And there’s not an expensive cinematic sequence in sight.
This is the trailer for Crawl, an indie action/RPG that’s coming to Steam. It has two things going for it.
The first is that trailer. It’s just gameplay. Instructions. Vincent Price meets Mike Mignola meets Electric Wizard. It’s fantastic. That narration. Ungh.
The second, though, is the game itself! Crawl is a multiplayer game where one person controls the hero fighting his way through a dungeon, while everyone else plays the part of not just monsters, but the dungeon itself, controlling stuff like traps.
If you manage to kill the hero, then bam, you become the hero.
It sounds, and looks, like a blast. Crawl is coming to PC, Mac and Linux. It’s currently on Steam Greenlight, so if you think there’s any point left in voting on that thing, you can vote here.
Comments
26 responses to “2014’s Best Trailer Is Already Here”
That was one of the best trailers i have ever seen and the game looks friggin awesome.
Sign me up.
Nice trailer. Jazzpunk was probably better, though.
The trailer sounded great, it didn’t *look* that good.
Retro 8-bit graphics: IT’S BEEN DONE, move on. It is an indie trope, nothing original, creative or interesting about blocky graphics anymore, at least for now. imagine how much better this game and it’s trailer would look with decent gfx?
I agree whole heartedly. Personally, I think this looks like an AMAZING multiplayer game. A truly original concept. However the pixel-art actually lets it down. Some hand drawn animation would just look fantastic here in its place. Seriously, I know a lot of people here espouse pixel-art as the shiznit, the be all and end all, but it’s now become the new ‘brown’, the new ‘go to trope’. When I hear indie game, the first joke my mates and I actually make is ‘how many hundreds of grand will this pixelshit cost?’
The trailer was balls out great, there’s no denying it. It was sensational, 11 out of 10 for it.
The game concept is great, 12 out of 10 for FINALLY coming out with a new concept that I believe hasn’t been tried before.
I even loved the retro music, that really suited it. Was quite outstanding.
But the art style… the art style. I hope they do a sequel already and get some hand drawn art, some really cool looking hand drawn art going for it, that’d be awesome.
Couldn’t agree more, well said.
Ta.
@beakeroo mind if I ask why the downvote given you upvoted molaram for his dislike of the pixelart and downvoted me for my dislike of the pixelart?
Normally wouldn’t give a toss, but seems a little….. inconsistent lol
Agreed with the post just no need for the capped vulgarities. Sorry chief it just grated on me a bit.
A very fair call. I shall remove them 🙂
I do agree with the art style being overdone these days. The idea in the game though may carry forward into better funded titles.
An indie game a long time ago was a two player game where one person controlled the story. Can’t remember the title for the life of me. One day, the mainstream will catch onto these great ideas and fund them properly.
In the meantime, let’s celebrate the original thinking here and hope it catches on.
Oh absolutely! As I said below, gameplay trumps graphics every time. This looks like it’ll be an absolute corker. If these guys, with this kind of imagination make a fair whack of money out of this title (I’ll be buying for sure!) then I hope they go forward and make many more experimental titles like this!
Could not disagree more.
I mean I get your complaint, the whole retro pixel art style is becoming over done no doubt about it, But it’s very rarely done WELL. Usually it’s used as a crutch by games being developed without a solid artist on board.
This on the other hand, the dude is obviously a fantastic animator, the animation and art is full of so much character and life in so few pixels and frames it’s insane. The poses in each frame are fucking amazing. They’re pushed just the right amount, the little swirl in the line after shotting an arrow, the way the teleporting monster dudes cloak flips up a bit when he walks showing you his legs, it’s all done with such a clear expert hand. The artist on this knows his shit. They’ve done an obvious stylistic choice to work in the game they want to make and it’s worked really well.
This.
I understand that pixel graphics are somewhat overdone, often to hide a small or non-existent art team (1 person indie devs come from many different backgrounds, art may not be their strongest drawcard and so simple pixel graphics are attractive to them).
When it’s done well though, can we just appreciate how incredible it can look? This game looks truly fantastic. They’ve chosen pixel graphics for stylistic reasons, and the person animating obviously knows they’re pixel animation spectacularly well.
Firstly, I think the Pixel Art graphics look fantastic. It’s now a clearly established style in gaming, like a gaming form of minimalism. I agree that it’s being done a lot at the moment but what it comes down to is not the art style, but how you use it. These guys have put so much life and character into every single animation that is really shouldn’t matter whether the graphics are in HD. The characters movements, the element effects, it all drips with style, and it’s a shame for anybody to talk that down because they’ve chosen a minimalist style for their game. If anything, they should be praised for being able to make the game look so damn good despite using a restrictive art type.
Secondly, I think you’ll find that the reason so many indie games are going for a retro art style right now is because it is incredibly efficient for what they need to do. I’ve seen people complain that it should have HD hand drawn sprites or 3D models, but this game is being made by 2 PEOPLE, not a whole development studio. If they had a large team and an impressive budget to work with, then maybe they could make a game that looks like Dragon’s Crown or better, but as games like this or Risk of Rain are made by just a couple of dudes because they love making games, then maybe we should just appreciate that they are trying to do a hell of a lot with not very much, and they are actually doing a very damn good job of it.
While I understand what you’re saying, and I appreciate the fact the game is being made by two people, the fact of the matter is when games are presented to people in a constant slew of a style people inevitably get tired of that style. You cannot hold it against the audience for tiring of that style and you cannot get pissed when fair critique is stacked against it. The game is presented at the world in a way that says ‘Here I am! Judge me!’ and it gets judged. It looks great, it’s just that some of us wish it had that tiny bit extra graphical polish. That’s not to say that it doesn’t have the ULTIMATE factor: Great gameplay, which will define it. Because that is what will ultimately matter. HD graphics, 3d graphics, pixel art, all won’t matter in the end if the gameplay is shit, (it looks far from shit, it looks rather splendid). But to simply say ‘You should all appreciate it!’ is rather simplistic. People do appreciate it, everyone here has appreciated it. A few of us just voiced that beyond how great it seems, it would’ve been nice to have seen some polished animation. There have been plenty of games made by minimally staffed companies that produce animation. But that’s more to do with individual skillsets of the members. Like I said, if a sequel happens? Hopefully we’ll see it. But what they’ve produced here now, looks pretty awesome.
I take your point DanM, but given the ease with which conventional 2D graphics can be produced these days, I wonder if it might actually be more difficult to make graphics in pixel art than something more current? I imagine it is actually quite hard to produce engaging graphics in pixel art with contemporary art software.
Also, pixel art is incredibly distinctive as a style. It’s attention grabbing. So funnily enough, when it is used now (now that the initial message of using pixel art has been done), I would argue you risk distracting gamers from how you use the style, as you say, and keep the focus on the choice of style itself. Surely they could use bog standard modern 2D graphics and make them sing by putting life into them in the same way you like with this game. Then the focus would be on how clever their animations are, not that they used Pixel Art.
Lastly, visual artists exist at the indie level as well. There are even websites dedicated to making art resources available to budding game programmers, and hooking up the artists with the coders. As gamers and game reviewers, a game isn’t just about one and not the other. Yes, I understand the original appeal of Pixel Art, and how it put the focus back on the game, after too many flashy AAA games with great graphics and poor gameplay. But as I first said, that message is out there, its been done.
The guys behind Castle crashers for instance, they were who I was trying to think of! They produce some amazing 2d art these days in their titles. They started off with a minimal crew but some great, minimal 2d animation as well.
People should also stop making games with 3D HD graphics, it’s overdone, there are so many games doing it and it’s just not that cool anymore.
That’s not really a fair comparison. It’s not the fidelity that’s the problem really, it’s the style. Pixel art is a style, same way Borderlands’ comic book art is a style. I don’t want every other game using the comic book style any more than I want every other game using the pixel art style.
If they all looked them same, then sure, but I don’t think they do. There are plenty of games that use pixel art that still have their own style, or at least a distinguishing style, the same way Borderlands is another 3D shooter.
That’s true, but this particular style feels overdone to me.
That’s a fair enough opinion, though I feel the same way.
I automatically pass over any 2D platformer which uses limbo-esque silhouette style so that they can avoid having to put any effort into a foreground (and precious little effort into a background) in the name of ‘style’. It was striking and novel the first couple times it was used in flash games in the 00s, and sure, Limbo carried that to a far greater gaming audience exposure, but right now it’s been overdone by clones to the point that it reeks of an excuse. “We couldn’t get any artists on board, but that’s OK because it’s the style.” Yeah? It’s a shitty, lazy style that doesn’t speak well of the developer.
I’m starting to feel the same way about pixel art as a style.
I feel similar about the Limbo style, it reminds me of how I drew comics as a kid, I’d make the majority of the scenes in the dark so I only had to draw eyes and outlines.
Sort of like a reverse Evolve, I guess. Looks pretty great.
Depends how you look at Evolve… 4 invaders come to a planet and the noble beast must defend its planet from them! lol
Also for those who don’t know. The developers are a Melbourne based pair that used to work at FireMonkeys.