Box art from another dimension

 Recently I set up an instagram account in order to post images, art, and promotional materials for Dakota the RPG and anything else I made. I tasked myself with creating nine images, and here are the first six. Some of them were made with the help of an AI image generator called PICSART. Back in the Boxpunx days I would make all kinds of promotional images, and working on these made me very nostalgic for that time. Ah, the good old days.

This one of course is based on the Nintendo black box style, with some alterations to the color palette. For the unaware, "Spectrographx" is an imaginary game console inspired by the Turbographx, hence the spelling.

In the eighties there was a company called IMAGIC that made games for the Atari and the Intellivision. This box art is based on their iconic design. The artwork was created in PICSART, but I added the little cowboy and dog. It represents Dakota and Idaho at the world's fair, an event that happens much later in the game. The MX-98 is an imaginary computer inspired by the MSX and PC-98 Japanese computers.

The classic Atari 2600 style. I don't know why I find the orange version of this design so striking, but I do. Again, the artwork was created with PICSART, with very little modification. The scene depicts Bolt Town, a location in my game that is basically a village of robots. It's not an exact representation, but it's fairly close.

Spoiler alert! So, in Dakota the RPG, there is actually a fully complete RPG based on oldschool games from the 80s. It has a different visual style and plays a bit differently than the main game. It's supposed to be a surprise kind of thing, but I figure if you are reading this, then you deserve to know. Dakota must complete Bitstream Saga in order to progress. The primary reason I released my game early is because I finished the Bitstream Saga portion. So yeah, each segment of the game that I release will have a sort of mini-rpg in and within. My intent is to release three segments.

I love how this box art turned out, btw. I added the knight in the corner. Bitstream Saga is about a flooded world and yes, there is a scene with a rainbow at the top of a mountain.

Box art from the 1800s? I really just wanted to make an advert for the Worlds Fair that takes place towards the end of the game. I drew the font for the exposition logo. Yes, the Crystal Palace appears in the game. Will it burn to the ground? Maybe. This one was a lot of fun trying to get just right. The Mega-drive and Super CD-ROM logos really complete the image, I think.

Lastly, we have an imaginary Dungeons & Dragons module from way back in the day. What if Dakota the RPG was a tabletop RPG from the 70s? The image depicts a scene from Bitstream Saga. This one was also fun trying to get it to look just right.

Anyway, That's all I got for now. Thanks for visiting my site! If you want to check out my instagram, you can do that here:

https://www.instagram.com/harlancore/

DAKOTA the RPG playable demo

 

Finally, after years of hard work, the first part of my game is complete and playable. 

Check out my "DAKOTA the RPG" page for a story summary and the full list of credits. 

Click here to go there now.

I've also made a trailer for the game, which you can view here:

You can download Dakota the RPG now from itch.io, using the link below:

Until next time, cheers!

Dakota - the RPG

 

Wow. Six years - almost to the day - since my last post. I honestly thought I was done with all this. But one day I started trying to answer the question, what would it look like if I made a video game? It wasn't easy, but after grinding out many a pixel, I am beginning to see the answer take shape.

Dakota the RPG. I don't want it to be confused with any of the other Dakotas. There are a handful.

I wanted to make something that celebrated my personal history with role playing games, a 30 year obsession. I have been enthralled with this type of game since the eighties, starting with my discovery of Dungeons and Dragons, and then continuing into the nineties with Japanese video games like Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest.

Somewhere between playing Terraria and Hyper Light Drifter I was inspired to try and make a game myself. Nothing too crazy, just something to apply my love of pixel art to. I was dying to start making graphics!

And so I began, and now six years have past. This is what I came up with.

TEASER:

There is still a lot of work to be done, but I figure since everything is finally working and looking the way that I want, it would be okay to start to show it. Of course I may change something here or there, and future bugs or errors may creep up, but at this very moment, things are looking and behaving really solid. And in case you were wondering, no, this isn't a "Boxpunx RPG", although I did consider what that might look like, and of course there are some instances of the tongue-faced character here and there...

And that's really all I have got for now. I do plan to update this site somewhat regularly as I continue to progress. I am going to shoot for every friday and see how that goes. Anyway thanks for the visit and be safe out there!

Boxpunx TV episode 6

Boxpunx TV episode 6: Greyscale Terror.

This video is about more than just how to make Boxpunx. It's a short film featuring myself, my dog Chato, my very first papercraft model, and some music I made on my computer using Garageband. It's about AC/DC and Gloomy Bear.  It's about a trip that never happened. My apologies to all the youtube channels that I plundered for clips. It was all an accident really.

Boxpunx TV episode 5

Episode 5! Ultima!

This episode is about how to build one of my favorite models, Ultima the High Seraph from Final Fantasy XII. I believe she was number one in my top 24, but that was so long ago I can't remember. Either way, I know I talked about her before so err...

Here's the model again so you don't have to go digging through the blog.

Not the easiest model to figure out without instructions, but after building it again I didn't feel like it was all that hard either. Of course I already knew where everything went, so it is of course very difficult to actually gauge this model's difficulty. If you ever wanted to build this, but couldn't figure it out, hopefully this video will clear up any issues.

In the next episode I think I am going to build my very first model, the brute. I uploaded one already (Gloomy Bear!) but now it's time to make a how-to for it. This one will definitely require some glue, so make sure you show up prepared.

Until then...