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xuanergame2 days ago

Thank you for sharing your experience. I really appreciate you taking the time to write such a detailed reply.

I think there might be a small misunderstanding though — I wasn't saying my current art style is inconsistent or that I dislike my own work. I actually agree that having a consistent style is important, and I'm happy with the direction I'm taking.

What I was trying to discuss is a broader problem many indie developers face when using external assets: even when individual assets look good, combining different pieces into one game world can still be challenging. (And recently, I've also noticed that even assets from the same creator can sometimes have cohesion issues as the collection grows.)

Your story actually shows another side of this problem — creating a cohesive game world can require a lot of time, money, and difficult decisions, especially for solo developers.

This is exactly the problem I'm interested in exploring. Instead of creating isolated assets, I'm trying to explore whether building a consistent asset ecosystem could help indie developers create cohesive game worlds more easily.

I'm sorry to hear about what happened with your studio. Thank you for sharing your experience, and I hope your future projects go better.

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Durance Gaming2 days ago

It's quite alright and thank you for such a thoughtful reply. Since this is only text and you cannot hear my voice tone or see my body language, my post probably sounds more sour than I intended.

I see what you are saying, though. And it makes a lot of sense. This very place, Itch itself, is a good example.

During those years, a LOT of the artwork was bought from other indie people here on Itch. That was true not just of my first game, but of all my projects up until the end. I still remember the moment I found this site... It was like a scene where everything lights up and you hear that angelic choir like "uuuaaaaahhhhh" lol.

Believe it or not, because of algorithms and stuff, when you first start off looking for assets they can be really hard to find. To this day I am still coming across random game asset sites and they all share a lot of wares but each one also has a little something different the others didn't have.

Which actually brings up a question I am wondering in regards to your goal... I wonder if simply gathering artwork together would be enough, given the nature of these algorithms. But gathering and then heavily categorizing them... That could possibly help to not only gather stuff together but also trigger the algorithms when it detects a relationship between two or more contexts.

Even here on Itch, the tag system is not as robust as I once thought it was. As I said, my first game required niche art and once you try targeted searches, Itch will yield very little results even for assets you know should be there.

Just wondering out loud, you know?

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xuanergame2 days ago

Thank you for sharing your thoughts! And I think you brought up another very interesting problem — finding the right assets is also a huge challenge for indie developers.

But I think my direction is slightly different from improving asset discovery or categorization. What I'm exploring is not gathering existing assets together, but building an asset ecosystem from the beginning.

The idea is that each asset is designed with the others in mind, so characters, environments, props, UI, and animations can naturally work together as part of the same game world.

Instead of asking developers to search for many different pieces and then make them fit together, I'm wondering if we can reduce that problem by creating collections around specific game experiences.

Of course, asset discovery and categorization are still important problems, and I agree that itch's tag system can sometimes make finding niche assets difficult. Thanks for bringing up this perspective!

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