Charming 2D RPG Phoenotopia: Awakening Launches On Switch Later This Month

"Wow, no comment... why not be the first?"

Don't mind if I do!

There's too many games like this on the eshop and they tend to just get lost among other games.

@Agriculture Sheesh, I look away from this site for one minute and this happens!

It looks wonderful. It's somehow related to a reputable browser game called Phoenotopia. Just found out about it today, but it stood out very clearly to me on the eshop and I had to do some research. Don't overlook it just because pixels.

Has fishing mini games:

HARD PASS

Looks okay. I will wait for reviews before making a decision to buy it.

@Agriculture So support the good ones. And at full price when you can.

This looks fantastic! Definitely waiting for reviews but it's got so much charm and gorgeous pixelart.

This is Zelda-inspired? Where? Because “Awakening” is in the name? 🙄

@JimmySpades Support? It's a commercial product and I am a customer. I always try to wait for a sale when buying digital games. If they don't get a sale from me they need to do better next time.

@Agriculture So they are obligated to work to earn the privilege of your custom, but they are not entitled to reasonable remuneration in return. Odd that one would take such pride in contributing to an unhealthy market.

@JimmySpades Nobody is obligated to do anything. What I'm saying is that if they want me to buy their game at full price, they have to make it so good I just got to have it right away. Nobody is entitled to the content of my wallet.

The unhealthyness of the market comes from too many people wanting to become indie devs. If you've decided to go into the indie market and your ideas are similar to the other 400 indie games on the market right now, then perhaps get another job. You're not entitled to having your indie game development be successful, in fact most fail.

Looks pretty cool. Looks inspired by Adventure of Link, like Elliot quest.

Gorgeous spritework. If the gameplay is as solid as it looks then it's a non-brainer! To the wishlist!

Mmmmm i'm gonna pass

This reminded me of Elliot Quest and Chronicles of Teddy, and I enjoyed both immensely on the Wii U. It's definitely on my radar now.

Looks good to me. Maybe I'll give this one a go after I'm finished with Crosscode. I will be keeping an eye for reviews first.

This is the best looking game of 2020 and I'm baffled by the lukewarm reception.

i'm sold, great trailer whoever made it.

Doesn't look bad. I'm not super in love with all this pixel stuff but IF you're going to do pixel art animate it hardcore. Will keep an eye on this.

Looks more like a spiritual sequel to Finding Teddy II.

My type of game. Instant buy if it's released in uk.

@ricklongo @retro_player_77 I too was instantly reminded of Chronicles of Teddy, a game that I love and that I had the same question about when it released on Wii U that @Fazermint has now. The only reason I can think of is that gamers don't actually appreciate quality pixel art, or even understand that it's a legitimate style. They only appreciate the nostalgia it invokes, and think about it only for how it relates to the games of the day.

I see a handful of people have mentioned Elliot Quest. I know the name but little else. I'll check it out, lest I show the same baffling ignorance I'm lamenting.

I'm also tired of pixel art. But if the reviews are good and gameplay appeals to me, I'll probably buy it at some point.

The game looks quite good and seems like it has just enough customization. Definitely intrigued by this. Will be watching.

@Agriculture someone has to speak the hard truths.
On topic, this looks interesting, though I wish more indies would take risks either in terms of art style (MadWorld, anyone?) or gameplay mechanics.

This looks great!

The original flash game was amazing with pretty great music if I remember right.

@shazbot Yeah, it takes real courage to advocate spending as little money as possible and thinking only about oneself while doing so. So few people act that way.

@JimmySpades The hard truth is the world doesn't owe you a livelihood doing things you like. The world doesn't owe anyone anything. You don't have to like it. Doesn't make it not true.

And based on the tone of your response, clearly not a popular message and not likely to get anymore popular.

@Kriven If you haven’t notice the term “Zelda-inspired” is truly over used on this site. And no...it’s not like Zelda 2

@shazbot Yes, too many of them has pixelart or that cheaper cartoon graphics. Even the new Earthworm Jim 4, which is supposed to be a system seller for the ill-fated Amico, has that cheap cartoon graphics.

Also, there's way too many Japanese games with some anime characters on the cover and extensive use of the color teal. You can't even figure out what those games are about by clicking in the eshop, you have to go to youtube to figure out if it's hack n slash, a point and click or a turn based jrpg. Sometimes it's even those awful visual novels.

@Agriculture I was agreeing with you until you said "The unhealthyness of the market comes from too many people wanting to become indie devs.". That is some really, really, narrow vision. It is like saying "Too many people want to become doctors, so its is hard to search for a doctor and patients are dying".
It is REALLY GOOD that many people are wanting to become indie devs. They do not have to follow the constraints of big companies and often come with bold new ideas and genres.
Just let as many people as possible have they dream fulfilled. You do not have to pay them for that, and it is alright.

@diegoarthur I meant overall too many people want into the gaming industry. You have to remember that the gaming industry is almost a winner takes all business. If you make a must have game then you can sell to a tremendous amount of consumers, but if you make a cheaper and less good copy of that must have game, then you can only sell to a fraction of the people.

Two examples of this is Xeodrifter and Brawlout. Axiom Verge is a much better metroidvania, so they end up having to sell Xeodrifter at 90 % off, and Super Smash Bros Ultimate is way better than Brawlout.

The harsh reality is that not enough people will pay for those lesser games, which means the developers won't make enough money to warrant the work they put in. If you are third, or even forth one out, you will always be struggling financially, and it probably wasn't a wise decision to make an indie game.

There's countless of people who read a success story about some indie game and think "that's what I want to do", then they struggle for 10 years making games that no one will buy at full price, and eventually they start to float the idea that they've somehow been wronged. That it's the sales that are the problem, and if only more consumers were "supportive" they wouldn't have to struggle.

So the core of the problem is that too many people want that sweet, sweet indie success, but there's only room for a few winners at the top, and then some niche game. There isn't room for yet another pixel graphics JRPG with some minor twist to the concept.

@diegoarthur I think the problem is that this is true of doctors too. Because of the pay scale for doctors in developed countries, a disproportionate number of developing country doctors (my parents, for example) leave their countries of origin for the West and the riches it promises.

There's a known phrase for this and brain drain has been an issue in professional fields for literally a century in developing countries.
Your desire can't increase the size of a market.

As @Agriculture said, survivorship-bias makes everyone think they'll make it in their chosen field, but perhaps they would have been better served developing skills in a field to which they're better suited.
That said, it's a (relatively) free world, and if they want to try, by all means, but how many millions of kids do you think are out there who didn't make the 450-odd NBA slots, but would have been amazing engineers, teachers, etc. If they applied that level of discipline to other fields that could actually succeed at?

@shazbot Yes, they are free to try, and it's great that so many people are trying, but when it doesn't work out they can't start talking about how hard life is as an indie developer, or how the consumers aren't "supportive" enough. It's a right to attempt to make it in game development, but it's not a right to make it.

@Agriculture The idea that there could be too many games of a type is impossible for me to understand. It's not like they prevent games of a different type to exist. It's just more games overall. And they literally can't get lost. You know it exists. You can search for it with no problem, add it to your wishlist and buy it whenever you want. Furthermore, how would games of a similar genre make a game less visible on any platform more than simply any game of any platform? Not to mention, I'm not sure I know of even one other game that looks like this anyway. 2D, super stylish, action adventure in the vein of Zelda, but side scrolling platformer? Where are these other games that are so much like this that they supposedly get lost?

Edit: That was in response to your opening comment. I've read the rest of the comments now and I do agree about the issue with indie games in general. I don't ever have trouble finding a game or understanding what it is because of an anime character or a color choice and I've never had to look at YouTube to figure out the genre, however.. I do get sick of reading pleas from indie developers who are upset that their game isn't more successful when there are infinitely better titles available at better price points.

The developer of 80 Days was recently complaining that Nintendo has done "NOTHING" for them to help their game sell better, yet they also admit that Nintendo featured them in one of their download videos and on the news tab as a recommended buy, which to my eyes is infinitely more than any other platform holder generally does and certainly more than is necessary. It's not Nintendo's job to make ***** Mobile Port B successful on the eShop. They can't make customers buy a game that doesn't look good. And their game is literally a years old $4 iOS port that they're selling, with worse form/control factor on Switch, for $12.

Indie development is like social media stardom. Everyone thinks they deserve success simply because they've tried. Even in realistic professional fields where people spend years in school and seek a job in the standard market, they can struggle. But just making a ***** game or a ***** video in your basement doesn't qualify you for big money and fame.

@Supadav03 I would assume the Zelda inspiration is in the exploration, the puzzle solving, the bosses with item-based weaknesses (like tossing a bomb in the mouth of the boss, which is literally done in many different Zelda games), the inventory of tools that alter how you navigate dungeons and the world, the lack of direct leveling, but upgrades through items/armor. And as for that kind of 2D adventure game.. Zelda II was one of the first.

That being said, I don't see how this is an RPG. If this is an RPG, then so is Shantae, so are all the Megaman Zero games, etc.

@Deltath you basically just described the action/adventure game genre....

Again, I can think of 4-5 games this more closely resembles than Zelda. NL just has an obsession with calling everything “Zelda-like”

@Deltath I meant from the perspective of the developer. If you spend a year developing a pixel graphics metroidvania when 20 others have done the same, chances are you will barely sell any copies, unless it's on sale for 90-95 % off, and then you will barely make any money from your effort.

Now when this happens it has become customary for the developers to claim there is something wrong with the market, or that consumers aren't doing their part in "supporting" the struggling indie developers. This is a completely wrong way of thinking of it, besides, that kind of thinking doesn't even lead anywhere, because at the most you can convince 1 % of your consumers to buy a game at full price because "it's the right thing to do".

I've even heard that some people buy two copies of a game for full price just to support the developer. If that game sells 7 459 234 copies, then maybe at the most 14 of those sales are from people who bought two copies to "support the developer". What matters in the real world is how commercially viable a product is, nothing else.

@Agriculture Yeah. The idea of supporting the market is silly. If a game is good enough, it'll get the recognition it deserves organically, more often than not.

@Supadav03 First of all, people almost universally know Zelda. It's a much easier and more obvious choice. Second of all, which five games do you know that more closely resemble it?

@Deltath If you are asking that, you must have started playing video games after 2000...

@Supadav03 If you can't name even one, I get it. That's fine. But attempting to throw shade at me doesn't do anything. You said you could name 4-5 that it more closely resembles. Let's hear them, then.

No eu releasedate 🥺😢

Looks awesome! I'm willing to try it out

@TNLGUY its a revamp of that title - new engine , graphic assets etc I think