Shark Riders

So, I just played this today, and I found it to be very awesome :) I can't believe you made it in only 14 days, I can't even imagine how you did that!

I really like how I as a player was just dropped in the middle of it. I didn't know what was going on, but through the descriptions and through play, a picture emerged on who I was playing as and what kind of world it took place in. Learning about their ways and traditions from like a small peephole, every new bit of information expanding the picture. Great way to keep me engaged.

I loved that there were four endings, and I think being told which one I got out of how many was a great way to make me want to try multiple times to make sure I got them all, which I did in the end, but it took some retries.

The story was much more engaging than I had expected. I had perhaps assumed that it would be way more over the top with a name like Shark Riders, but at least for me, it held just the right balance. It had a bit of that exotic pulp feel, giving me throwback vibes to old pulp classics like Tarzan, King Kong or King Solomon's Mines.

I also like that (at least in my interpretation), it's a story about family and duty, and about sacrifice - more than it is about riding sharks.

As for the visuals, I find them stunning. Using the colors of the ZX spectrum is a fine choice, but I don't think that is to thank for the nice graphics. The choice of which colors to use is absolutely perfect, opting to not make use of the entire palette available, but instead limiting it to a few main colors with a couple of sparingly used emphasis colors on certain elements. It doesn't seem like there's been an attempt to emulate the "attribute blocks" limitation of the spectrum, which limited the number of possible colors within a single 8x8 block. I think that is the right choice, hands down - it is a hassle and I think it does more to distract than to enhance graphics.

But one side-effect of the attribut limitation, was the poularity of using a lot of black in many spectrum graphics (it was simply easier to make black one of the color in ever attribute block, to help transitions betwen them). And the look of this game pays lovely homage to that style, using lots of black and sharp black outlines in places. 

The images themselves are great, the composition is very well done, and they feel appropriately mood setting and dramatic as situations of the game require. Having different facial expressions for the character does a lot to make them feel alive. Also, I think the art style itself works very well. I like that it is a bit... "noisy" is not really the right word, but I struggle to find it. Maybe "texture" is better. The heavy use of dithering, even dithering large fields of solid colors rather than just transitions, and the placement of stray single pixels in some of the images all works really well. 

I like the use of smaller images for some things, it reminds me a bit of the old game Legend of the Sword.

All in all, I really enjoyed it, this is just the type of games I want to be making myself, so I am drawing a lot of inspiration from this. 

Thank you for making it!

This pixel-pulp was beautiful, weird, and gripping! I really enjoyed it, thank you for creating this experience.

I talked about it in my video this week, if anyone is interested: 

Quite an interesting art style and a unique story. In our video we show one of the four endings. There's no background music in this game, so we added some that fits. Best wishes!