Super Pillow Fighter 2D

Hi, I'm and independent game developer with a game called Super Pillow Fighter 2D. It's a 2d fighting game played with smash rules for windows PC. You can check it out at SuperPillowFighter.com

I'm ready to start selling it, and was wondering if you guys would be interested in carrying it. Let me know what you think!

Disclaimer: I'm not part of Manifesto Games, I'm just commenting on the game.

It looks like it has potential and I really like the idea of making a non-violent fighting game using pillows. The presentation could be a lot better though.

Thanks dude! By presentation, do you mean the menus or the website? I've cleaned up the menus a little bit since the demo, I'll probably kick out a new one soon. The website is terrible because I'm using that Microsoft Office Live hosting. It's free but their template is garbage.

By presentation, I mean mainly the animation and sprite graphics and special animation effects and so on -- the core graphics of the game. It looks like either you didn't spend a lot of time on the sprites, or aren't a very good artist. Compare your game's sprites with, say, this game's: http://youtube.com/watch?v=kQOGKd-epn8 (yes, that's an indie game -- Japanese, but indie).

Well, that's part of being an independent, ya know? I don't have any reliable artist buddies that will do my artwork on the cheap, and I don't have the money to hire professional artists. So I had to do the artwork myself. I know the artwork definitly isn't as good as it could be, but you have to cut corners somewhere, and I think the artwork is passable.

You're right though, Big Bang Beat looks totally sick! Like I don't know much about how the developers are doing it, but they must be a bunch of professional spriters that got bored or something.

It's part of being independent, yes, but it's also part of what keeps independent games in the margins of the game industry, something that doesn't appeal the the most people who play games.

I'm not sure the artwork is "passable" -- passable to some maybe, but not passable to the majority, in the sense that I would expect most people to not want to try it out based on the screenshots or video. For instance, I showed the video to a few of my friends and they universally weren't interested in trying out the game based on how it looks.

I don't think it takes money for an artist or artist friends, it just takes time to learn art. There are hundreds of great art tutorials online, I think what's lacking (not just from this game in particular, but from the visuals of independent games in general) isn't talent or money but just plain time and effort. What I'd recommend is to try spending a month on nothing but the game's graphics -- no code work at all, no gameplay work at all, just restricting yourself to making the game visually appealing -- and you'll see what I mean, you'll probably be surprised what you can do.