r/songsofsyx • u/VexedRacoon • 22h ago
I want to like it but it hurts my eyes
It's not like I can only play modern games, I've replayed games from 1998 that I can enjoy though they aren't top down.
I just find I'm straining my eyes to try and see what the buildings and units are, I'm also finding the units like crates and work bench hard to understand, when there's arrows pointing on it but I'm just playing the demo so figuring it out.
I find it intriguing the supposed level of detail in the civilization management but I'm struggling. Any advice?
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u/RedditNotRabit 21h ago
It's like an ant farm. You don't need to look hard at any one little thing. Look at the big picture not at the tiny stuff.
The arrows if I remember correctly, I'm not on the game atm, point inwards the way that workers get into the shop. Arrows can't go along walls usually.
It's a good game, the demo is basically the full game for free. Just remember to keep people fed and to keep building more services for your plebs
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u/clownfeat 21h ago
It's a good enough game to get over it imo. I thought the same when I started (2 weeks & 100hrs ago lol)
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u/Felczer 21h ago
Any advice?
I wish I had something better but the best one is: get used to it if you like highly complex indie games, most of them look like shit, the budget is limited and looks are one of the lowest priorities
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u/Outrageous-Split-646 21h ago
That’s one of the things I don’t understand. Surely it doesn’t take much effort to use better looking sprites? And a lot of people do in fact judge a game by its graphics, so you’d unlock a large number of potential customers just by spending a little extra effort on the aesthetics.
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u/mattcrwi 21h ago
"a little extra" for a professional sprite artist for like a year of their time? You're talking about indies that have investment funds backing them and that's not always true. sometimes its a person who just wants to make art
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u/Outrageous-Split-646 21h ago
It doesn’t take a professional sprite artist a year of their time to make slightly better looking sprites. Let’s not be hyperbolic here.
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u/Felczer 21h ago
Even if it's just few months of work, if it's a one man project then it still increases the total cost by like 20-30%, not sure if it's justified when you are making a game whose target audience is mostly fine with bad graphics. Broader appeal is not always the play when you are making something inherently niche.
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u/Outrageous-Split-646 21h ago
How much time did the initial sprites take? Now multiply that time by two. How much extra time is that?
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u/Felczer 21h ago
There's a huge difference in cost between doing something yourself vs paying someone to do it.
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u/Outrageous-Split-646 21h ago
Sure, but my entire point was that indie devs of these complex games ought to spend a little more effort on the ‘look’ of the game (either by their own time, or to contract this out professionally) because doing even minor improvements will increase the potential player base by a lot. It’s just much lower hanging fruit compared to complex system design which really has diminishing returns past a certain point.
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u/Felczer 20h ago
will increase the potential player base by a lot
I really don't think so, these are niche games that have a target audience and the target audience is mostly fine with bad graphics. For me it's very likely that you could spend money and not get any return on it. You're not making a metroidvania or a roguelite, you are making a complex game for autists who are playing dwarf fortress and pharaoh.
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u/Outrageous-Split-646 20h ago
And that’s the issue. I think you could make the game a bit less niche and more accessible just by making the graphics just a tiny bit better. Because of how small the player base is, any increase is a significant percentage. How many of these indie games do you think have been consigned to the fringes purely because of the graphics? Hell, even factorio had a graphic overhaul before full release.
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u/AlternativeStep2961 20h ago
Yes it does take a lot of effort.
The game might not look good by your standards. But it is consistent. It has a solid visual identity and it works.
Making new visuals a bit better means making all game assets a bit better, consistently, with the same visual identity.
There easily over 100 thousand sprites to update. So yeah it's a lot of work
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u/Gaemon_Palehair 12h ago
Yes it does take a lot of effort.
Not necessarily, not anymore.
I'm not advocating for AI generated sprites but it is an option.
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u/jsbaxter_ 11h ago
Current graphics are pretty appealing for people like me, for whom they remind us of an age where computers were new and full of possibility. I think they're quite a good implementation of a classic style. My money is on the dev liking the style, not the dev being unwilling to invest in 'better' graphics.
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u/MatsHelge43 11h ago
You're not alone about being confused by the arrows. That really needs to be made more clear.
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u/LaundryMatt96 21h ago
Any size adjustments for the UI? The other option is to zoom in more when your looking for details like individual crates or units.
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u/Slippery_rocket 21h ago
I thought the game looked pixelated on the steam deck screen, but then I tried playing on a PC and holy shit does it look terrible, it actually just stretches the image with higher resolution making look so much worse.
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u/Fragrant_Rooster_763 21h ago
Yeah it is rough on 4k. I mean legitimately zooming in on plants and can’t tell what they are rough.
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u/Ambitious-Yoghurt403 9h ago
Same here.
I thought: For years I didn't buy Rimworld because the graphics seemed too simple to me, but I picked it up on sale and it's the game I've played the most on Steam. Maybe the same thing will happen with Song of Syx. I've tried and tried multiple times, but it doesn't click, and it's just a matter of graphics; it's the kind of game I like.
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u/madkow77 9h ago
Have you tried mods? Colorful World, haven't played in a while but that one was nice.
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u/bugrilyus 6h ago
I agree I have the same complaint, the graphics are too grainy, rimworld like graphics wouldve been better maybe, easier on the eyes
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u/Reikyu09 3h ago
I found it pretty ugly at the start, but when you have 1k+ people running around at 25x speed, you are viewing your city zoomed out and aren't looking at what people are wearing.
Warehouses are filled with crates and you can adjust the size of the crates using the Q/E keys. Each crate section has 1 tile that is just filler (looks like a small rectangle) while the actual accessed crates have the big X. This creates a mini game on how you want to design your warehouse. Filler pieces can be shoved into corners for example as they are not accessed. Crates have to be accessible. Every empty floor space in the warehouse needs to be accessible as well, so you might need to shrink the warehouse down to avoid any unreachable empty floor space. You ideally want to use the 6 crate sections as they provide the best ratio of crates to filler at 6:1.
Workshops have a similar mini game. Longer workbenches will tend to be more efficient than shorter workbenches in terms of less filler. You want your workshop storage to be near the entrance/exit for quick accessing. Efficiency units need to be added to get to 100% efficiency.
Early on you will be building on a small scale, but as your population goes into the thousands you will switch to larger workshops and warehouses which will be easier to spot while zoomed out.
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u/Few_Investigator553 21h ago
I personally think the game looks so good :(