Why Do Unreal Games All Look This Way — PontyPants

why do some games just look they they have that look right a lot of Unreal Engine games have the look it kind of looks like an asset Flip Game everything looks the same um me and ponie pants actually talk about this Pony pants is the creator of a game called a difficult game about climbing and he sold over 200,000 copies of this game so frankly I listened to him very intently because I want to learn from him and I also just wanted to learn why he made almost every as set in that game from scratch that that sounds kind of ridiculous and it goes against everything that I've been spouting for The Last 5 Years cuz I I've been a big proponent of asset flipping but lately I'm starting to change my tune a little bit so we're going to learn about why you should maybe not flip assets and why you might want to create everything from scratch in your game stick around I think you're going to learn a ton you you could have taken a bunch of like Mega scans you know and just put them into the game even though will say

the game looks incredible don't get me wrong but there is that Temptation right to just throw in assets and call it a day sure yeah I mean I think it depends on the game but uh a huge contributing factor to that was um remember that game only up uh-huh uhhuh remember how that's not on Steam anymore oh you want to know why lawsuits yeah cuz they grabbed or he or whatever grabbed a bunch of assets off the internet that were supposedly free to use but had just been reuploaded by someone and they didn't actually have the legal capacity to upload it so I was like I got super paranoid I was like okay so you can't trust anything so I was like you know what I'm just going to make everything myself but also it makes it so that the the game feels more cohesive because if I started using it does feel cohesive yeah like if you use Mega scans it like it looks too photo realistic I don't think it would work in the game like it's supposed to be a little cartoony right so if I started putting

Mega scans in there I don't think it would um have the right aesthetic I guess um I agree there I think there's something like dude I think there's something subconscious where players know whether a game was an asset game or not yeah you don't want to they might not be able to pinpoint exactly why but they just they could feel it it's kind of like AI you just know totally you can just sense ITT yeah you just feel it you want it to feel custom like it's like intentional right and the thing with the the climbing game is that it's very it's like a lot about the surfaces and you know like it's a game about surfaces that's what I always said about the game it's not a game about climbing it's a game about surfaces so you have the slippery surfaces and the more grippy ones and then the moving objects and all that stuff and so I was very like um intentional with how I made them look so that it would be clear to the player you know what can you climb on what is not grabbable and all this stuff and so yeah I did try early on with just like some I found some rocks or whatever on the unity asset store and it it just wasn't really working right I think

Bennett did that and I think it works because it's so simple the hammer touches something and that's it right it's not really that complicated but in my case it's really about like where you you have to really look at the surfaces and so it was just too hard to find stuff that felt right and was cohesive so that's why in the end I modeled it but you know I have a long uh career in VFX so I was using blender and stuff to make assets and I'm pretty good at it I'm pretty fast at making them so it's not really a big deal for me um so I felt like an okay approach to to just make the assets um humanoid characters though you refused to make that I didn't do that one did I well what's the point right like if you can find something I agree I agree you know I I did I and I actually did it a few times I I did find some assets that I didn't make myself but what I did was that I textured it all myself so that to make sure that I had a style of the textures at least

sure and that worked so I think I mean yeah um man dude that is so freaking impressive that you did all that cuz we we basically did all of the artwork from scratch in Twisted Tower which is what we're we're currently working on it's a Bioshock Bioshock but Disney World kind of game and I don't I I recall telling my team and and the 3D artist his name is Felipe he's brilliant I told him at the beginning of the project I was was like please please please just use assets like flip them let's just get this done let's not worry about creating everything from scratch and if he's listening Felipe I love you he would he would go and go ahead and make them from scratch anyway and then tell me later and so every day at the end of the day there was a bunch of new assets that were created from scratch and so I'd keep telling them use assets use assets use assets and looking back now with the Advent of

AI crap and just the asset flip games flooding the Steam Market I just want to give them a big hug because his his principles his gut principles were correct and mine weren't and I think that there is a huge gap in this in the indie game Market for games that they just have that from scratch look they just feel handmade homemade human games you know what I mean yeah I think it's probably better to make a game that looks bad than a game that looks good but looks like an unreal five engine game like I'm getting the moment I see Unreal Engine five I'm just like yeah I don't think so it all looks the same and it's like even like kind of like the Harry Potter game which was cool it was like I was like this looks like unreal Unreal Engine 5 and I looked it up and sure enough it was Unreal Engine 5 right well what what do you mean by that so I I I know what you mean

but I want you to clarify it for the audience why is it a problem that Unreal Engine 5 has a look why is that a problem because it makes your game look too much like I mean okay it makes look it makes your game feel generic and there's nothing worse than if your game feels generic right and you might be like oh well your game looks like Bennett's game but my game is very similar and probably appeals to the same audience as Ben game and not a lot of other games look like that so it was a very intentional decision and I hope Bennett isn't offended he didn't seem to be on Twitter but I I couldn't be sure I was just like you know I'll just go for it like it's just a bald dude in a loin cloth like it's not really that specific but no dude no he's not offended and and I saw his tweet and it was he seems he seems um he seems cool with it he seems cool with it and I I think look dude if your game looked like um like what's what's there's a game

called roller Drome very stylized sure yeah if he had created a hyper stylized look and you like copied that look I'd be like bro but like you're the style of your game is fairly realistic with a little bit of stylize so it's I don't think you I don't think you copied anything that was like fundamental to his aesthetic I mean if I SW swapped out the character for something totally different I don't think you would associate so much with Bennett's game anymore it's really about that bald guy naked guy right or whatever um but you know it's like I I I I had a lot of like I spoke to Jonas Ty roller um like a yeah a month or so before release or something and I showed him the trailer I was like hey could you just look at this and let me know what you think and look at my steam page like and he was like yeah this is this is looking good man and and I was like yeah I'm kind of worried that people are going to think that I'm just like copying because it's not I was like it's not a copy of Bennett's game like I put a lot of effort into making he said yeah it only

took me a year but I put a lot of effort into making the game feel unique and to have like and so I was like I was worried that people were just oh it's just a copycat game and Jonas was like yeah well you're going to get a lot of that anyways doesn't matter what you do but I think it's probably good because you actually want people to associate your game with something otherwise they just have no idea what it's about and uh that would made a lot of sense to me I was like yeah you know what that makes sense and um I I guess intuitively somehow that's why I did it but it really made sense when he said that I was like yeah that that makes perfect sense it uh it it's there's two things going on there um and by the way I know exactly how you feel uh I'm making a game that looks like Bioshock yeah yeah and um I guess I can say this out loud but I I'm pretty sure Ken LaVine is coming on the podcast um he and I have been messaging each other um and for those who don't know he's the creator of BIOS CH but point being is I

was so freaking paranoid and I was calling my publisher I was talking all over the place with people my subscribers like hey do I need to make this game look tuny do I need to make it look different like what do I need to do because it looks so similar to Bioshock and my biggest fear my biggest fear was people buy it because they expect Bioshock and then they don't get BioShock that's a big problem you have to deliver on it yeah totally that's right the problem is this and this is what I struggle with is sure it's not going to be as good as Bioshock there's no way like there is no freaking way it's it's a you know I don't know what the budget of that game was 50 million yeah but like you don't know that because like what was the budget of Animal Crossing no not Animal Crossing what's the game har Harvest Moon what was the budget of that I don't know but it was probably more than stard Valley and stard Valley sure sold a lot more copies than Harvest

Moon ever did hey thanks for watching hope you enjoyed that conversation with pony pants I know I did it was really really fun he's a cool guy uh hey remember link is below to learn how to make a game in 15 minutes it's a free Workshop no gimmicks just click the link below you'll get instant access and learn how to make a a what am I saying a game a 3D game in 15 minutes and uh you'll be learning from me a which is great cuz well I actually don't know why that's great great anyway you'll like it click below