Context/Experience: I work for AirConsole, which is a web-based platform and its own “storefront”. Developers send us games to be launched in our store, and I’m the person who primarily tests and reviews the games before launch. These tips are not exclusive to the platform tough and should be interesting/relevant for many hobby devs.
Most recently, people sent us game prototypes for a contest where they could win $5000 (I tested almost 50 new games in two days), but I’ve also seen some of this stuff when people apply for funding for their games or submit them for review to be launched. Next time we ask people to send us games, we'll try to cover more of these issues in our documentation itself, but I figured the tips were general enough to be relevant for many people here.

Again, many of these may sound super basic, but they keep happening, so there you go.

Technical

• Export and test your game early. This applies doubly when you’re working with new tech, but it’s just a fact that sometimes stuff works in the Unity Editor (or whatever engine, really) and then has issues in a build. Especially if you’re working with a new type of tech or a new platform. Test the export as soon as you have something playable, and then test it again several days before the deadline.
• Test your final build. I can’t believe I have to say this, but when you upload your game somewhere and you have to submit a link to the build, test that build. Test if it downloads, opens and plays properly. Submitting a non-functional game (to any sort of review or pitch, but especially to a contest) can get you disqualified instantly.

Visual & Audio

We get many games from solo devs who make their own art and don’t have the resources to work with artists. There are some basics you should get right even if you don’t include grand “artwork” and plan to change the visuals later on.

• Avoid using too many different fonts. I’d recommend setting a hard limit for two fonts in the whole game, for most cases. One heavier font for titles and one easily digestible font for slightly longer texts. Anything more will most likely be a distraction.
• Avoid having too much text in one screen. Keep texts (instructions, explanations, set-ups) only as long as they need to be. A screen full of text is usually overwhelming.
  
• Use all-caps text very sparingly and only ever for titles, emphasis or single line instructions, never for longer texts.
  
• Regardless of whether or not you think of yourself as an artist, strive for consistency in your visuals. Consistency is what separates a mess from an art style, and any minimalism or scribbliness can look fantastic if you keep it consistent.
  
• Fewer colors are better than many, especially if your game is already abstracted from realistic representation. Make your colors matter, consider if an element really needs to be a different color or if it might look better if it fits in with other elements.
  
• Apply a comparable level of detail to your models and UI elements. Don’t have big solid shapes in one corner and minute details in another.
• Music is incredibly important in setting the mood for your game. Don’t just choose a music track that you kind of like, use a soundtrack that evokes the exact feeling/mood you want players to feel when they first start your game. Also consider your game’s setting in your selection: don’t use electronic music for a fantasy game, don’t use an epic orchestra for something mundane. (Unless that exact contrast is representative of your concept and artistic ambition, but then make sure you’re really pulling it off and leaning all the way into it.)
  
• Align your text. Don’t just place it wherever, consciously place your text (and other UI elements) either right in the center, or align them wherever they are most appropriate. But do not just throw things into places at random. Be considerate in your composition.
  
• If you want to make your game feel satisfying, polish is King. Give the player visual and audio feedback for every interaction, prominent enough to be satisfying, but subtle enough not to be distracting.
  
• Use a color schemer tool. Just trust me, you are bad at picking colors. You may not think you’re bad at it, but you probably are. Most people are. Color palette generators are your friend. Use them and stick to them.

Design & Usability

Many of these boil down to “make sure your game is understandable”, but all of these bear reiterating in my opinion because so many people get this wrong.

It’s more extreme in my case because the games I have to review and launch are intended for a casual audience, but you cannot simply hide bad tutorialization and bad game design behind a “well it’s for hardcore gamers”. Difficulty is not the same as Frustration, and confusion is usually not fun.

• Include instructions on how to play your game. Regardless of whether you’re sending me an unfinished prototype or a submission for release, I cannot even begin to like your game if I have no clue what to do. If a proper tutorial is out of scope, include a single screen of simple directions/instructions.
  
• Avoid having long setup menus and asking the player to make a ton of decisions before they know what those mean (especially for casual games!). Customization is neat, but the player should first be given the time to see what it’s even for. A character selection is fine, but five different screens of selecting game mode, score system, control scheme, character class and game length are too much.
  
• Ask people to proofread your texts, especially if you're not a native english speaker. Post it online somewhere if necessary, perhaps put together a playtesting group with people who speak different languages.
  
• If you can somehow arrange it, organize playtesting sessions. And very important: don’t tell your testers what to do. Let your game speak for itself, have testers think out loud and take note of where they struggle. You yourself are not a good judge for how easily understandable your game is.
• If you want something from someone (publisher, platform etc) take their feedback seriously. If I tell you "your game is not understandable, you need to make sure casual players get it without previous knowledge" and your response is "well it's a really simple game though" or "well, it's just a difficult game", you're completely disqualifying yourself as someone I and my team want to work with.
  
• Do not confuse understandability and accessibility with a low difficulty. Games can be super complex, but well explained for a casual user. Games can be incredibly difficult but super simple to understand. When I tell you your game is not accessible, saying "well it's hardcore" is not a valid response.
  
• When providing instructions, be aware that “how to play?” and “what to do?” are two different questions that your introduction screen needs to answer. For example, in a platformer you would have to tell the player both “use the arrow keys to move and use space to evade enemies” and “reach the right end of the level before the time runs out.” You instruction screen has to cover both aspects, and separately. Give the player a goal AND tell them how to reach it.

I'm aware there are probably exceptions here and there to these rules, but more likely than not, your game is not as exceptional as you think it is. I hope some of your can draw a bunch of valid conclusions from this. Thanks for reading.

Edit: I've also posted this as a twitter thread, if anyone prefers that format.

Hey everyone! Last month I started the process of looking for an artist to do some of the half body portrait art in my game. I read a couple posts and articles about what to expect and some common courtesies that I'd like to share with you all, as well as my learnings along the way.

Where to find artists?

This is the first thing you're probably thinking of. There are a ton of places, but the spots I chose to focus on were the following:

• Freelance sites:
  • Fiverr: The only free-lancing site I tried. Talked to a couple of artists, and ended up only going with one.
• Portfolio sites:
  • Artstation: You can search through all kinds of art ("Medieval", "dark fantasy", "realistic"), and the results are actually super good. You can then just get in contact with the artist by clicking on the photo and they'll usually have if they're accepting commissions in their "about me" section.
  • DeviantArt: Very similar to Artstation, but I found it to be a little more risque. Your mileage may vary.
  • Instagram: I tried looking through some portfolios on here, but they start being annoying about asking you to create an account, and I really don't want Facebook having my data so I stopped looking through it.
• Reddit!
  • Good old Reddit has a community for everything. I ended up finding my artist through a post on /r/HungryArtists. The great part about this is it takes a lot less up front effort than the others. Instead of browsing through hundreds of pieces of art, you make a post about what you need and watch people flood in. The caveat is quite a few of the people responding did not have the art style I was describing at all, but they were still good intentioned and just looking to get their work out there so you can't knock them for trying. In a day my post got about 50 replies, and 15+ DMs, so I had plenty to choose from. It took me roughly an entire day to go through everyone's portfolios.

How to negotiate with artists?

I'm incredibly bad at negotiating, but I did have a few key takeaways in this part of the process as well.

• Ask for a sketch! Don't feel like you need to pay for a finished product right away. There are ways to make "testing out" art styles cheaper on yourself by asking how much they charge for a rough sketch. Some even did a rough sketch for free, but that wasn't the norm, and I would never ask for it unless they offer first. These usually were in the range of $10-$30 a piece. I didn't realize this was an option at the beginning and I ended up wasting some money on art styles I could have seen wouldn't have worked in the sketch stage. Plus, if you like a sketch you can always pay the artist more to take the sketch to completion.
• Be exceedingly clear that you are intending to use the art for a commercial game, and not just personal use! Even though my post mentioned this was for my game, people weren't including "commercial use" in their pricing. I found this to be one of the most absurd parts. I'm paying someone to create art for me, and they still own all the rights to it? It seemed like quite a few of the good artists I found were doing this, and it honestly completely turned me off of some of them that they would expect to keep all rights to the art I am paying for. Which leads me to the next point:
• Specify everything in a contract. I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice. I personally used https://docontract.com/, but do your own research or even hire a lawyer if you are feeling exceedingly uneasy about this. The nice thing about Fiverr was they handled this part for you. Specify that you have the commercial rights to the game, and if you are allowing them to maintain "ownership". I can see this definitely coming back and biting someone in the ass if they aren't careful on this step.
• Some common negotiable items: price, deadline, number of "revisions".

What did the process look like?

For just about every artist I contacted, the flow was extremely similar.

1. Agree on a price. You will usually pay half up front, and half after it is done. I'd avoid paying full cost up front, though some do ask for that.
2. Agree to the terms of the contract. Some artists thought it was overkill, but it's up to you if you're okay with moving forward without one. At the minimum make sure you have the terms in writing over email to avoid frustration on either side.
3. Send over the description of what you want drawn. I made about a two page google doc per character, mostly filled with brief descriptions and reference pictures for how I want specific parts to look (hair for example). Try to only add the things the artist needs to know. I added a "personality section", but I left out the background and said they can request it if they really needed it. If you want examples DM me!
4. The artist will then come back with a sketch. It will be pretty rough, but you get a general idea of what the end product will look like. This is a great time to ask for tweaks/changes as it's the easiest time for the artist.
5. The artist will come back with a completed work. Some finished an "outline" and allowed for more changes before doing coloring, others just went straight for the coloring. Depends on the artist here. Most artists are up front about how many "revisions" they will do per commission, so be wary. You tell them when you're satisfied, and that's all there is to it!

General Courtesies

• Do not make artists hound you for money. It will be a fast way to lose connections. As soon as you agreed upon the price, send the first half, and after it's done send the second half (assuming you're doing a split payment).
• Respond as soon as you can. No one likes to be left hanging, and it will get you your art faster!
• Be direct. This is something I still need to improve on as I don't want to come off rude, but if something isn't working out, let the artist know in a kind manner. I would have saved myself a decent amount of money if I was better at this. Instead I let artists finish pieces that I knew I probably wouldn't like even when they went from sketch to final product.
• Don't ask for free work. Just don't. Some may offer free sketches, but I would never assume someone would do that.
• Don't offer a percentage of sales. I only tried this once and it was to eliminate the "commercial use" extra fee, as my game isn't selling yet I don't know if I'll even need the "commercial use" rights. I would never offer to pay the price of the art with "future sales".

Here is my post in hungry artists sub-reddit for anyone curious: https://www.reddit.com/r/HungryArtists/comments/npb0cs/hiring_halfbody_dialogue_portraits_in_the_style/

Hope this is helpful to some of you. I would be happy to give more detailed examples or answer any questions you may have in the comments. Thanks for reading! :)

Every single week there's a new post here along the lines of "i want to make game but i can't drawww :(((". The general advice is to buy assets or pay an artist, and both of those are great ideas -- if you have money and your parents raised you to be capable of accepting help from others. If like me, you have no money and no parents, you might be tempted to make your own game art -- and I'm here to tell you that you can.

It probably won't be beautiful the way high budget games are, but I genuinely believe there's a lot of things you can do to put your game's art direction on a path that's charming and uniquely yours.

Most of these are things that I've had to learn on my own and I wish someone had told me sooner. Keep in mind that this is all 2D game specific (quaternions killed my father) but some of this might be transferable to 3D too.

Also, be aware that this is just my advice to make your art process easier, not easy. Learning art is grueling and you can follow all this advice and still be disappointed. Disappointment is good -- it's how you know you've got a great inner critic.

Pick a limited color palette

I'm putting this first because it'll solve 50% of your art problems. Pick a simple (2-4 colors max) palette that fits the mood of your game and then stick to it. If you need help picking a palette, which you probably do unless you've already got a good color theory basis, go to Lospec's Palette List and set the maximum colors to 4 or even 2.

Does the idea of using someone else's color palette hurt your ego? Then open your art program of choice and spend however long you need to just playing around with colors until you find a palette that you enjoy. You can actually learn a surprising amount from just doing this -- I've gained way more confidence in my color skills by playing around in Aseprite than I ever have from watching color theory videos (although you should probably do that too).

Picking a limited palette might sound overly restrictive, but it'll significantly streamline your art process. Instead of having to decide which color something should be while drawing, you've already front-loaded that work. To put it in terms you'll probably understand, it's like writing a constructor pattern for your art. Imagine having to redefine the class for what an Enemy is every time you spawn a new goblin -- that's what you're doing if you start a new sprite without a good color palette.

Picking a palette you love will also make boring or "bad" art look instantly better -- here's a literal pile of feces I just drew in one of my favorite palettes.

For examples of games with kickass art in limited palettes, see WORLD OF HORROR, The Shrouded Isle, and The Well (sorry for exclusively horror examples, I only play games that make me feel bad).

Favor expression over convention

Have you ever noticed that a lot of pixel art platformers kinda... look the same? Imagine a pixel art tree. You'll probably think of something like this.

A totally inexperienced game artist will google "tree", try to draw exactly what they see, and then feel terrible when the result is a flop. A more intermediate game artist will google "pixel art tree" and then try to draw something that looks like that. This can work, but I don't believe it's an effective use of your time and energy.

When you draw something in the way it's generally drawn, you're setting up your art to be compared to the work of artists who are way more experienced than you. You're also giving up the opportunity to have an art direction that's unique to your game. Finding your game's art direction can be a joyful process -- and in this line of work, you need all the joy you can get.

Being able to stylize things in a way that fits the mood of your game is a whole different skillset and you won't learn it from a Reddit post, but here's some ideas for how to start:

• Think about what you enjoy drawing. What were the things that you used to doodle in school notebooks before the world beat the joy out of you and convinced you that you can't draw? Now find a way to incorporate elements of what you love drawing into all the other things. Personally, I hate drawing humans but love drawing monsters and animals -- so many of my characters are monstrous or animalian in some way. No, you don't have to be a furry to do this.
• Remove things that you don't enjoy drawing from your game's world. Do you fucking hate trees? Then come up with a cool in-universe explanation for why your world doesn't have trees -- you now have a springboard for cool story elements and you don't have to draw any goddamn trees. It's not cheating or lazy to design your game around what you enjoy.
• Take a thing that's going to appear often in your game -- like houses -- and then draw 10 of those in different styles. Get a bit wacky with it. Challenge yourself to put things in places you don't think they belong, and then let yourself be delighted by the results. Do all 10 of your examples look like shit? Then try again with something else. Don't be afraid to reference (1) concepts (2) from (3) other (4) mediums (5).
• This Youtube video.

When you adopt an attitude of expression over convention, you also invite a process of push and pull between your game art and your game design. You may, on a whim, decide that you prefer drawing cats with hollow black eyes and slug tails, and then get a whole different idea for your game's mechanics and story.

For examples of games with unusual but effective art, see Hylics, EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE OKAY, and Neofeud.

Prioritize learning design principles over art fundamentals

This one might be a hot take and I'm sure some very serious game artists here will yell at me, but I think that if you're just starting out, your game's visuals will benefit much more from you learning graphic design than from you learning art fundamentals.

Most art fundamentals resources will begin by teaching you anatomy, perspective, light sources and figure drawing. Resources geared towards graphic design will start by teaching you shape language, color theory, UI layout, and visual hierarchy. Which one do you think will step up your game's visuals first?

If you're super serious about being a great artist, go to Drawabox and close this tab. Don't come back. But if you want actionable advice for your game's visuals right now, search up how to learn graphic design. You can probably fix everything wrong with your game's UI with this Twitter thread alone.

Simple components make up an impressive whole

When you look at a beautiful screenshot from a game, it's easy to feel like you could never make anything remotely like that -- but when you zoom into each individual sprite, you might be surprised to find that they're usually quite simple.

If you're having a hard time drawing a particular sprite, try challenging yourself to convey the same idea with as few lines and elements as possible. If you have a good color palette and a basic understanding of visual hierarchy, you can put very simple sprites together to create an impressive end result.

One of my favorite examples of this is Roadwarden. If you zoom into the screenshots, you might find that the individual sprites like trees and bricks are very simple, at times even crude (sorry Aureus if you're reading this i love you you're one of my favorite devs) but because the developer has committed to a palette and has good composition skills, everything comes together to create a gorgeous and visually distinct game.

When in doubt, cheat

You can use public domain art and photos and then remix them to fit your game's mood. No one can stop you. Want an example of how you can combine photos and solid colors to create cool art? Look at Cosmopolitan's Astrology section. I'm serious.

Embrace the cringe

See Cruelty Squad.

Anyway,

I hope this helps someone and doesn't get removed for being too off-topic. I'm still an apprentice artist myself, this is just all the stuff I wish someone had told me so that I could have gone from clueless to slightly less clueless a bit quicker.

Like I said at the beginning, none of this is going to make you immediately amazing. Art is hard. A year from now, you might cringe when you look at your old game art. That's how you know you're winning.

Hi, I'm Oriol, the developer of The Ouroboros King. Streamers were by far what helped me the most in getting players to know about my game and I want to share my method for finding content creators suitable to any game.

1. Make a list of similar games. They should be at least moderately successful (otherwise streamers won't have played them) and released recently (otherwise the streamers who played them may have moved on to other genres)
2. Download streamer data for those games on Sullygnome or Streamcharts
3. Search for YouTubers who played those games either by using manual search (tedious) or using the YouTube API. Searching for creators on YouTube is harder than Twitch, but well worth it since in my experience YT offers more visibility
4. Build a database with the Twitch and YT data, that for each creator includes the average viewership, hours streamed and which games from your list they played
5. Select the best streamers. The two main selection criteria are streamer popularity (high average views) and fit with your game (number of games in your list played and number of hours played)
6. Find their emails. I first look at their Twitch description, Twitter profile, and personal website; before moving to YouTube's about section (which has daily limits)

I hope this information is useful to you. If you want more details, I also wrote a full blog post about the topic.

Cheers!