Pere Games

[catgenova]

Hey!

New member here, still just touching the surface of perusing the creativity here, but hopefully some of my work fits in!

In 2023 I launched my game studio Pere Games, with the intent on producing story-driven, art-rich games that showcased the talents of as many real people as possible. Little did I know that AI, especially generativeAI, would invade the art space so quickly, but it only made me double down.

Developed in c# on Godot (we were cool and jumped from Unity during their T&C debacle), Aspect Heroes features digitally painted art from 5 artists in our studio. Two amateur writers from the US have written a ten chapter script per hero, that interweave along a single timelines. 4 SAG voice actors bring them to life with over 3 hours of combined voice lines(30 mins in the demo). The game is a turn-based defense roguelike.

The process so far has been really cool, but difficult to manage with a large team over two years putting in what we can, when we can. Sometimes we get a ton done, sometimes very little for months, but it's a passion project <3

Aspect Heroes Steam

Between deliverables on Aspect Heroes,I have been working on a solo project in Wildermon, a hobby online MMO in early development that combines my favorite person genres: cozy crafting, community homesteading, creature collecting, and open world exploration.

Wildermon combines some favorites like Wurm Online, Palmon, Valheim, Runescape, into a fantasy pastelcore world.

On the technical end, js, react, css on a huge canvas has been a lot of fun, and this has been my first full experience with database/front-end stack and management. It has been cool to see what Claude is capable of for review and rewrites, I can see why technical positions are leaning more and more on this tech.

Wildermon has finally hit the implementation of all temporary assets and the art team has started the trace process to bring it to life, feels amazing to get to that stage so quickly. Game is already super fun if you enjoy the grind in those genres. (Tutorial WIP, as warning to any who want to try it at this early stage.)

Wildermon

Would love any feedback or questions

[Jubal]

Hi, nice to see! I'll try and actually have a poke at Wildermon soon but some (sleep deprived so hopefully making sense) thoughts on the pages and meta-level stuff Where did you find your artists and writers/how did you build that side of the collaborations? I kind of increasingly wonder if games showcasing human art we're going to need to forefront the actual identities and portfolios of the artists more on the game's pages in future - it feels like "not thoughtless slop" is going to become THE most important selling point in games, and as a consumer I'm increasingly wondering if actually having more about the artists on the pitch would be a good way to reassure people about what they're getting...

For Aspect Heroes the main thing I'd sharpen a little would be finding the USP and leaning into it a bit harder? There's a "show not tell" writing aspect - anyone can say they have a rich fantasy narrative, I want to know what makes yours rich to make it stand out more. So I guess front-loading a couple examples of the sorts of mechanics you mean in the description might help it stand out.

Also, a heads-up for the steam page, there's a stray close-bracket in the text where it says "Lucian, the Jester". If I was being really pernickety I'd also change "9 heroes" to "nine heroes" (9 is a thing you see on excel, nine is the fellowship or the ringwraiths, it just has a very subtly different resonance with the associations people have if you write it out). I also noticed the steam page has a peregames.com link that doesn't seem to lead to a website?

(Sorry if that's a bit much of a thought-dump, as my professional training is as an academic rather than in computing or game dev I go into Editor Mode a bit too easily sometimes!)

[catgenova]

I also noticed the steam page has a peregames.com link that doesn't seem to lead to a website?

Thanks, I missed changing this when we hosted elsewhere!    I appreciate this and your other tips and will rework the descriptions

My primary artist I know from university, and the rest are his friends he has worked with from his home in Brazil. For a time the old website was dedicated exclusively to Aspect Heroes, on our rebuild I would like to make it more art and artist focused (WIP). I have had a lot of luck finding artists for commissions and commercial work over the years on r/gamedevclassifieds, but that normally requires vetting 200+ applicants for each posting. Most of those are incredibly amateur or just AI users trying to hide that fact. Over the years between the two avenues I have gathered a decent list of artists to reach out to when I have work, depending on their medium, style, and forte.

Once upon a time I considered myself an artist, but a heart attack at a young age knocked out some traditional ways to express that. Game design it is!

[Jubal]

Yeah, I wish I was better at sketching but I have some early-onset join pain that gives me a few issues there. I still try sometimes, and I've managed to keep playing my musical instruments, but it's frustrating - has definitely channelled me towards writing and coding