Sources of Game Inspiration

sheamkennedy · Post by **sheamkennedy** » Fri May 23, 2014 8:41 pm

I'm not sure if a thread like this already exists somewhere, but I'd like to start this thread in which everyone share all the stuff that inspires them and what helps each person formulate their games. This can be anything from artists to games, poems to movies, or even other existing games, and more...

Just post links to cool stuff, pictures, etc... You get the idea.

sheamkennedy · Post by **sheamkennedy** » Fri May 23, 2014 8:49 pm

I'll start:

I really dig Kilian Eng's art. I've followed him for a really long time and he still manages to mesmerize me with all his sci-fi art and use of color.

http://dwdesign.tumblr.com/

His new stuff's okay, but if you dig back to his older work, it's really amazing.

Willy Elektrix · Post by **Willy Elektrix** » Sat May 24, 2014 12:03 am

sheamkennedy wrote:I really dig Kilian Eng's art. I've followed him for a really long time and he still manages to mesmerize me with all his sci-fi art and use of color.

I never heard of Kilian Eng before now, but his artwork is cool. The colorful and ornate backgrounds are inspiring. Some of the scenes look so alien that they are nearly abstract.

His coloring and lines remind me a lot of the French science fiction comics that ran in Heavy Metal magazine in the 80s and 90s. The most well known and widely imitated of those artists was Moebius, whose style resembles Kilian Eng's a little bit.

Meowskivich · Post by **Meowskivich** » Sat May 24, 2014 4:33 am

A corn u co pia of ins pi rat ion , ma dne ss , a nd ma ybe ev en the oc ca si on al dou ghn ut .

Just to barely scrape the surface.

sheamkennedy · Post by **sheamkennedy** » Sat May 24, 2014 5:01 pm

@Willy Elektrix: Nice. Just checked out Mobius. Very nice style.

@Meowskivich: Very good tunes. I especially like Porky's Theme. Brings back a lot of good memories.

Another great artist is Yoshitaka Amano (http://amano-artwork.tumblr.com/). I'm sure everyone's heard of him but maybe not seen all his art. He's the guy that did all the Final Fantasy art.

Jack · Post by **Jack** » Sat May 24, 2014 5:36 pm

sheamkennedy wrote:Another great artist is Yoshitaka Amano (http://amano-artwork.tumblr.com/). I'm sure everyone's heard of him but maybe not seen all his art. He's the guy that did all the Final Fantasy art.

He must've done some Castlevania work, too. Great stuff.

sheamkennedy · Post by **sheamkennedy** » Tue May 27, 2014 1:27 pm

Jack wrote:
sheamkennedy wrote:Another great artist is Yoshitaka Amano (http://amano-artwork.tumblr.com/). I'm sure everyone's heard of him but maybe not seen all his art. He's the guy that did all the Final Fantasy art.
He must've done some Castlevania work, too. Great stuff.

Oh yes, I guess he's pretty famous for that too.

Foxley · Post by **Foxley** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 5:09 am

I'm necroing this thread just for this:

https://soundcloud.com/madbr/sets/valjeran-approved

SNES/PS1 style mini-soundtrack for a game that doesn't exist. Hngh. If I ever have money, the first thing I'm doing is hiring Madbrain to score a game.

tarl · Post by **tarl** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 3:07 pm

Frank Frazetta, Robert E. Howard, Karl Edward Wagner, Tolkien, Ultima, and my Pen & Paper Role Playing game.

Damn, I have no live ;D

Nathan Karr · Post by **Nathan Karr** » Mon Jul 13, 2015 11:32 pm

Dragon Warrior was the series that had the most direct impact on my RPG design ideas. More than D&D or GURPS, more than the books I've read, and definitely more than the series I have played scantly like Final Fantasy and Breath of Fire (or not at all like EarthBound or Chrono Trigger).

Dragon Warrior I gave me a series of related goals to accomplish and a world to explore in which to find the tools to accomplish it. I have a hard time remembering any other game I've played that gave me the same feeling of entering into a fantasy world and feeling immersed in it, though the first Legend of Zelda comes close. Maces Wild's design goal was basically to attempt to recreate that feeling within a more modernized fantasy world, I just never got that far in terms of fleshing out the contents of the buildings or built up to the "plot" to give an endgame goal to the player.

Dragon Warrior II was the first game I played where the story felt like a story and the characters felt like characters. Funny how in retrospect only one of the main characters had a personality trait, but it stuck with me and has profoundly impacted my design of all "paladin" characters since (Wolf McClaymore is basically just the Prince of Cannock's personality and abilities grafted onto the appearance of the Wolf monster from DW1). The feeling of the world's openness felt slightly diminished to me in comparison, but this is still one of my favorite videogames that rests purely in the RPG genre without mixing in platformer elements.

About 40% each of my games are either visually imitating the GameBoy ports of these early Dragon Warrior games which I am nostalgic for as they were the first RPGs I played, or for the NES originals which I was exposed to later and mixed better with the other games I was trying to imitate or steal from. (It's basically just an outlines? yes/outlines? no thing).

Froginator · Post by **Froginator** » Tue Jul 14, 2015 11:48 am

My biggest inspirations come from artists like Bill Watterson, or Charles M. Schulz, but also from many, many games. For example; the artstyle of the newer Rayman games took a huge impact on my artstyle, but also games like Earthbound, Conker's Bad Fur Day and Banjo Kazooie are big inspirations. I like to say that my artstyle was "formed" out of everything saw up to this point, and what my imagination made out of it. My style of story-telling and humor is also hugely inspired by Watterson, but also by some german comedians and series like Doctor Who or other weird sci-fi stuff like the Oddworld series of games.

kylekrack · Post by **kylekrack** » Thu Jul 23, 2015 12:31 am

Inindo Way of the Ninja. If you haven't already I suggest you find a way to play this game and do so. It's a classic style rpg but doesn't clone the mechanics of most of the big games (ie. Final Fantasy). Its graphics are pretty mediocre for the snes, but I've noticed that the effort in this game hasn't gone mostly to the artwork. So if you're not an artist, here's proof that you don't need good graphics to have a great game.

The game can get tough to get into, because it's a little difficult and a little archaic, but the strategy is unique. The fighting system adds movement and melee vs. ranged attacks. The party members are acquired through either defeating them in combat and earning their respect, or by meeting with them at an inn and hiring them to your band.

For some reason I find this to be one of my favorite RPGs of all time. I hope someone else can share a little bit of the inspiration I found in it. [/img]

Post by **Bob the Hamster** » Thu Jul 23, 2015 1:38 am

Thanks for the recommendation! I will try it when I get a chance.

LWFlouisa · Post by **LWFlouisa** » Mon Sep 07, 2015 1:42 am

Well it's not so much of an inspiration as getting back into game design. What inspires me as a writer are cyberpunk novels and ... as contradictory as this sounds, classic children's books. There is something about the clash of tones and values of the 1980s and 1930s that really gets my creativity flowing.

It's hard to determine what exactly inspires me as a poet, as while I've had favorite poets, I'm not sure which ones I prefer.

How this would translate over to game inspiration I'm unsure yet.