The Modern Retro Mistakes of Game Dev

The indie space is home to a number of franchises and genres, and one of the biggest trends out of the space in the past decade is the “modern retro” craze. From Shovel Knight to Celeste, Owlboy, more RPGs than I can count, space sims, boomer shooters and the list goes infinitely on. There is something great about making a game as an homage to a title that you love, but as this trend now continues into early 3D, I feel we need to have a talk about where modern retro doesn’t work no matter how hard designers try. <h1>What Does Modern Retro Mean?</h1> Modern retro is the goal of making a game to look and feel like a title from a previous generation(s) of game consoles or PC hardware. If you were playing indie games for most of the first half of 2010, you were playing the many 2D platformers released that used pixel art as their art style. Some of my favorite indie games have been those that have managed to elevate these retro games in a different direction — Shovel Knight, Alwa’s Awakening, and Odallus to name a few. These games look and sound like they were right at home on the NES hardware, but still did things different or unique; keep that in the back of your mind, as I’m going to be coming back to this point further down. Retro games provide a well-tested and marketable template for designers to work in, and why I made my first major design book about platformers. <a href="https://medium.com/@GWBycer/the-modern-retro-mistakes-of-game-dev-e2dfe045757b">Learn More</a>