As a gamedev i feel this great idea for a quickly made game! It will come down to execution! Good luck!

I wouldn't worry about the split of audience because one is a audience for buying all the other one is the audience for videos it's the way I see it.

I will say another factor to consider how art style genre affects the audience appeal, anime style will skew players to care more about art style than gameplay (I’ve played plenty of super pretty anime games with mediocre or bad gameplay and enjoyed them). It might be easier to go with something like low poly (but this still needs some style consistency) or realistic or pixel.

“Asset flip” is just a derogatory term when it looks like unrelated assets of different styles come together and aren’t unified because it gives the impression of the indie slop on steam. But in reality it has nothing to do with actually using only assets if they look cohesive, and non devs won’t know they came from an asset. Anime art is definitely one of the most challenging styles to do in 3D without advanced shader tricks and tech art because it’s meant to be 2D.

if all your game parts are 5/10, you're gonna end up with a 3/10 game" math.averageAndDemotivate()

Does look like shit tho. That thumbnail, the graphics, the name...yeesh. And a survivor-like you say? Burn it with fire.

so they think we're all wrong. got it

To bad you never learned proper English in school. The Belgian school-system refuses to learn kids good English. Good effort. You may want to get English lessons in speaking proper English.

12:14 That's a pretty smart notion: when you're 80% done, you still have 80% og the work left 💡

Hey man, I'll give my 2 cents about MGG. About the aesthetic: it may came as asset flip to some people as it looks so "basic", not looking bad but standard. Maybe step up your palette game: don't tint the things as they really are, why the grass is green? why the sky is blue? Maybe you could use a more autumn-ish palette with some purples (now it looks like the mmo Ragnarok from 2001). Also you need a stronger shader work. Maybe some volumetric fog to give more density? Also the hair of the guardians should have physics. About the mechanics my opinion is that it shouldn't be an autoshooter, actually to shoot it's a pretty fun mechanic, but even if it is the shoot should feel stronger, (and maybe even more as an autoshooter) see the machine gun in helldivers, maybe some work with lighting, slight camera shake, sound, or something like that, it looks kind of flimsy rn. Same with getting wound, the screen is not giving the right amount of feedback. Maybe a dash mechanic and some kind of granade launcher would help it to look more dynamic and varied? Always rooting for you guys, hope you find the way to make it work!!

Currently I'm very busy so I missed the awards, the mgg trailer, but NOW I saw it(atleast the trailer). well yes it's no Halo3 Trailer, but for what I saw in the Streams, It looks more or less as expected. Maybe it was not 100% up to par to the fast Trailer Roast fixes, but I'm bias since I'm not so the kawaii girly type. :) The second Trailer reminded me abit of a game you guys roasted I think, and yes this type of game would be more up my ally. I any case I don't see the drama. Just wanted to write before I forget (am only on min 15). AND finally I think Terms like asset flip and Slop-Games are throw around a lot, but 99% of games could be grouped in one of those groups, with other words, let the haters hate.

I agree with the synty-ish style. I went for a more original stylized style. I like the result but I spend so much time coding shaders, reworking assets so they look good in this style, painfully make new 3D models when I can't find one that can be adapted, making VFX's because the standard ones don't fit etc.

I think you need to separate people not liking the game, and not liking you and the studio. Hardly any of the comments were attacking you personally, your community is offering their opinion on what is put in front of them and they're allowed to have their opinion. Personally I feel that the feedback is better that it's so clear in it's sentiment and you can make changes accordingly. I, along with probably 99% of the commenters here, are long time watchers from the community who actually _do_ want you to do well. Try and bear in mind that negative feedback about the game is not a personal attack on you.

Use this as a learning lesson. You're never to old to keep trying as long as you have a heart for your passion.

Two approaches prevail in indie games; creating nice, consistent graphics to look good on the trailer with average gameplay or betting on complex mechanics and unique idea with inferior graphics. If it's poor in both categories, there can be problems with marketing and if it's still short, it won't succeed without a huge amount of luck.

I think the design problem with Magical Girl Guardians is that once you play as an anime girl you lose all mainstream shooter, survivorlike players, and the second you put a gun in her hand you lose all the players who like playing cute colorful games (mostly cozy players) so the ideal player for this type of game is very very niche (considering that players who play small indie games like those games are already super niche) That's one man's opinion anyway, wish you luck!

LETSSSSS GO‼️💯

After watching the trailer a few times, I noticed my main issue is that the enemies seem to clash with the overall game style. Some of them appear out of proportion compared to the rest of the visuals. Nonetheless, I would still buy the game because it looks like a fun game to play while just chilling.

My first game was an endless runner (more like endless bouncer) on iPhone. To my surprise it didn't make any money whatsoever. My mom is still playing it tho, almost 10 years after I released it

Issue I had with Vampire survivors was the lack of impact that the map made. It was like a painting in the background but didn't change the gameplay or bring any level of strategy to the game other than MAYBE a small chokepoint. If you can make the environment useful from a strategy perspective, even some events that make it destructible which increases/decreases the difficulty that would be interesting.

@BiteMeGames: You know I've noticed a lot of people that comment negatively are people that complain because they think they know everything. They don't, and probably haven't even made a game. Its not that their opinions SHOULDN'T matter but that their opinions DON'T matter. Unless they're more successful(and i doubt a more successful person would say those things), they are just spoiled children that hate anything that isn't done specifically to their wants. Let'm go suck on lemons and peel some onions for all i care... ha! there's your next game idea😛

All the feedback you received is valuable. I feel like most people "hating" on you or the games are either mad because you did not follow your own advices or do not like the game style/mood. Read them, study them and take notes, but don't hate them for stating their opinions. You are doing well and I hope you can take more positive lessons from these feedbacks. As for your magical girl trailer, you should have focused a lot more on the gameplay if you think that is what should have convinced your audience. The anomaly trailer focused on the mood and setting which is most of the game you want to see in such a psychological horror game. A survivor game needs solid mechanics, settings and characters which have not been showcased well in that trailer. Asset flips are not bad, but they are badly received if they feel and look like asset flips. If the mechanics or the mood distract from that, it's working. Your magical girl game can be great, but it still looks very much like an asset flip and the gameplay looked very generic. You should have put in some more work in making the assets fit together and also show some more gameplay mechanics that make it stand out. I have my fingers crossed for all your projects :) good luck

Hey, Hope you didn't take the wrong way what i said about a/b testing, it wasnt negative or anything, i even think it's a smart way of evaluating interest without commiting too much. Whatever you do best of luck and thanks for the content !

Ah .. people are reactionary .. and when they explode like they did, they cant row back and have to double down on heir position. Fair play that you are coming out and addressing it head on and bring very open about what happened. Its down to everyone else now ... not you or the team ... to accept or reject what you have said and make their own decisions on whether to stay or go. Now second point .. are you selling your game to your community or are you selling to a market or sector. Communities are amazing, but sometimes they feel that they own your creative process and if it isn't for them you are a bad dev. What can explode in the community is often not reflective of the wider market. All the best guys.

I'm a full-time tabletop game creator and I watch your channel to pick up tips for game development and promotion. I love your open honesty and passion for games. Im sorry to say but having watched the trailer for the game I was shocked to find it didn't seem to follow any of the principles that you guys have been teaching us. The music was jarring and distracting, the visual cuts seemed to jump from one scene to another scene almost identical in nature (so it didn't show me new game elements) and I had zero sense of story and direction. Honestly, my main reaction was 'What the hell am I watching?' It was only upon reading the comments that I had a sense that maybe I could level up my character and there were power ups. As I said, I'm a tabletop game producer so I watch for slightly different reasons and I don't even know what an 'asset flip' is. (I'm guessing it's buying premade art pieces and recycling them). What I do know is the trailer did not teach me about the game, it didn't engage me and was visually, and auditoraly confusing. As I'm pretty sure you've said in other videos, everyone makes mistakes. The key is to learn from them. Keep the faith and keep going. Your audience and those feeding back want you to succeed.

I agree with you guys. I think it is very important to have a knowledge of what are the common approaches for project management and game development used by big and smaller companies. But you should not start caring in all that from the start. You will realize when something is needed. You will face the walls and issues on the way and then you can quickly react by having that knowledge. That being said, it is good to start with some miminal organization. But, just dont make it the utmost priority. Just start developing, testing and getting people interested in your game!

That's ridiculous if they are coming from people that you know, like that Tale dude.. Like trolls and those people who only play AAA games etc will always be there and whine but if they are a part of your community, at least give constructive criticism and not that shit.

There is a huge difference between devoloping games for a living - and generating games as a hobby. If you are a hobbyist: Make the game you are passionate about. It will not matter if it is a huge commercial succes. Do it because you love it. Not because you expect a fortune and fame at the end of it. Most games will never be a commercial succes - even if you analyse STEAM data to find the right genre. If you are doing games for a living, it makes a lot of sense to analyze the market to improve your chance of succes. You should also try to find a genre that you are passionate about becase it will be visible if you love the genre/game you are developing. Passion for a genre also means you would likely know what makes a game of the genre great. Play your strengths!

Hey, just remember. Opinions are like assholes. Everyone's got one.

If only passion put bread on the table, doing what works for your studios long-term success far outweighs the needs of the moment make games that get you to your goal y'all ain't running a charity or a goodwill organisation.

I sadly didnt have the time right now to watch it till the end, but two things that caught my attention and that werent quite mentioned until like half of the video: First of all, people honestly want to see you succeed in what your doing, the believe in your success. So they expect some sort of change now and then, mostly improving on what you did before. After a couple of game titles, they somewhat want or probably want things to be drastically better than your first game. My assumption for that guardian game would be, that some of them feel betrayed by it. It looks not any better than games you did before, it might also seem dull, but to top that off, you keep comparing it - that would be my second point I wanna make - to overtime anomaly, which people seem to like. But instead ok capitalizing on this urge of people to play it, you seem to keep justifying the unwanted guardian game. Which is, ofc, absolutely fine, but if you wanna deliver a game, that people love to play, you might wanna listen to their wished, at least a bit and especially on that fundamental basis. You can make something better by arguing how much worse another thing is. What you can learn from that is: doesn't matter sometimes, if the trailer is just a hour filmed in a demo scene - if people understand and like the idea, it's perfect. Hope that helped some, enjoy your day and enjoy your journey ❤

Fun vid, more drama plz

Thank you

Honestly, I should have known by your company name that you are kind of jerks. You cuss too much, you make fun of your audience too much, you are full of yourself as well. I unsubbed just now.

I wish I were better at blender. I’d make art for you pro bono.

The difference between magical girl guardians being received well and not, is simply the visuals. Make it pretty and youll be suprised in the difference. If the mecahnics are good beneath then the visuals will bridge the gap you have at the moment. Some baked lighting will definetly help at the minimum which I did suggest on the stream. Best of luck on your product, overtime anomaly proably has been a better received because of the nice lighitng and assets - also it has a more interesting hook with the level of mystery, the trailer gives us a vibe of what the theme will be but not enough to know whats going on which makes the player want to buy and find out!

Magical Girl Guardians, just check the game HoloCure (anime/vtuber and survivor-game) to see what an anime artstyle is all about. Or even better, check Genshin Impact's 3D. As someone who watches anime religiously and plays anime games like BanG Dream! Girls Band Party, the MGG art style should improve.

I think the main issue with the magical girls game is the enemies. If everything else i kept the same but just the enemies design is improved and more variety is added it would look much better. At some points in the trailer the enemies basically filled almost the whole environment and there were 2 kinds of repeated enemies, that's what gave the impression of the game being cheap. If the enemy design and movement is polished a bit more variety of basic enemies is added the game would look much better

It was super key for me when you guys pointed out the visuals of my game needing an upgrade. It's obvious in hindsight but it can be hard to tell when you're so close to it. I think the problem here is more so the style not being sufficiently implemented than it is about the game looking like an asset flip. That said I see the difficulty of having an opportunity for a hype announcement and not wanting to pass it up even if the game isn't really ready

Ok, so. I would not buy the anime girl game (neither my genre nor does it look good at all), but I'm authentically interested in this game. I wanna know what the horror angle is though, I see tension, but, you have to give us a hint what that tension will lead to. Horror games themselves need to hide their scary bits, but horror trailers should reveal at least some of their best moments, otherwise, people won't see the hook. Inspite of that, it looks 100x more interesting than the previous game. But also, genuinely might go somewhere like unicycle pizza time did, or even better, frankly. Horror game players will definitely do rounds on something like this.

Love the AI music, I'm assuming from Suno

This is the first post I've made in perhaps over a year with this account; but it really felt necessary to drive home what your audience is saying here. Magical Girl Guardians is an excellent game on paper, and in practice should attract a lot of steam users/creators. But the lack of homogenous art direction (including ux/ui), and over reliance on paid assets really does make it feel like an asset flip for the casual user passing by. In previous livestreams, you've received the feedback that having the camera positioned over the shoulder for a 1st person perspective would improve the overall impression of the game; and I agree. A quick improvement here may just be the 1st person perspective - it would make the game feel more immersive, and (with less objects in the player's immediate view) attract less attention to how out-of-place these assets are. Personally, I also think it would be hilarious to have the fluffy creatures jump right at me, it would make them feel way more imposing. Anyway, I hope you all take the feedback with stride and continue doing what makes you happy. Your livestreams / candid dev videos are great to have on in the background as I work on my own game solo 🥲; Thomas is really lucky to have someone like you make this content on the side, it's a ton of work! Best of luck~

Gotta show off more features in the trailer. Multiplayer, different classes and the like aren't featured. All I can really tell that's in the game is shooting waves of enemies and getting power ups. That's a relatively light scope compared to what is actually there.

Just went to watch trailer and checkout game page, keep up the good work! I see the vision, i think you guys can pull it off :)

I'm here to learn with you, not to tell you what games to make. Keep on it, and keep talking about the experience, that's why I'm here for!

All I'm gonna say is that if you reacted to your own trailer with the same objectivity that you reacted to other people's trailers here (that you are very honest about), you would not be impressed. I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just being honest. I know this isn't some kind of magnum opus dream game, but it's true that the art direction should have been thought about more when making this trailer. maybe simply adding more saturation to the colors and adding a cell shader or something might make it more cohesive. but yeah yeah, i haven't made anything yet, so who am I to judge? All I'm doing, however, is basing my rubric on the one you use to judge other people's trailers. I think you have the skills to get it done, and i think if the colors and shader was more cohesive, people wouldn't perceive it as negatively.

Come on Marnix, you guys love talking big and taking shots at other games and then you do something similar? What did you expect from your audience when they see the faker? [bowie] Honestly this video sounded like one whiny bitch fest full of excuses and even blaming others, geesh get a grip! Accept it and do better!

Come on Marnix, you guys love talking big and taking shots at other games and then you do something similar? What did you expect from your audience when they see the faker? [bowie]

i just started making the game i wanted to play that no one els made

Selestia, Kikyo, Rindo and Swarm game mode. It looks too similar to things I already know, therefore feels overly derivative. If it FEELS overly derivative, it is gonna get disliked because folks connect derivative things to plagirasm, which is bad.