Let's Review Your Games — Ep. 003

e e [Music]

check one two12 check gosh okay where are we good hey guys welcome to the uh Thomas brush plays your freaking games and we're gonna be sorry about that it was muted hey we're playing your games um they are all going to be linked in the description so when we play the games go ahead and wish list them if you think that they look fun and then also hey go ahead and vote for those games as we play them and the way the rules work the the way the rules work is only vote if you would actually keep this game if you would refund this game don't vote okay the goal is to try and get an accurate feeling of what a steam game is going to get thumbs up thumbs

down or you just didn't vote at all cuz you refunded the game I think that's a fair metric wanted to say a huge huge welcome uh to Daniel Daniel D Pat W Andes UGA Chad mcdonal and gr gor pen um these are new students who joined um the uh full-time Game Dev program this is my program really super duper proud of this program uh has over three I think no over 4,000 students worldwide um it's 50% off today this ends soon um I think there's maybe 120 seats left maybe 115 seats left you're going to get full-time Game Dev for 50% off which is my program on how to actually make a game not only in unity gdau or unreal whatever you want to pick you can pick your engine it's totally fine by me you can learn all three if you want you also learn how to uh submit this game to Publishers and get publishing deals um to go full-time with just a demo you

also learn how to Kickstart your game I've done this multiple times and also how to hit the steam front page I've done this multiple time uh multiple times so be sure to check it out below you also get 2D art and 3D art Pro my programs on 2D art and 3D art completely free but only for this sale event guys this does support the channel think of this as a sponsorship for the channel the good part is it's not some random sponsor this is me sponsoring myself which is frankly it's always a a great position to be in if you're a YouTuber so it means a lot that you guys listen to the ad reads okay so how we doing are we good are we ready to start playing some games here guys can you hear me okay check one 1212 check check check check check check check check check check check are we good thumbs up thumbs down are we ready to start playing some games okay let me check here checking checking checking

yep we're good awesome okay let's go ahead and jump into the first uh game which is called deck of haunts let's go and I've got my window open guys because it's a beautiful it's so beautiful out today a breeze is coming through the window I can hear my kids screaming in the distance they're playing so if you hear screaming they're okay they're just playing it's a beautiful day all right let's go are we ready to roll it's a little loud I love this really cool let me turn it down just a little bit for you guys as well

okay wish list settings play Reset qu I wish the cards went up a little bit every time you hovered over them I need a click sound there was no click sound okay welcome to deck of haunts you play as a haunted house trying to consume humans entering your domain so I am the haunted house pretty cool keep the humans away from your heart play your cards on humans kill them or drive them insane and steal their Essence um fun build rooms with Essence to expand so the loop is you basically kill humans get their soul and use their soul to build your house um and expand your strengths and gain bonuses okay during the night you play cards from the deck oh boy guys I'm not very good at these deck games so please please forgive me um and you're going to need to to help me out

here uh I really wish there was click sounds but there's not um so that would be nice it looks amazing though the UI is phenomenal super pretty UI um AO wraps who's AO wraps okay let's go sorry during the night you play cards from your deck to damage health or drain sanity of humans okay action point C I'm so bad at this stuff I'm not the right person to play this target damage so bad at this stuff my brain isn't cut out for this oh that feels amazing so what's going to end up happening during this uh this playthrough guys

is we're mainly going to discuss visuals and feel and music um I kind of feel like the graphics and the artwork let me scroll my blinds down it feels amazing but I would say that the music isn't working for me personally I don't know why I can't quite put a finger on it yeah this looks amazing honestly humans will enter and if they are lucky Escape your domain here okay I wish I understood what to do so I select this human there's JN we could drain two of their health oh that's cool I love that look at that guys ain't that

cool oh making him go crazy so I drained his sanity what's this heart room your heart humans will damage it upon entering once destroyed it's over this is very interesting okay well let's see what we can do to uh John I guess we could just drain to sanity again okay end turn Okay so he goes okay okay he's in another room I could damage him okay I keep doing it I guess any human move human to a random room

cool wait what's the difference between this and this collapsing spaces changes human location this one is instantly teleport a human to a random room I want to try this why would I want to do that sorry guys I'm I'm telling you I'm not good at these games please please please forgive me graphically amazing let's discuss the mus really quick and we're going to keep playing we're going to keep playing cuz I think honestly this is a really really well-made game clearly um the music is hurting the experience in my opinion um I feel like it needs to be less uh um it needs to be unassuming so the thing about game music in my opinion the thing about game music is that it needs to not get in the way of the experience and especially if you're streaming like this is a streaming game this is a great game for streaming and

if I was a streamer I'd be like kind of annoyed or like frustrated by this music again this is just my personal opinion I would much rather have something really really calming and slightly disorienting or uh disturbing so Resident Evil save room I always go to the Resident Evil save room is a great example potentially we'll see of of what this should could sound like on take a at this be quiet okay hold on I'm pulling up the Resident Evil save room okay much more unassuming and calming CU it's kind of got it's got a cozy vibe to it this is really cool honestly really really cool idea but the music automatically feel makes me feel better

um and look we can even go to hang on let me close my window one sec um we could even choose music that's a little bit less me melodic like for example watch this um let me do this really quick you just got to type in like Moody horror atmosphere um on uh YouTube and you could find some really cool stuff here we go do you guys see why I'm choosing music that's a lot more unassuming see that

this feels so much better okay um but that's just me okay all right let's go ahead and get rid of this human here I'm going to end the turn I don't know why I would actually so why do I want him to go insane what what does he do if he goes insane oh what's this oh those are the things I've used I think okay so you're getting a random deck of cards that's uh or a random hand right is that how it is unke keep Essence cost heart room okay I could build my deck at the end of every night you can choose from a selection of cards to permanently add to your deck

[Music] cool all right building in basic rooms during the day you construct rooms and change your layout build common rooms so humans will take more turns to reach your heart placing room tiles of the same type next to each other will merge them into a single room oh cool the setting changed so it's daytime what's over here the game looks incredible honestly really beautiful looks like it's not isometric actually there's there's a subtle depth to it which is nice so cool wow okay let's let's throw in a kitchen what a strange concept brilliant game

Isn't that cool guys expanded the uh living room that's so cool what a concept brilliant yeah I would I I would highly H like this is just my opinion but I would recommend that the the developer use music like this this is a type game it's slow and calming and eerie and I would I would think music like this is much better again let's go back to the other music I think music is going to be the biggest problem that's just my personal opinion okay I'm being hesitant because frankly this game the developers know what they're doing so I don't want to give too much advice when in reality these aren't even my peers this is this is great these are my superiors but let's listen to the music

add tension huh it's the violin I think but that it's just me I I I'll shut up about it very awesome okay let's move on to the next game really cool honestly I'm going to write my uh review down here it's hard for me to review a a deck game um um I I would have played batro

and I would have said ah you know it's fine it's like a six I wouldn't have known I have no idea how these games work um they're just not in my my Paradigm but I'm going to go ahead and write my review down there and guys go ahead and click the link below if you would buy this game and if you would keep it you wouldn't refund it and you would actually play it leave a thumbs up or a thumbs down okay bad games uh Factory says maybe just adding a little bit more Reverb to the piano would make it more re ambient yeah absolutely excuse me I'm burping here okay let's see here uh TR trian says I love the card art yeah art artistically that game was incredible I think it's hard for me to rate the gameplay again I don't play these games but in terms of the artwork top tier uh the music is good I just don't think it works for that game so I would prefer

more ambient soundtrack or maybe something that's more arpeggiated ASMR arpeggiated music might work really well for that too you guys ready for Tropicalia let's jump into trop o Calia all right you guys ready uh where where do we post our games post your games on Twitter so follow me on Twitter twitter.com Thomas brush DAV yeah I don't I didn't quite understand the story for that game but I don't know if that [Music] matters warning this game references violence nudity and what you are free to

rec I didn't get to read it in time I the only man interested in okay so we're about to get sub nudity I only interested in what is not mine law of man law of anthrop what is that anthropist anthropophagic I can't read that word anthropophagic manifesto o I can't I don't know okay [Music] that menu feels pretty good actually oh [Music] boy music is way way too

loud there we go my name is Jack why is the the P the font not pixelated my name is Jackie Jer and I'll be your guide before proceeding I'm going to ask you to equip these items Tomahawk small Shield want an explanation of how to equip items sure boy this isn't really the best way to start a game you need to teach them while they're playing you don't teach in a tutorial um you just need to start the game and then they slowly learn the abilities this is too much for me I can't I can't quite handle this I my brain is already freezing over and that's because I'm a first world short attention spanned American and that's what your gamers are going to be mostly all right it's just the way it is to open the menu Okay blah blah blah Mouse right click what does that do

right click what oh to open the menu what when you open the menu go for the third option equip oh man this isn't how you teach oh boy tomatically you choose the best equips pick equip pick pick optimize okay to choose yourself each it you can equip weapons Shields and equipments so there's some stuff getting Lost in Translation here because this is a Brazilian game meaning that I it could be that there's translation issues I don't know if there is it seems like there is every equipment changes your par what every equipment changes your parameters in different ways even equipments of the same type have different Val values every equipment has its own

durability you can see it this is way too much okay um it's too much it's too much you need to teach me this slowly this is why games are expensive to make um it needs to be presented to you slowly and I don't need a tutorial I need to be presented to this this stuff slowly in the actual game way too much information okay I don't know what I'm doing yay I saved so I'm playing as like a Native American or or no this is a Brazilian game so I'm like a native in the old times in Brazil I think where' the music go

I don't understand how do I get back to the main menu what oh here we go oh okay let's try and play the game instead of doing the tutorial I got a map no no what okay graphically visually the game is um

it's fine it definitely has the classic feel to it oh that's cool attack oh I needed to click sorry okay got got it okay that was that was pretty standard but it it works um I got some rewards okay yeah the music isn't my favorite it's a little repetitive um so one of the things we want to do with

these kind of games is we want to come up with a unique mechanic and I don't I don't think there's anything fully unique going on in this game um maybe the setting is a little bit unique but not sure there's anything super unique going on okay so the music is is there's a disunity with the music you've got pixel or like 8bit music playing and then all of a sudden that reward song was not right um so yeah I don't really I don't feel like there's a hook in this game there's not quite anything really going on with the okay so far I mean um I it's not my comp it's not my my style of a game um and I don't feel like there's much of a hook there um you play in a

fairly unique I guess it's kind of a unique environment but it looks like a standard retro top down game um pretty straightforward gameplay nothing super duper unique that I could see in the in the time we had right so we've been playing for 30 minutes we've got five games to get through so um is it like Tarzan um yeah I don't really I don't fully understand it so there's nothing really fresh or new there um so I've just written down my score guys go ahead and click the link below and go ahead and do a recommended thumbs up or thumbs down this assumes you would keep the game on Steam and that you wouldn't refund it okay if you're somebody who would refund this game don't leave a review we want it to be we want the sample size to be as clean as possible okay so go ahead and do that okay are these Tech demos yes they're

all demos um Jungle Pokemon is that what it is yeah and I'm not sure that that's a strong enough hook um some of you might be wondering we we've gone through this before but let me try and explain some of you might be wondering Thomas you just played the game for five minutes give it a fair shake you know give it give it an hour uh give it 20 minutes and the way I play these games is the way that I assume most gamers are going to play these games um they play it and they're gone if they if if you don't hook them in the F guys seriously if you don't hook them in the first 15 seconds they're out of there gone they will not play it so we're going to use that same mentality here in playing demos if it doesn't hook me gone and I could tell when you guys are getting bored I could tell when you're ready to move on to the next game all right you ready let's let's move on to the next

game this game is called sphere um sphere buddy demo you need to introduce the game play the hook the game play the story The motive the character the setting the sympathetic traits of the character all of this needs to be instant in 10 seconds they need to know that might be a little dramatic but something like that okay so this game is called sphere buddy 64 if you're going to call something 64 everything needs to needs to be pixelated Okay so we've already got a problem here which is the game is trying to be a retro game but everything is highres like this is 4K it shouldn't be it needs to be

crunchy right and pixelated but it feels good it's just it's not really working with the 64 but let's go ahead and hit play menu is fine sphere buddy and Mr uncle got stuck in this strange World help them you let me let me read that and then press space okay so those textures uh there's anti-aliasing on the textures um you need to choose um what's the setting in unity um gosh guys what's what's the setting called in unity when you do low res resolution but um there's no softening um and smoothing with the texture what's that called I'd rather roll I wish I was rolling

the filtering the filtering yes you're adjusting the filtering N64 has filtering uh maybe it does I don't know if you're right or wrong but this feels off to me so I wouldn't I wouldn't use filtering and you notice guys that there's um some of the textures are much smaller than other ones like that right there notice how the texture is very very big on the bottom but in the middle there it's much more tiled and so it's causing some inconsistency in graphics so this graphical style doesn't fully feel N64 to me hi spere okay so I would give me like a A or a so there's a lot of sounds that you can grab from artless doio great is you have to pay a bigger fee once you launch a game it could be very expensive but they have some really cool retro and 64 sounds that you could use for this um hi

sphere buddy this strange world what hi sphere buddy This Strange World enjoy the demo I think it's trying to say hi sphere buddy welcome to the St This Strange World enjoy the demo what okay so one of the rules with platforming is you should always have especially at the beginning you should have the platforms perfectly fit the mechanics of the player so I should be able to jump perfectly onto a flat surface and so and there's also clipping there and I don't know why that's rotated it's it's just causing it to feel buggy yeah this is all off when it comes to platforming platforming needs to be fit perfectly with the player's um jump height okay what about this okay give me a sound there what's the story there's no story give me a

motivation quickly quick and quick and dirty right make it fast um my mom is a square and the circle world didn't want to let her participate and so they banished uh the square mom to a dark corner of the universe and it's your job to go rescue your mom and and all other squares because at the end of the day all shapes deserve to to have a voice voice right something like that I can't jump on anything the jump height is is just so um The World Isn't doesn't feel built for the jump height graphically it's really kind of bland the music doesn't match this environment um let's go ahead and I can't pause oh I could triple jump okay I can't get out there's no pause menu um but let's let's go ahead and find a better song I can't because I

can't mute it so never mind whoa oh they're disappearing hm that's odd okay okay um what else here why does some things have textures and other things don't have textures that's a struggle I have as well okay but let's keep going it the the move movement feels good uh the camera's not great because it's clipping into the ground sometimes like this right here well it depends okay I think we're actually pretty good the camera seems fine actually I thought it clipped but I think we're good um a lot of the things are unwrapped improperly so like that's unwrapped improperly so textures aren't lining up and just cuz it's N64 doesn't mean you can't line them up you know and make it clean uh some textures are really massive like that one is super scaled

up yeah you could get you it's amazing how much better your game can be when you just give a motive um so there's nothing really hooking me um I feel completely oblivious to what I'm doing and who I am and what the point of this even is I don't even know what the goal is like even the mechanical goal I have no idea like what the heck is what what why did I okay so apparently I can get up there why are all worlds opened up gemstones what you should show it up there how many I need all right um okay we'll try one more world yeah too much is being to pres presented to me too quickly um there's a sort of a lack of color theory here I want to open up Photoshop and show you guys how we can

make this look much better much much better so I'm going to screenshot okay um let's take this I want to show you really quickly what we could do here am I oh sorry well sound the the punch sound is a little uh delayed let me show you guys how you can use color theory to quickly make your game feel amazing okay um so what we're going to do is we're going to open up Photoshop here and yeah I I pretty much have a good idea of of of this game so let's open up Photoshop and we're going to take a look at the uh the issues with the color theory give me a sec give me a sec okay what what what were you able to see guys

pay attention to us Daddy okay um let's go ahead and open up the game and I'll show you guys so you so you guys weren't able to see the game really at what point were you not able to see the game hang on hang on guys hang on were you really not able to see the game holy crap I'm zooming I'm going okay so you did see some of the game you didn't see the ice World okay okay hang on okay all right chill everybody freaking chill I'm going to show you the the um Grassy World that I was just in did I alt tab at some point

I'm sorry guys but everybody needs to chill out all right jeez all right so let me show you Jason why didn't you text me what's wrong with you oh you did so he did text me okay um so let's I'm just kidding by the way I'm just being sarcastic okay let me show you guys the green World okay um and then what we're going to do is we're going to open up Photoshop and I I want to show you how can make it look potentially 10 10 times better can you see my screen no chill only frill so here's here's this uh Grassy World and in my opinion there's no use of color theory at all um it's fairly random it doesn't really feel very good the colors feel like they were sort of just picked from an a paint Microsoft Paint so what we're going to do is we're

going to open up Photoshop and we're going to make it look uh better okay and guys why do I do this why am I why am I critiquing people's games am I trying to be mean no I am not trying to be mean I'm trying to be helpful okay so let's choose our colors I'm thinking green like a tealish green um for all of the green and then the sky will be like a a teal okay so I'm going to grab all this okay there's that whoops and this guys this is going to help you a lot actually if you can get a solid color theory for your game um you can maybe make it twice as good just based on simple color theory okay so if I take this I could do something that's

a little bit more uh vibrant there we go but more interesting so let's do a teal and go to Horizon so see that look now it feels really like um what's the word it feels really sad and so all you got to do is add just subtle pops so what I'm going to do is do subtle pops of clouds but we're going to do low low resolution so I'm going to do something like this and watch if I scale it down and then I set this to nearest neighbor this right here to nearest neighbor and I scale it back up it'll be like a pixelated look okay so this isn't perfect but this is this is the idea okay so we're just going to do subtle clouds that we can see through the the trees you see

that so really you could change a ton of the mood of a of a game just by adding in a subtle uh Sky Box okay let's go ahead and make all the green uh match for the trees okay so what I'm going to do here is I'm going to grab this and I'm going to grab this this all of the tree parts are going to be the same color green now the grass we're going to do differently okay um so let's let's actually just grab this here this uh green trees right here I'm going to grab that and this as well all of these are going to be the same color what's happening is you have there's a lot of green and it feels random and what you want to do is separate the surrounding wall trees from the ground so that there's a clear distinction between the two but you also still want use good strong color theory okay so I'm not going to grab any of

these Vines I may actually make the vines a completely different color okay so watch this if I take that we're going to go ahead and add a hue saturation shift here oh good much better uh we'll saturate it up yeah give me some saturation here maybe desaturate a little bit let's see yep okay okay then what I'm going to do is I'm going to actually select the grass here all the grass anything I can jump on is going to be the same color and you know what I may go back on what I said earlier I may go back on what I said earlier I may want this to be the same color that sort of yellowish green let's do

colorize here we go so this one here we're going to try and see here drop down the saturation make it a little bit darker or let's see here let's find the right color there we go okay now this neon green is problematic so what I'm G to do is grab this neon green or it's not a neon green it's almost like a vibrant Kelly Green I don't know what the right term is we're going to grab this and we're going to experiment with some color here yes yes yes yes okay we've got all those good okay okay I'm going to copy that paste it yep we've got it and then

we're going to do a hue saturation shift and see what kind of color changes we can make with some good color theory here good that matches good good good yeah we're g to do that that's good so notice how we're trying to match all of the greens okay um so we're matching all of the greens and then what we want to do is match all of the Grays okay we've got three different Grays okay actually no we've got yeah we've got two different Grays I like this gray here oh we forgot this let's see here ah yes we didn't get that okay take this there we go past it together merge those layers together

and then do this there we go okay the reds are a problem so what we're going to do with the Reds is we're going to go ahead and select all of the red and we're going to make it a much more unique pop of color okay what we're using is color theory here to make this world have its own unique identity okay so I'm going to remove this um our buddy we'll worry about our Budd in just a second here and I'm going to paste this in here go all the way up here and then we're going to do a huge saturation shift here we're going to find the right color oh yeah that's cool look at that very nice very very nice um this guy needs to be much more vibrant so we're going to use a a vibrant sort of orange-ish color for our buddy our main character um let's try

a more neon yellow nope I kind of wish he had shade to him but that that's what I would do right there and then the red I would just make it Pink to match this world but then again you know you can have some problems because um if you go into each world and I'm always matching that pink you got to make sure that that pink is in every other world okay so far so good oh I was right okay we have three different Browns it so you need to pick do you want brown or do you want gray um so we've got gray gray this hyp saturated Brown and then we've got this low saturation right and it's really really hard to determine um what the developer was going for with all these different colors so what I'm going to do is our final

thing here is I'm going to colorize the the brown see what I did here guys so I can do a low saturation here like this like that that actually looks really good in my opinion okay so here let's let's go ahead and make sure we add a little bit of shading below this because I'm getting some issues with my colorizer or I did a colorization uh with the Hue shift and now I'm missing out on that dark color underneath so I'm going to fix that really quick okay uh now we're going to go ahead and merge all this together and we can actually this right here what I just had I'm G to go back in time give me just a sec guys I want to make sure I save this so we can compare and contrast oh crap that sucks I have to do it again hang on one sec there we go

and then we're going to go back up this is just our our comparison okay there's that going to save this as test let's go ahead and add that dark shade again to this here almost done guys almost done and then I want to show you how we can change the UI and the music and make this have much more of a strong personality um so there's that uh you could use Sun shafts and I think Sun shafts are totally fine um in an N64 type game so you could have a just a a very subtle um Sun shaft right here we'll scale it down then scale it back up to get it pixelated and you can do something like this um these will just be planes or quads in your world Sun shafts and then flowers so I'm going

to take a circle we to use that uh Pink we're going to scale it down so You' have these sort of bouncing around in the game bouncing you know and then finally if I merge all this together we can discuss the UI uh two out of 30 so what I would do is I know that um I know that uh uh N64 games they would have non-pixel fonts and it I I remember a lot of these N64 games just looked super ugly they were trying to use like high resolution fonts um which is totally fine and that definitely is er ER it's true to the era but if it were me and I was making this

game I'd have a really clean pixel font what did I use today I used one today let me let me double check it was called what um Sim text this one's great there it is look look how pretty this looks guys and then you could even so you could have that there there and then you can imagine what it would look like in various places um kill or uh like dialogue hello big ball go get your mom do you see you see how clean this looks does this make sense all right if you don't like the yellowish green tone that's understandable I've had many people say that for my games they they they don't

like the yellowish green tone which is totally fine so we can go to our yellows and just shift more towards the green drop the saturation down and then we can also go to the pinks pink looks really good with yellow so we could go to the to the uh the the magentas and you could shift them more towards the red or towards the blue so we could do more towards the red drop the saturation down so now we're getting more of a consistent tone okay hang on one sec Okay so so here's here's here's what we've got okay and then we could we could even go more green if you wanted to okay so here's this and then here's what it was so do you guys see how we're we're creating a more consistent uh color scheme here does this make sense and all it is is color that's all it is um so you can you can accomplish a ton a ton with just a solid understanding of color theory um let me sort of fade that out here um you color

theory is like the number one thing and then also um we could go in and just say hey look what what kind of music would we want and you could um the the best example the best example if it were me is um give me just a sec ready so this is the kind of music you could use suddenly the game comes alive you're you're matching the tone of the music to the tone of the color palette um personally I like these colors better I think this is way stronger

um but uh regardless see this doesn't feel like the real world because there's something off with the coloring it doesn't feel natural it feels alien this feels natural because it uses natural colors there you go can you hear it how's that now I want to show you guys one more [Music] thing so one final thing and this is not necessarily true not necessarily true to form with N64 but what you can do to accomplish a ton of mood and depth to a 3D game is to take a directional light and throw Shadows with the directional

light now we don't have any directional light in this game all we have is ambient light so I want to show you really quick what we can do with directional light and make it feel I mean actually there may be directional light it just might not be angled properly but what you could do with directional light is you can create depth a lot more depth into the world see this I'm going to set it to Overlay do you see a lot more depth can be added with Long Shadows and make it feel Moody now suddenly that ground doesn't look so flat right look see that does that make sense um again it's not true to form to add postprocessing because N64 didn't have postprocessing although it sometimes Perfect Dark felt like it had post-processing but I don't think it was technically postprocessing but but if you wanted to you could add some Bloom um to the world

here like that and the whole thing just comes to life see you could even add a little lens flare um but that's that's that's neither here nor there you know you could still do just fine with this does that make sense okay so sphere buddy I have a score for it um I think it could be visually and look visuals and music are what's going to make this game work okay because it's a Nostalgia game that's what it is here's what it was now here's what we've got so that's the direction I would take it if it were me and I was the art director all right you guys ready to move on to the next game let's move on to the next game and by the way guys check out fulltime Game Dev below and if you're a student by the way let me know in the chat if you're a student if you're not a student Check It Out Below while we're we're streaming here um

you'll learn how to make indie games from your bedroom um the reason I've been you know doing so many sale events I did one for Black Friday and then also one for New Year's is because these are the two biggest sale events of the year uh so be sure to check it out below these will not be here in I think i' you've 10 days left after that they're going to be over um so be sure to check it out below if you want to learn to make games from your bedroom okay what's the next one here pedal verse oh I've been looking forward to this one and to the developer to the developer I'm not here I'm not sitting here trying to flx and say look how cool I can make it I'm trying to say look at what what color theory if you just get a strong sense of what color theory is you can make your game really shine um okay so pedal verse let's take a look ooh those buttons feel really

good why is there like that's weird loading in pedal verse it's not it's just you your bike and nature explore the open landscape freely No Boundaries just Adventure I have a feeling this game is going to be slow I could be wrong I've I've played indie games like this in in the past episodes where it was just slow um um this however doesn't necessarily look like unreal this might be Unity let's double check o this feels great random tracks Trail roulette my PC is starting to take off pretty slow that's a a a rough rough controller graphic why is it squashed I can't read this yeah we need

to darken this so that we can actually read all oh and definitely getting information overload here um everything's squashed and suddenly the game feels incredibly cheap and that's not good I just want to do a free ride let me turn it up for you guys yeah yeah we're looking at unreal here whoa okay can I can I get into third person mode this is kind of fun actually it feels slippery

okay I I think I well I'm not sure there's a loop here but we'll we'll try um I'm feeling aimless and I'm not quite sure if that's my fault if it was timed or something or it was a race okay let's down Thomas W it's so hard to control but I could be me you know let me turn it up for you guys um okay so it it feels slippery I'm not sure what the word is it feels like I'm slipping it feels like it's made out of soap um I can't really turn it up let me try and turn it up for you guys it's pretty quiet yeah that feels really slippery right there like

this how do I like drift whoa I can zoom whoa okay so holding shift goes shift to Sprint so you can go faster um let's try again I want to go up here though whoa so that doesn't kill me for some reason this is insane whoa I'm about to go into the sky boox is that a Skybox no that's a mesh okay uh all right let's keep going it feels very cold the game feels very cold um and empty but let's let's see if

we can actually play it here cuz I kind of suck that's not fair how do I slow down okay let's see here I could change the weather cool can I it didn't do anything nope doesn't do anything um let's go to our settings here take a look at our controls press and hold for movement tricks okay e and r Sprint is shift control is manual switch to drone oh switch camera oh see but how do I slow down do I not have a break okay I'm going to at least switch camera okay but I'm I'm confused as how to break

Tom this is Jason Thomas you need to go back and watch this on video on demand the bit rate compression is Wild is it really um okay so let's where is where is uh where's the brakes whoa whoa okay so it does work hang on super loud this is cool though I love this weather how do I break though whoa Okay so we've got some decal projectors on my body they're very odd I think you die a little too

much how do I break though surely I could figure out how to break guys come on help me out here there's no break the weather's cool though okay let's just go slow oh it's back back what I got killed by a tree branch hang on okay so back is like instant stop so we're going to use that okay this is actually getting fun I just like the weather it's cozy it's just doesn't feel it doesn't feel like an actual bike it feels like I'm on

a bar of soap okay okay there we go the movement needs some work for sure um it's tough it's tough to control and it feels really janky um and you I know that I'll die if I touch a tree I love the weather though this is really cozy nice okay I'm having fun oh don't die no I'm sure once you figure out the controls it's pretty fun because I'm

kind of starting to enjoy it wait where am I going come on you know I wouldn't have died whoa so fast woo okay let's try again all right so I'm sure there's plenty there that I don't understand but uh I have a score for that and the the the mood is awesome the gam play could use some work um specifically the controls it feels really really um clunky I love the weather patterns though I think it's really really cool so good work to the developer there

all right you guys ready for the next game we ready for the next game um I think it might be a rage game yeah I think it might be a rage game the non-free ride is I think it's probably going to be like challenges and stuff okay playhead yall ready for playhead our last game is oh by the way go vote for sphere buddy and peterse guys please vote for in fact just vote for all four go ahead and vote on every single poll and then we'll we'll get the final the final score there um so that we can get a final score at the end so please vote for every single game and then finally we're going to play playhead [Music] okay so this resolution is much lower

than the text resolution so I would I would make sure that this this uh logo is 4K um the fonts feel inconsistent so for example this uh let's see here let me show you guys what I mean here um I would match up all the photos not photos all the uh so I just want to show you why why fonts are so important um for example make sure that this font matches the um the logo font so this is going to say demo and I'm going to have it be really small and I'm I'm going to use moner because I think it's basically the same kind of it might be Open Sands but I would do this demo like that and then I would have it right

here click to start yeah this is I think it's Open Sands nice and clean so I would I would definitely match those um it just looks more professional you could even do a light one here um like this but I click to start yeah you can make this light much prettier right versus this it feels random that font isn't the same as this one so I just clean it up make it look like that that looks more professional okay you guys ready oh I'm on YouTube cool music all right so we've got some weird uppercase issues with the topography that makes it look cheap and I'm not I'm not sure if this

is was intended I don't know but capital capital capital capital lowercase Capital lowercase um okay this is really cool concept though let's go ahead and start so it's like I'm on YouTube I could scroll down this is hilarious that's so funny I'm on YouTube you can collect those glitches in the level they are optional but I know all you Gamers want to collect everything uh if you get stuck on any level you could skip to the next one come back at any time and remember to check the comments that's hilarious so what do I do okay so I can drag this and then play

that's a cool concept very cool concept I don't know what the X's are nice so the the movement feels a little sluggish it feels heavy um I want less easing I want it to go immediately great example is Mark Brown's um Mind Over magnet this is so slippery look how slippery this is and I understand it looks cool but it doesn't feel good so I would make it much more chunky and um predictable and stop instant instant go instant stop we got other another color theory issue here which is um I won't I won't get into it actually let's go ahead and keep playing

collect this I think there's a cool concept here it's very cool concept somehow I died H if if it truly gets puzzling um I think think we could this could be a really re honestly this could be an incredible concept for a game I think the hook is very very strong I think [Music] visually that's hilarious look you could change the resolution I think visually it's not great okay let's go ahead and take a look [Music]

um let's just go ahead and we'll talk about the music and the visuals in a sec let's get the game idea down let's play the game [Music] though really cool they need to get Mark Brown to come in and do the the art cuz mark would just mark would make this game look so freaking [Music] good trying to figure like how far you could go with this mechanic you know I don't know oops I just wonder could you do make it more like a video you know because right now it feels like the slider is all it's doing is controlling

a tween so you're really just controlling the state between Twins um or a lurp and I I'm wondering is there a way to make more of it feel like it's an actual YouTube [Music] video oh careful dude oh that's that's funny and you can set it to Loop wait what oh that's [Music] restart oh sorry I'm I'm trying to figure out what these controls do I think the gimmick is pretty strong but the graph Graphics are just really hurting the game it just doesn't look

pretty lava there oh no [Music] man the music is not it's not doing it for [Music] me what do we think guys what am I missing here [Music]

make it full screen what's the solution here don't slide just skip what do you mean oh that's great it's so clever lots of clever mechanics here there's a lot here guys this is a really cool concept I think this is a game that has a super solid hook but the the the aesthetic is just hard for me to enjoy [Music]

[Music] okay okay so right there so clever brilliant really cool concept here [Music] [Music] ah so we're going to get to right here right there okay so let's do this and we'll we'll talk in a sec about Aesthetics what I would do differently if it were my

game Oh Thomas careful Bud cool this is addicting actually it's really addicting um what level are we on currently look at this this is hilarious okay so aesthetically um what would I do differently um let's go to the forest level that's always the easiest to sort of how do I go to the there's little hints down here that's hilarious okay let's go to the forest level hang on I'm going to take a screenshot here so something about are you guys cool if I go into the how I would change the the Arts here the art here to feel a little bit more premium um really really cool concept I would be scared if I was the developer to be completely honest because it's a very straightforward and

simple mechanic and they better get this game out there quick um because it's a good mechanic um no I personally I don't think the music is is I I don't feel like the music is on track I think it's it's not uh on the right um track I think it needs to be a lot more um less obtrusive and also more uh memorable in terms of The Melodies um what we've got here is we've got simple monochromatic monochromatic gradients okay so this is the this is the gradient for this level this is the color scheme that's being used what I would prefer they do is actually choose a sky color um there's a lot of things you could do I mean you could keep it monochromatic if you want but I just feel like it's really really flat um and so I would choose like a tealish

blue like this okay H let's let's do this actually let me think here what colors would I choose for this level blue yeah I think that could work sorry I don't want to I don't want to say the wrong thing here give me just a sec

guys okay I think I've got it I think I've got it first off okay first off I wish there was number one a a more subtle color gradient shift or a a a subtle shift in Hue from blue to green I wish that was happening I also wish that there weren't so many weird angles um it feels like it's being it was like drawn in all one scene and it's not actually like clean tile based cuz like with these with these puzzle games and these Platformers you want it to be super clean you want it to be hyper predictable and so everything in a nice grid and tile based makes a lot more sense to me okay it's it's something there's there's a psychological thing that happens where you just feel safe as the player um when everything is structured in a grid but also um I think that uh it also makes it easier to design a bunch levels because in my opinion this is drawn by hand this entire thing and it should be it should be

modular okay so let's go ahead and figure out our colors okay so definitely what we want to do is green I'm going to I'm going to follow basically the same color scheme here but then we're going to shift to a little bit more blue um so let's go to uh blue here like this there we go good okay and then finally light blue so I think we can get away with that um so there's my color scheme right there and what I'm going to do is I'm just going to use very guys I'm going to be super simple here just to show you kind of how we can use color schemes um to make our way forward um I'm G to be a much more I'm going to do it in a much more clean approach here so we're gon to do these are our bushes in the background Everything feels really big

too and clunky and I would much rather a little bit more Fidelity in the size of everything so I can go forward like this and and we'll do clouds in a second but I'm just going to grab colors as we move forward and go a little bit bigger as we move forward and we'll add gradients in a second to make it feel a little bit more foggy it'll make sense in a sec I promise and I'm not saying I'm better I'm saying this is this is just something for the developer to consider um to use a gradient shift of color as opposed to just a simple monochromatic Q shift uh or I'm sorry monochromatic lightness shift which I think is what was happening um so let's see here let's keep moving forward here let's make it a little bit bigger so this is our bushes and then you could also

add subtle trees like this hang tight hang tight guys we're almost there okay and we're we're still I'm still trying to be respectful of the the original art design and stay or the art style and keep it fairly monochromatic and simple I don't want to S suddenly make a completely different looking game um so give me just a sec here merge these layers and what we could do is just sort of use this as kind of like a stamp like that we'll flip this one okay and then the best thing to do when you have it it's it's feeling really flat and monochromatic is just to add some pops of white um let's see here

that that'll do and then over here what we'll do oopsie I need to grab this and actually delete that and then go here there we go all right almost there guys almost there so what I'm going to do is above this I'm going to do a white cloud big ones okay and then in the background we'll do a few more ready watch watch pay attention Boop some down here as well some down here as well okay so I can get rid of this um next what you want to do is add in some contrast between layers so you going to do just some light white here you could even do it guys you could even do a pink I always love doing a little bit of a pink because it makes it feel like morning so something like

this go a little bit yellow there see this I'm going to move over and the background here add a little bit of a Darkness at the top and we'll vote in a sec guys promise I just want to show you what we could do differently because one of you asked what would you do different aesthetically um okay so each layer you notice there's not a lot of Separation so what you could do to create separation is you could either do Shadows which I think I'm going to use Shadows or you can use highlights um to create sort of a fog effect but I'm going to just use Shadows set it to Overlay though overlay is just going to darken and enhance the saturation of what's underneath it set that to Overlay and then with the foreground elements what you want to do in my opinion what you want to do with the foreground elements is use squares okay so the idea

would be to use modular pieces that are very very uh saturated and dark and those modular pieces can have little Cuts in them um like this just to make it feel like they're blocks and then I could take that let's do one more I could take this and I could just put these all over and create puzzles with it see you can create like a billion levels from this do you guys see what's going on here okay we could have a small one what you want to do is you want to make sure they all look like they're uniform in size so you want to make sure those cuts are all identical so if I let's say I had a pillar here um you do this okay let's throw in the character and just actually let me what I want to do here is one more for uh I want to take

this and if you go super dark here and saturated you can create a a much more um interesting look for the whole game as long as it's not interfering with the actual ground okay uh that you can walk on like that would be confusing because the player would say well can I jump on that right so you want to do something like this and then you can also use just circles okay so like we were doing before you just create all these cool looking foreground elements um you could even go uh full black if you wanted to um in fact that's what I'm going to do I'm going to Full 00 Z black see so want to make sure that you're not confusing the player by putting it on the ground okay next up ground should be something ground should be something that you can

recognize and you go okay I can officially walk on that you want the player to know that and so what what you want to do and you want to do this modularly I'm just going to do it in the actual art though you want it to be um clearly visible something you can clearly walk on okay so if I take this I could actually um apply this to the piece to the mod piece so that they always have grass on them and then if I just fade this down like this and stretch you can create little Moss hanging burp burp does that make sense guys what I'm doing here so there's that grass piece right and now what I I'm going to actually make that thinner there there you go okay so I have this grass piece here and I can use

this as a way of not only adding just a vibrant pop of color to the scene but it tells the player hey you can walk on me okay see that I could even put one up here right but you need to be strategic on how you're doing this cu the truth is is this needs to be mod mod and how I'm doing it is not modular they need to be individual pieces which is not hard they're just going to be prefabs in unity okay all right so notice how we have a pop of color but it's also a a a a it's a pop of color but it also tells the player what they can walk on all right final thing here is the the uh the player the player is what's the shape here I would simplify it and obviously you can add a stylized look to all of this you know you could add Strokes of of black uh around the

the character that's fine so it's a circle circle triangle with gloves and then circle circle feet so yeah you could simplify it you could do this I'm going to choose a red that I think works for this environment a little bit more of an orangey red there's that and then Circle body yep just like that we're almost done guys and then we can do we can do the rating but I think this is important to be able to to help the developer like and and it could be like that I'm just completely wrong here you know um but I'm just trying to help and show sort of some art direction that we could do defeat our squares I actually really like the character design um that the feet are not squares they're half circles uh the face is a play

button which I think is really funny we could even uh you could do that and then just a little gloves and I don't I'm not gonna add black legs and whatnot I think this is actually fine the way it is a little bit more contrast in scale here it'll be fine and then what I like to do bring that down a little bit yeah there we go we'll just add a little bit of shading here just to make him sort of pop and uh that's the idea so what we've got here is we've got a gradient of color um we've got a gradient of color

going from blue to green we've got Pops of of um neon green and then this character I think what we could do is we could probably make him a little bit more orangey um let's Fade Out the uh this to as well on one side there we go make it look 3D so that's the idea that's the idea um if it's tiles big modular pieces of tiles it's easier to walk on um so does that make sense guys I think I think they should ignore you and finish the game then instantly take your advice and make a second game so no one takes the concept yeah all right let's see here okay yeah it looks like Strong Bad doesn't it all right one final thing here you could do guys is with modular pieces um you can add in these sort of gradients here um and these gradients will help

make it feel um more three-dimensional and you could add texture on there all sorts of cool stuff you could do highlights low lights you know the whole thing set that to Overlay do all sorts of gradients um what is the the main art also has like some cool like rock or stone texture on it as well that you could do um but yeah this is a much cleaner approach in my opinion um and you could build all sorts of levels off of these modular pieces which is the end that's my that would be my end goal you know um okay so yeah guys go ahead and vote on this game below vote on this game below and so there there's that how that looks and then then here's how the sort of

more chunky sketched look so do you see how um we're using gradients of color and we're also using a cleaner look so that it's more modular and that you could build a lot of levels from it um so that's the idea right so that's just my thoughts on that all right go ahead and vote all right go ahead and vote guys go ahead and vote any questions before we move on any other questions before we move on all right let's go ahead and check and we will go from

there let's go to all of our straw polls the vote if you want to vote guys the link is in the description all link so you vote for each game whether you would recommend it or whether you wouldn't recommend it okay um so we want to vote as if we're playing a steam game so thumbs up or thumbs down all right how do you apply to be part of these reviews um I'm on twit uh Twitter uh Thomas brush DAV is my username so just go follow me there and then anytime I post about uh me playing your games you'll know and you can leave leave a comment of of your link to the game

okay okay so I'm going to go ahead and open up all of these we're going to start with deck of h no we're going to start with playhead and we'll go from there has everybody had a chance to vote all right so we've got a thousand or 1,200 people watching and only 80 people have voted for playhead for example so um go ahead and vote no we're not going to vote on YouTube because we have to vote for all five games and each one has to be voted based on a percentage of the total votes because it's not fair because a lot of people weren't here at the beginning right and so that that one's going to get less votes so that's not fair and also a lot of people might not have seen it so they're not going to vote for it right

so this is a better way to vote okay go ahead and vote we're only at 85 votes for playhead why aren't we voting guys you guys come in you consume the video you watch it and you don't even participate it's a very self it's just selfish it's selfish altogether Mr Thomas what other stuff is basic like color theory um story story is pretty basic if you know the formula for story like a classic story arc you can pretty much mimic it and and fit anything into it okay well you know we're uh okay people are voting apparently the guilt trip worked um yeah I'm seeing total views so I'm across Twitter twitch and YouTube we have 1,200 people watching okay so people are still voting um which is

fine okay okay uh well we we'll just go ahead so shelfish all right ready is YouTube channel course a part of the full-time Game Dev course no it is not Mikey uh The Guilt Trip got you all right so it looks like we've got um let's start with playhead playhead said 84% of the vote is uh recommended what does that mean that is a uh is that very positive on Steam guys I I always forget I always forget let's get chat GPT to tell us chat GPT says uh yeah that's very positive nope nope it's positive that's positive let's take a look at it really

quick oh no we're we're at very positive okay so playhead officially just got very positive moving down the line pedal verse we're looking at mostly negative um let's see here 58% so sorry one sec here uh 41% so that's mixed actually so pedal verse got mixed and guys what could what what could pedal verse do differently right what could pede do differently to to to ensure that it's not mixed does anyone have any feedback for pedal verse North I was me and my wife were talking about North Star so I I didn't know what the North Star really was so we chat chped

it um have a goal well that we were in free ride so that's not really fair uh predictable controls is the problem acceleration yeah Jason that's for sure acceleration felt really fast um clean up the physics and controls yeah it's mainly just controls uh the goal the mission yeah that's not a really fair critique because I just chose free ride um okay moving on P so pedal verse got mixed play head got very positive sphere buddy uh 26% which is currently on Steam Reviews mostly negative and oh by the way I gave seven to playhead I gave five to Pedal verse which is right where you guys are I give a three to sphere buddy which is exactly where you guys are as well so mostly negative uh Tropicalia I gave a three to that as well let's double check what we did with

Tropicalia yeah so 20% is so it's a two basically and that is uh mostly negative okay and then deck of hauns I gave deck of hauns a nine so you guys ready to take a look at deck of HS it looks like it's probably going to be between playhead and deck of hauns you ready guys deck of hauns is an 8.8 which Thomas was right on the money gave it a nine deck of hauns is officially the winner of today's um let's review your games and honestly deck of hauns deserved it it's really really good I would never play it because it's not my style uh I don't understand in those kind of games but it was really good I mean it's clearly a great game playhead is in in um playhead was

second place peterse was third place sphere buddy was fourth and then Tropicalia was fifth I believe right am I missing something here yeah yeah okay what could what could Tropicalia do differently guys What could Tropicalia do differently um and what could sphere budy do differently write this down in the chat so that the developers can read the chat and get some feedback that really helps them okay so write it down uh below um okay guys this video final final little sponsored read here this video is brought to you by my course full-time Game Dev um I won't be Shilling this course forever this is uh or for these live streams um this is just a a the New Year's sale event and so it's the same as Black Friday so I just wanted to share it with you if you want to learn how to make games and learn how to make them in your bedroom and not only that

how to get funded right whether it's steam or whether it's Kickstarter or Publishers or how to hit the steam front page I show everybody how I show my 4,000 students how to do it now why does Thomas have any say in how to do this it's because I've done it multiple times I've been I've had I've signed four publisher agreements um I have uh done two Kickstarter campaigns both of which have raised $100,000 um I've also had my own students um do the same Chris stair here went full-time okay Bart mamser went full-time okay everflux games got funded these are actual students that went full-time because of this course okay granted it's difficult guys to go full time it's really difficult but I show exactly how I've done it and so check it out below it's 50% off you're not going to get a better deal than this um for probably the rest of the year until Black Friday which is in November uh you

also get my 2D and 3D art programs completely free so check it out below it's pretty awesome it's ending soon and also the seats are filling up so check it out below links below um so yeah as we wrap up here I will say that I think deck of hauns is probably going to be a very successful game if I had to predict which game's going to make a lot of money it's deck of Huns now let's see if there's any articles about it because it just it's just a solid game like look at The Branding you know what reminds me of is batro like if we look at batro that it looks like what they were trying to do is capture that red color see this red color the red and blue right here it's like they were trying to capitalize on that feel look at that same color scheme this is so brilliant basically they're saying hey by the way we want a piece of that pie look at

this marketing is so important even though this game is like it's probably it's a much tighter target market um than batro uh it's still I think they're still trying to capitalize on that market bacho has a certain it certainly has an edgy feel um to it and so if we take a look here you can see Thomas just paste the freaking thing look at this if we blur them you can even see it you can see how they they basically use the same color scheme on purpose see look at that if we sample this there's that they just used a little bit more of navy blue in batro see look at that isn't that crazy the red is almost identical they knew what they were doing here oh maybe they didn't but I I think they did

and it's again it's just the idea is to capitalize on what's working and there's nothing wrong with that even this teal look at this well that Emerald color isn't that crazy um so yeah I I see nothing wrong with that I think that's the way you got to do it um but guys let's let's take a look at their the the steam page I mean it's a deck of wants it's brilliantly done did you guys did you guys see the cell shaded effect when we played cuz I didn't the the the the lines here I didn't see the lines it looked different when I was playing it

I like this this music's way [Music] better fall of House of Usher oh I just got chills that that's a big deal Deca look at the they've just killed like the the I love when the Hook is so strong and so clear deck of haunts invites you to become a malev a malevolent haunted house um now you might be wondering okay becoming a haunted house isn't necessarily a fully unique hook but the fact that it's a cards a card game which You Could See Clearly here it's be a haunted house with a card game I think it's brilliant I do I really do I think this is just the the art direction

is so good let's take a look at mantis what else did mantis do so this is uh the publisher actually what's funny is Chris zakowski tells you not to do this he says that oftentimes Publishers will take advantage of the developer link so you click mantis but it takes you to Danon and so I've had to tell my Publishers not to do that um now I'm not sure if that's what happened here but it looks like that's what happened um nothing here I recognize let's see let's take a look at mantis and see who mantis is because they're clearly they clearly know what they're doing U mantis game developer mantis games um I'm not seeing anything here I know you can't see it one sec yeah okay let's take a look let's see what they've done Journey for

elisium can you hear me an hero still upon you richh looks kind of boring um Astro Harvest I guess it's cool yeah but you can't beat this this looks so freaking good it feels like Diablo or something I don't know anyways really cool really really cool um how is that not banned actually what is there a fake link oh this it's not it it's okay we're not saying the the publisher did this on purpose I'm not saying that it's it it actually happens by mistake if mantis doesn't put in the right URL or I'm

sorry the right business name it gets confused this has happened to me before and I don't I don't even know if it works for Never song Let's see once upon oh good okay so there's mine so it works for me um and all my games are here ready to go okay well that's all we've got for today guys thanks for hanging out