One super important part about the Visual Novel will of course be the overall look of it all. For this project, we have a ton of options.
A) We could use existing Secrets of Grindea graphics, as is. This would mean very little development time in the graphics apartment, except for making additional characters. Most of my time could be spent on writing the best possible story.
B) We could use existing Secrets of Grindea graphics, but tweak them a little. Perhaps blur the backgrounds a bit or change some colours around to give the visuals a slightly different feel compared to the original game.
C) We could go for a more typical higher-resolution Visual Novel look, which is closer to what most games in this genre look like. For this version I’d have to create brand-new, more realistic graphics and painted backgrounds instead of reusing any Pixel Art. This would be a huge leap style wise from the original game, which could be a bad thing for certain fans of the game – but it could also be appealing to a different type of audience. It would also be quite interesting for me to do something different before diving back into pixel art for the next big game project (probably).
D) We could use a mix of old and new. For instance, creating new, higher resolution backgrounds while reusing the portraits from the game.
I’ve made a bunch of mockups featuring each of these options, which one is your favourite?
