The Gamer's Quarter

[dongle]

To me, there's a charm (beyond nostalgia) to the explicitly tile based design as seen in [url=http://www.vgmaps.com/Atlas/PC/Relentless-Twinsen'sAdventure-BrundleIsland-TeleportationCenter-Inside.jpg]Relentless[/url] and 2-d console classics like MegaMan 2. The repetition and regularity of the background patterns in many old NES games is somewhat hypnotic, and I love the sense of deliberateness in every placed object in older PC games like Jagged Alliance. The placement of, for example, furniture in that game hardly seemed "organic" but it recalled using legos to try to construct a facsimile of a breathing world.

Wouldn't it be kind of surreal and slightly unsettling to create a game with highly realistic assets and engine then create the environments in an intentionally artificial manner? I'm thinking that the mechanics of a highly structured game like Gears of War would lend themselves best to the effect.

[Harveyjames]

This puts me in mind of Wind Waker with its one treasure chest, one island, one fish-man per map square arrangement. I wonder if Twilight Princess is similarly regimented.

EDIT: (I'm just making explicit that I'm alluding to how a lot of modern 3D game designers consciously make design choices that are informed by the tile-based aesthetic and design limitations of the past, which is pretty much what you're talking about right?)

[dessgeega]

i find something incredibly satisfying about games which are constructed of uniformly-sized tile-atoms. metroid does this in a big way, and it lends to the sense that any one of these blocks, no matter what their appearance, could be hiding some secret. i tried to capture this aesthetic in one of my games, too. limitations create both challenge and focus.

this is part of why i find falcom games so charming. look at this map of drasle family / legacy of the wizard, for example. and every item, character, monster and treasure in the game is the same size as a block of the game's dungeon. the way that each screen is made up the same number of blocks which are made up of the same number of pixels is reminiscent of they way the dungeon is made up of a certain number of screens, and i find this recursion very pleasing. it gives an amazing sense of proportion to the game world, too.
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[dongle]

Yes, Metroid was one of the influences for the thread. Its tiles influence play structure and mechanics as well as aesthetics.

That map makes me want to play more falcom games (only played Ys).

[Lackey]

Some of those recent overhead dungeon crawls would be close if the tiles were less obvious in the overhead view. Still, you can definately see them.

I'm in love with the grid too. I also notice the effect that once a tile set has been established psychologically it feels like it could go on forever. You've got these basic elements introduced and then all these variations on those little pieces, it's almost infinite.
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| Little bird fighting against a bat sect game |

[wourme]

I think it would be fun to create an extremely vast game in this style. The trick would be making the game interesting enough so that the entire world is worth exploring. I've considered trying this before, inspired primarily by memories of Legacy of the Wizard (even though I never really got anywhere while playing it). I'm reminded how much I like the style occasionally when I find a newer game that uses it by choice rather than due to real limitations such as Ikachan or Invader.

I think there's a unique feeling of progress when you've been in an area with a limited tileset for a while and then move on to another one. I mean, compared with moving through more detailed and realistic-looking locations in a 3D game.

[Lockeownzj00]