

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