We’ve seen a host of indie games with really interesting art styles in recent years, but still stunning surprises turn up. The first-person shooter VINCIT looks like total chaos, so much so that I can’t really tell what’s happening in the footage below, but the wild art style has me hooked.
The game features black-and-white comic-like art with a hand-drawn look plus vibrant blocks of colour that make it look like a massacre in a Mondrian exhibition. Things get even more intriguing when you read the developers’ description of the mechanics (see our guides of the best game development software and the best laptops for game development if you want to create carnage of your own).
indiedev from r/IndieDev/comments/1my1efr/spent_2_years_on_a_shooter_where_bullets_combine
Two years in the making so far, VINCIT is the work of solo developer OchPuch and will be published by Cowboy & Clown Games. The dev describes it as a lightning-fast FPS that fuses the depth of roguelike-inspired emergent systems with the raw intensity of modern movement shooters.
The unique ‘gimmick’ as the developer calls it, is that every bullet has a unique effect. Red bullets ricochet off walls, and yellow bullets home in on the nearest enemy. After you shoot, the bullets hang in the air as glowing trails and they can be fused midair to create devastating combinations.
If you punch trails that are close together, they merge into a new projectile that combines all their effects. So you could get a ricocheting bullet that also seeks out enemies. “Oh, and you can also double jump off your own bullets,” the developer adds.
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It sounds intense. The white background is a bit jarring, but it’s also a big part of what makes the art style so crisp and striking. While it’s hard to tell what’s going on in the footage, working it out could be a mechanic in itself. This might be one of those games you have to play to truly understand.
Some developers on Reddit wonder if the impact frames, which serve as visual indicators for when the player does something with the bullets, could generate motion sickness after a while, but overall people are loving the unique combination of hand drawing with CGI in the art and animation style.
It’s like a “whole world built on a notebook drawing that gets you sent to the principal’s office,” one person writes. Some even think the style could spark a whole new trend in game art.
OchPuch thinks VINCIT will take another two years to finish working part time. You can wishlist it on Steam.
For more inspiration, see our interviews with indie developers and our feature on game art styles.