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Sonic Freedom - These fangames are getting out of hand!


Jango

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Saw on SEGA Nerds today, don't think anyone made a topic about it yet, so here goes nothing:

Quote

Disclaimer: This is not playable (yet), this is merely a visualization of what I want to accomplish.

An on-going passion project, this is the trailer of my dream game for Sonic. It took over 300+ hours to make; everything was either hand drawn, hand-animated by myself. The only assets I didn't create were the sound effects.

Thanks for taking the time to view this.

What happens next? I learn Unity then ask the community to be a part of this. If you are a solid programmer, stick around as I'll be conducting interviews for this project within the next 6 months or so (long time I know).

 

So this is what happens when you pick the Sonic OVA/CD awesome animations, a bit of Rayman Origins, plus a whole lot of effort (300+ hours to be more precise), and mix it all up.

It's not a game, though. Yet. But man, does it looks cool!

The creator of it is simply known as tripplejaz, all credits go to him.

 

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It's a nice little animation, but as a game concept it's not really selling it to me. Classic gameplay with a few parkour elements isn't a bad plan by any means but it's not really doing anything to stand out. The one new element is that aimable, time-stopping homing attack and it doesn't really feel like a compelling mechanic to me.

If this is the kind of game the guy wants to make then more power to him, and it could very well turn out to be a fun game, but at this point I'm not seeing anything to get excited about.

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I'm not too hot about it.

The creator's pitch as it currently stands doesn't seem like something that could be realized into something further than a demo or prototype, at least not without making significant changes. The art assets visually clash against each other (the spritework for Sonic and the badniks, the photorealistic painted foreground level, and the background each look like they came from a different game), and the level design seems disjointedly put together, and not really indicative of something you'd see in a Sonic platformer. It just looks incoherent overall.

The best thing I can say about it is the mid-air dash attack and the sprite animation of Sonic itself, even given the latter looks like each frame has been directly lifted from existing assets, rather than being drawn from scratch with it used as a reference. And given the entire animation is entirely animated by the creator themselves, that's rather commendable. But everything else, I can't say I'm enthusiastic about it to be honest.

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Aw, I always love me some more Sonic OVA inspired fan stuff. As an animation it's adorable, although not amazingly well done. It's definitely still impressive and a respectable accomplishment. I definitely applaud this person for putting so much work into this and making something impressive. 

As for gameplay, it's hard to say much about the games idea for actual levels when the animation essentially plays out like a strange cutscene and really isn't focusing on the finer details of level design and such. The parkour and timestop homing attack(?) was the focus of the animation, and while they are interesting, I need to see a lot more to convince me that this will be new and will work well. So far, to be blunt, it looks like the person gave OVA Sonic infinite Cyan wisp and made short jumps/walljumping/etc overly fancy. It certainly gives a greater sense of flow to have Sonic climb over rocks and such over simply doing a short jump over them, so I guess that's the benefit. 

Well, the person seems willing to put effort into it. I'll keep an eye on it, and certainly play it if it comes out. 

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I'm probably not the best judge of parkour or its mechanics, but I feel like above all else it should be faster than simply running and jumping alone - otherwise it kind of defeats the point. Say for example those stumps at 0:50, Sonic does a little flip over each of them, but if it's faster to just jump on top of one and leapfrog at full speed as you would in a normal Sonic game then what benefit are you supposed to get by vaulting over them with a parkour mechanic? It looks to me like it's built more with flair in mind than flow, and that's just plain silly. The two should ideally work in tandem, if anything.

Not a big fan of freezing the game for a whole 3 or so seconds just to aim a momentum boost, either. What's wrong with "hold the control stick in a specific direction and press a button to launch off in that direction"?

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Yeah really doing the vault thing should put sonic into a faster than normal run state, or something like that, but I guess it's just an animation rather than a designed and programmed game.

 

mega impressive video for one man though! 

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I'm surprised no one didn't made the connection of the mid-air spin attack with that one move from Ori and the Blind Forest, heck the graphic that shows the direction looks like it was ripped right out of that game.

Outside of that, looks neat. Though I'm probably gonna reserve judgement until actual gameplay is shown.

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It's a cute concept animation. But that's all there really is to say about it besides from nitpicks.

I have to echo many others on the net and say the art style is to random and doesn't match together. The environment needs brighter colors, less of a muddied look,.. and just better detail/structure overall. Also Instead of being inspired from CD/OVA art style... Sonic's sprites seem merely copied from them which is a problem.

Not much to say about the gameplay as what is shown won't reflect how the real product will turnout really. The time stop midair spindash is a okay idea... but many Sonic fans I know dislike gameplay that kills the speed flow, which it would.

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I think the stop dash could be better integrated as a thing if it allowed for things like being able to spindash onto walls without the need of springs, slopes or booster pads(and that in itself could lead to interesting level design ideas if you were able to keep your speed up.) also bouncing off certain surfaces by using it could be cool. Idk stop dash to me is just as groundbreaking as dropdash in concept, so not seeing why people are flipping out about that move compared to this.

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Just dropping by to prove I'm not dead.

Make this into a movie, not a game. 

In fact, as a challenge, someone edit the thing so it takes out the player 'choice' moments, like when you aim the air spindash, or speed it up so it happens in a near instant and I bet it'll flow better.

The issue as others have pointed out, the context choices and actions (like the vaulting), slow the pace far too much, even as a game this would be a big problem. 

The other big problem this has is the same problem I had with that old Sonic fangame which came out just before Sonic 4 did, what was it called? that it has the same problem that I had with Sonic Fan Remix way back in 2010. Due to the 'artstyle/colouring/"busy-ness"' of everything that's happening on screen, it's very hard to keep track of Sonic and what's going on outside of the moments when one of the cool animations play.

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This game concept embodies freedom a bit too much for a game. Those wall jumps look like either they are aimed for the player or are an absolute pain to use to get where you want to go.

I'd like to see how those drop through platforms work. Considering that down and most buttons equal a Spin Dash or Rolling Attack, how would Sonic just fall through the ground?

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