Comments - astralojia

It's now 2 years later and I've released Episode 1 for free on Steam, please check it out if you have the time:
Store.steampowered.com

And here is a before and after when mixing your logo down with more natural colors. You'll notice it doesn't clash as much:

After:
I.imgur.com
Before:
I.imgur.com

Here is an example of what I mean. I took a screenshot of the game and cutting it up gave it a more natural color palette:

Here's after:
I.imgur.com
Here's before:
I.imgur.com

And here's a side by side of cartoony vs natural color palettes:
I.imgur.com

This game looks really interesting, I can't wait to see more demos you release.

Right off the bat with the Hera Cutscene the first things I notice that could be improved...

The animation for the main character when she runs...I don't know what 3D program you're using but there are lots of free resources on run and walk cycles, even right on youtube you could find and emulate. The legs look stiff, the arms look the same. I'm not quite sure what it is about it but this is just what I see immediately.

Here's a problem, though, to keep in mind....You don't necessarily want a character's run to be copied directly from real life. It might be better to copy it right from real life, then modify it to be exaggerated. This is what for example a game like Final Fantasy 13, 14 or 15 does.

The text is far too small, so it turns the player off, at least that's my own perspective on it. Bigger text across more pages shouldn't be too hard to accomplish, right? I think this would be better. I would take the "Hera" text and position it in the middle of that buldge on the upper left of the text box, it looks like it's supposed to be there.

Okay so for color theory....If you keep using all oversaturated colors it makes it seem more cartoony. The character on the road seems to blend too much in with the texture of the road. What you need to do then, PERHAPS, to get a very natural feel color wise is to use aqua as your base color that can be very saturated. This leave your bright orange overly saturated road on the opposite (almost) end of the color wheel.

You need to take this saturated orange then in that case and unsaturate it. Not too much of course, but it would need to be a pretty greyish brown, orange would be almost non-existent unless you're using this as your complimentary color.

This would mean that the red rooftops of the houses need to be colored a very very unsaturated red. The sky is fine at bright aqua, but you would need to take everything that's green and unsaturate it juuust the slightest amount so that it blends with your base of aqua (as green is close to aqua on the color wheel, you can still use a halfway saturated green in you're using aqua as your primary color)

You need to add the slightest mist for those far away trees, as the farther away you get the greyer/unsaturated everything is going to become. Things also become cooler farther away so mixing more blue in far away will give that natural feel that everyone is attracted to in mother nature.

The mistake color wise that I see most game devs making when designing worlds I think is using an overly saturated green. If you want to use green as your super saturated color, then unsaturated the aqua sky enough to have an impact, but definitely don't shine bright red unless that is your only complimentary color.

I guess those are overly strict rules though, and if your goal is to make it cartoony-like rather than anime-like it's fine. The appeal of anime, though, is that it seems to make sure of aqua as it's primary color, so that is the only color that has the ability to be very saturated.

Shadows...

Shadows with the trees are so needed here I can't tell you. This is a game for Xbox One and PC....So it shouldn't matter too much if you're increasing the draw calls so much I think through the shadows. If the performance is slow, you're not combining meshes throughout the game. I'm more of a Unity user myself so I can't really tell with Unreal Engine 4 what's needed here...