Link: https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/cyberpunk-platformer-replaced-catches-another-delay-for-final-tweaks-based-on-demo-feedback

Replaced. Sad Cat Studios' dystopian platformer, has had its release pushed back to April so its developers can make some "final tweaks".

Hopefully they listen and add a toggle to disable the forced 21:9 aspect ratio. Otherwise I'll wait until I have an actual 21:9 monitor.

This is the first I'm hearing of it, looks interesting. Also I love how a lot of developers have suddenly realized that a lower framerate in 2D games makes them look amazing. Especially when it gives some old fashioned animation principles to a very modern looking game.

I played the demo and it was great (except for the forced "cinematic" 21:9 aspect ratio). However I played it at 240 FPS, so not sure what you mean by "lower framerate".

I can't quite tell from the trailer if it's what they're doing, and unfortunately I can't find the video about this that I watched recently, but I wonder if they're talking about "animating on 2s"? It's a technique where the character's animation only changes every other frame, which gives an effect that's just slightly choppy but pleasing to a lot of people. It's how they animated the Spider-verse movie.

^ yes, that. It's just the character animations, I'm not saying the entire game is running at a low framerate. That would not look good.

It’s a very tricky thing, I’m sure thousands of people will cry foul about it, but I do think “low framerate” has a good place in design, mainly around cinematic moments where the loss of clarity triggers an intentional panic. Ex: PTSD-riddled hero is in shock from a sudden violent event, and has a panic attack blurring their vision.

One thing that comes to mind is the reveal of Ganon (final form) in Ocarina of Time. The game kind of overloaded the N64 with all those active effects, which worked really well especially with the lightning silhouetting the beast.

Another scenario is some scenes in Final Fantasy 7. In 3D, all tweened animations are naturally smooth. I can’t quite tell what triggers it, but a few hard-hitting character scenes somehow bring that animation framerate down to emphasize certain actions (one specific example is Barret, in the town below the gold saucer, raising his gun to shoot his teammates - but actually hitting an ambusher behind them).

Cyberpunk platformer "Replaced". . .