itch.io

I'm also developing a further game idea based in the same setting as Human Upgrade Labs, but with a different, more focused playstyle.

Here are some potions I designed/painted for that. These are not meant to be consumed like some mana or hp potion, but are meant to serve as ingredients in crafting/upgrading.

I know it's not the smartest thing to make final versions of visual assets while anything in the game can change in super early stages, but hey, I wanted to paint these. I will end up using them for something else if things change along the way.

Human Upgrade Labs is coming to Steam and also here is the gameplay trailer

It's the same game but now with Steam achievements and cloud saves. Everything from the build to the Steam store is fully done and tested and the game will be available very soon. Current plan is to release it on the 30th of this month.

Human Upgrade Labs will cost 4.99USD and will be discounted further 20% on the first week of release as well!

Don't worry if you prefer Itch though, I am lowering the price slightly here as well to match it.

Also a small thing to note: the saves between Itch and Steam versions won't be transferable. That is because I had to change the method the game uses to create the saves in order to enable cloud saves for Steam version. 

That is all. Check out the gameplay trailer and my "world class" video editing skills.

Human Upgrade Labs is coming to Steam very soon and you can wishlist it now: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2887720/Human_Upgrade_Labs/

In this game you will be playing a role of a fool, I'm sorry, a volunteer who signed up to participate in the tests going on in the Human Upgrade Labs in the far future Earth. You heard rumors that anyone who manages to pass the various tests designed to improve you in every conceivable way will have new and amazing possibilities unlocked in life. That, or be completely broken mentally. The tests you take will essentially be various mini games, over 30 of them, placed into several different categories, using multiple, sometimes experimental visual styles and combined into a single story.

Human Upgrade Labs will cost 4.99USD and will be discounted further 20% on the first week of release as well!

Don't worry if you prefer Itch though, I am lowering the price slightly here as well to match it.

Also a small thing to note: the saves between Itch and Steam versions won't be transferable. That is because I had to change the method the game uses to create the saves in order to enable cloud saves for Steam version.

The game also has a substantial free demo: Human Upgrade Labs here on Itch

That is all. Check out the gameplay trailer and my "world class" video editing skills.

Thanks, I'm glad you liked it so far! It's really cool to see someones live reaction to my game and it's always fun to see people trying indie games in general.

By the way, I can generate a key so you could try the full game for free if you want. Just let me know and i can send you a pm or something with that. 

The last slime wants a hug. A deadly acidic hug.

 I want some of those monsters to have evolutions and this is my first attempt at designing that. I based these of a design I came up earlier, the third one from the left.

The last slime wants a hug. A deadly acidic hug.

I want some of those monsters to have evolutions and this is my first attempt at designing that. I based these of a design I came up earlier, the third one from the left.

Awesome. Let me know what you think about when you do

Thanks, glad you liked these. I will be posting more as I draw more monsters

Even more monster designs. I've been having a lot of fun with these recently. I tried to come up with some more unusual tentacle monster designs, besides the classic octopus thing with too many teeth.

Even more monster designs. I've been having a lot of fun with these recently. I tried to come up with some more unusual tentacle monster designs, besides the classic octopus thing with too many teeth.

Thanks, glad you like it

I can't believe I almost forgot these lovely slimy boys. I painted these before the geometric horrors above actually. I will be expanding on these as well. I want some monsters to have evolutions so I'm working on that for the light blue slime with the face.

I can't believe I almost forgot these lovely slimy boys. I painted these before the geometric horrors above actually. I will be expanding on these as well. I want some monsters to have evolutions so I'm working on that for the light blue slime with the face.

I've been experimenting, designing and painting some monsters for an addition for my game Human Upgrade Labs, or maybe a different project entirely. This is still on the idea level, but I definitely want to work on more monsters in either case.

Here are some designs I came up with. Do these seem creepy to you, any other sort of monsters that you think would be cool to see designed?

Thanks, glad you like these.

Yeah, something hand heavy similar to what you described is definitely on the menu, I was thinking about a creature with hands instead of teeth for example. I haven't done something like that yet mostly because I made simpler designs for now and hands are hard to draw. Especially if we are talking about a many armed abomination, but we will come to that( I'll be sure to upload more creatures as I design them). Thanks for the suggestion

Some more creepy ones. I sketched out the pyramid eye and it all went out of hand pretty quickly. Didn't expect to paint 5 themed after shapes.

Yeah, I think they call those desk renting offices "coworking offices" in English. I work with a lot of random programmers and architects and such which is kinda interesting.

Well in my experience it depends a lot on the client and the project, but often there is a fair amount of freedom about the details drawing left to me. Usually we agree to something like the client can choose from the sketches i make and ask for changes if needed and this allows to keep the changes to the final illustration or what have you fairly minimal. It's usually understood that if the client requests a lot of redraws, especially something they didn't mention from the start than that requires extra payment. I even had some rare projects where I was given a hundred percent of freedom about what to draw because i simply needed to draw something cool looking to use as a victory screen in a game. Those were fun.

I mean, there is some boss feeling still, but much less than in a normal job.  Also if I was trying to sell artwork or such and to survive of it then it's  almost certain i would need to follow the trends, what sells and i don't like drawing fanart, for example. There's always something, basically. Think about it like this: Michelangelo did commissions, haha

Being a mechanic doesn't sound like a bad job, to me at least.

When this sort of freelance job is going good, it's really good, in my experience. I live in a slightly cheaper country than USA, for example, so I can manage to work maybe two weeks out of the month and to make enough money and to have plenty of free time. However, because of the randomness involved, sometimes I make no money in a month at all and I still need to work on finding projects etc. Basically it's a good gig, but still often stressful and definitely not easy.

Also I worked from home for two years and noticed it's really not my thing. So I've been renting a desk at one of those coworking places and I think that's a good way go for a lot of people.

Glad you liked my artwork by the way

Thanks.

Well, making things like the pokemon skeletons or such could be fun, but I prefer not to do fanarty stuff and also I will most likely use these in a game so that's another reason to avoid that.

Hi. Depends. If you want to sell games then I don't know, might me close to impossible.

On the other hand, if you would like to do commissions for money, that sort of stuff, then that is more possible. I have very little social media stuff besides maintaining some portfolios and I have been working as a full tile freelance artist for around 9 years on boardgames, books, computer games and such. Not saying it's easy, or that it's even a good idea, but it is somewhat in the realm of doable,  if you really want to focus on art. Because it takes me much more effort and time to make money drawing comapared to, let's say, working in construction like i did before, haha. It is a much more interesting job to draw and design stuff for living of course

I've been experimenting, designing and painting some monsters for an addition for my game Human Upgrade Labs, or maybe a different project entirely. This is still on the idea level, but I definitely want to work on more monsters in either case.

Here are some designs I came up with. Do these seem creepy to you, any other sort of monsters that you think would be cool to see designed?

Actually sounds like a fun little addition. I would have to remember to record that stuff every time I encounter it though which might be a bit of a pain, especially in some cases where the bugs are harder to replicate

Besides the price and complexity, at least to me it seems that it's easier to make a 2d game look good and in a more reasonable amount of time. That could be only my impression though, since i am a 2d artist so I understand that whole part best

Not saying this is the way to go, but i just released a game and my method was to make a full version of it paid and to provide a fairly sizeable free demo( around a third of the game is playable for free). I still think free demos are a very fair way to give people the chance to see if they actually like the game. No idea if this works in term of overall views/plays. Time will show.

I go all over the place as I like to experiment with styles, but a long time influence would be surealism( you know Salvador Dali times, old stuff). Not trying to copy a hundred year old art, but the share technical quality of some of those paintings plus all the weirdness involved gives me a lot of ideas. Like here is something I painted for my game a couple of months ago:

Alright, how about this one then: I just finished a game that took over three years of my free time called Human Upgrade Labs

I am a professional artist in my daily life so this was a big passion project that helped me by being an outlet for a lot of stranger and sometimes experimental artwork ideas I have.

In this game you will be playing a role of a fool, I'm sorry, a volunteer who signed up to participate in the tests going on in the Human Upgrade Labs in the far future Earth. You heard rumors that anyone who manages to pass the various tests designed to improve you in every conceivable way will have new and amazing possibilities unlocked in life. That, or be completely broken mentally. The tests you take will essentially be various mini games, over 30 of them, placed into several different categories, using multiple, sometimes experimental visual styles and combined into a single story.

Multiple new levels become available at a time, so you can choose the order in which you want to progress through the game while discovering more about this strange future world. Some levels are meant to be played once like this one where you will be teaching a robot to feel:

Or this one where you have to tell apart old tech from cutting edge tech:

Or this one where you have to haggle for funds with accountant from your nightmares:

Other levels track your best score and test how far you can push a specific skill. Like this one where you need to prevent as many wooden enemies from escaping as possible:

The whole "visibility" thing is a curse. Seems like almost everyone struggles with that part. Including me of course.

Thanks, glad you like it. Well, i guess there are some similarities then. There are robots, humans, monsters interacting in my game

Human Upgrade Labs

Hey,

I just finished and published my game Human Upgrade Labs

It's a strange scifi themed puzzle game full of various minigames connected into a single story. I specialize in artwork and altogether this took around 3 years of my free time to make and I'm glad to see it finished.

Free demo contains around a third of the game but of course I  can create a key for you if you happen to want to try out more of the game.

I'll check out your channel, always nice to see people trying out non mainstream games.

Human Upgrade Labs

A free demo containing around a third of the game is available on the game page.

In this game you will be playing a role of a fool, I'm sorry, a volunteer who signed up to participate in the tests going on in the Human Upgrade Labs in the far future Earth. You heard rumors that anyone who manages to pass the various tests designed to improve you in every conceivable way will have new and amazing possibilities unlocked in life. That, or be completely broken mentally. The tests you take will essentially be various mini games, over 30 of them, placed into several different categories, using multiple, sometimes experimental visual styles and combined into a single story.

Multiple new levels become available at a time, so you can choose the order in which you want to progress through the game while discovering more about this strange future world. Some levels are meant to be played once like this one where you will be teaching a robot to feel:

Or this one where you have to tell apart old tech from cutting edge tech:

Or this one where you have to haggle for funds with accountant from your nightmares:

Other levels track your best score and test how far you can push a specific skill. Like this one where you need to prevent as many wooden enemies from escaping as possible:

And here are some finished ones

And now I would like to briefly talk about a completely different part of the game - character customization.

For each completed level you are rewarded with at least a few customization options for the Science Guy( he is actually not the protagonist, but the one who is leading you through the levels, because you can only see the back of the head of the protagonist). The game takes place in far future where extreme body modification is an almost casual thing so that let's me get away with a lot of insane designs. In game justification for this customization is that the Science Guy is really into fashion and he likes to spend a good chunk of the money he gets for guiding you in this process for "clothing".

Above are a few options for hair I have now, some fairly normal, and some fairly wacky. There are 49 options for hair alone and the face, eyes, beard, body, coat and a category called "extra" also have a fair amount of options each.

It's a comparatively quick thing for me to make after I somehow managed not to mess up the code for it, so besides art all I need to add is a single line for each addition to make sure it's unlocked at appropriate times. I think it works fairly well as a motivator to complete new levels and I've even seen a youtuber try out this part of the game and have a lot of fun with it so maybe some people would agree with me on that.

Anyway, do you like these hair options?

Some monster sketches. I actually already painted the final versions of some of these I liked.

Human Upgrade Labs

Makes sense I think. Also probably adding some elements of randomness would work well, to possibly make people want to go through the game more than once. I mean, look at any roguelike game. They tend to gave maybe an hour of actual content, but they are randomized to a large degree so it's always interesting to see what you can find in the next run.

I'm not saying you should make a roguelike, just using that as an example of course.

I made upgrades to this whole woodcarved level since the last time I mentioned it. I carved two new enemies with slightly different mechanics.

This guy flies around and keeps spawning basic enemies until it is shot down. However, when it dies it still spawns multiple enemies you need to take care of it and even has a small chance to spawn a copy of itself.

And this one keeps changing direction each time it's shot, while getting slightly smaller and faster until the last life point of this matrioshka style thing is lost.


If you took time to look closely at the gif in the first post, you might notice that this one was in the game already. I decided to change it, and now the two original wood enemies look like this:
I think these new additions make this shooting level a fair bit more strategic and fun.
Also I just uploaded an update where this level is fully playable so ti would be really cool to hear some feedback if you try it out: Human Upgrade Labs

Yeah, but onfurtunatelly most sites seem to have the same aproach where they promote already popular stuff. I understand it as a financial decision, but from perspective of someone whi tries to promote stuff, it's like running into a brick wall a lot of the time.  I have been posting art in mulpitple sites for around 10 years, and in most cases it seems to be the same as well

I think Corel Painter would be a good addition to the graphics side of things. I've been using it instead of photoshop for years and at least for me it's much nicer to work with when it comes to actual drawing/ painting. Photoshop is still much better for any sort of photo emitting of course.

I tried to use MagicaVoxel you already have on the list, just to try out the voxel thing. It seemed like a pretty good tool, but damn it, the whole menu layout is unintuitive as hell.

Yeah, game design is hard. I come from a similar place since I am primarily an artist and at least my whole approach is to try to come up with a game where I can stuff as many of the things as I really want to draw as I can. So puzzle games work best for that it seems. 

I had one game I made where you have to sort out peoples dreams and the dreams can be almost any sort of image so it seemed like a good enough way to add playability to the whole situation. I think just adding unlockable stuff or a simple story can do a lot, or otherwise it's more similar to wandering in a museum than to playing a game.