First of all, I'm new. Hi!

Anyway, I'm mostly an artist and a fan of an NES game called Abadox, which I'd like to remake as a PS2-era survival horror game. I'm a big Silent Hill fan and I love the idea of a game where you're inside the body of a giant monster where it's pitch black aside from what your flashlight illuminates (plus maybe there's some bio-luminescence as well), and none of it is pretty. 

This was an idea I originally had about 14 years ago, so some of what I'll be posting is old. But recently, I've revived the idea and I've decided to be more serious about it. I used to work for a small video game developing company so I know how to model and animate. Granted, I don't know programming or game design, so I may need help with that eventually (also not sure how to deal with the copyright issue, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it), but for now I'm just playing with the general look of the monsters and such.

I would love some feedback. First I'll get some older drawings out of the way. Everything after this will be new.

Here's a new one. I redesigned Parasitis and changed everything but the color scheme. For some reason, I kept imagining a giant sea slug, so I went with that. (I just didn't think a meatball with teeth was all that scary). The opening FMV would show the main character being swallowed by this thing.

I have another one I might be finishing tonight, so I may be posting that tomorrow.

Would really appreciate some feedback, even if it's just utter confusion =P

I've done a couple more since I started the topic, if anyone is interested.

Here are some Level 1 enemies and the Level 1 boss, Deathface. I figured Deathface should look a little less human-like, and I added a long tongue as a weapon. The original fired projectiles which I have a hard time accepting for some reason.

Hello, I am kind of new too! Pretty chill place for us creative types. 

Yo! These are sick af!I don't remember much of Silent HIll, but I do remember liking it. Guess what? I am a pretty darn good programmer, and a fair designer ( I have studied game design for years, and have been a gamer for over twenty ). I also am a musician, so that is a plus . Anyways, I am in the thick of the middle of a somewhat large project, but I would be interested in hammering out the design and concept with you if I could be the programmer and musician for the project. IF you are interested, just throwing it out there.

What kind of mechanics were you thinking about it, other than being inside a beast of sorts? Or story line if you have thought of anything yet. Curious to know more. Side-scroller? 

What would be the copyright infringement, not sure I see a issue atm.

Hi, David.

Thanks for the compliments. I'm pretty proud of the work I've done so far.

Hey, that's awesome. Do you have some examples of your work I can check out?

I'm mainly thinking of a 3D third-person shooter. The story is pretty simple--you play as a soldier whose damaged space ship is engulfed by a giant creature. The ship is swallowed, but you get separated from it just inside the mouth so you have to go into the creature's stomach to rescue and repair the ship so you and the people in it can escape.

The copyright issue would be that it's a remake of an NES game. I wouldn't be re-using any of the assets, but it's going to resemble it and have the same name. So I'm thinking I might have to get some legal advice about that at some point.Worst-case scenario would be that I'd have to make some more changes and just say that it was inspired by Abadox.

Oh, if you're curious, here's what the original game is like (I probably should have just put it in the original post--sometimes I forget that Abadox isn't super-well-known):

Ah, I feel silly. No, I should have just read your post better. It says in the title the game name. Yeah, I was a little kid when NES first came out ( 4 years old ) and my uncle had a system and I got one a year later for christmas. I thought I played every game, and it is fantastic to learn I did not. That games play through kind of shows why it never was to popular lol. But your right, it is a super cool idea.

I would twist it up a bit, rename it, and bam, you won't have copyright issues. Like, adding a tounge to that brain beast, no one could say its a copy, inspired by, absolutly, but not a direct copy. If the game you design is a 3d game, it won't be a side scroller shoot-em-up, it will be a fps horror game - no copy rights issues there.

i have very little to show as a programmer. twenty three years ago, my first career choice, while I was a still a young ambitious teenager, was a game developer. I learned C++ from a six inch thick book with a Code Warriors demo attached to the back and installed in my PowerPC Macintosh . I made a tic tac toe game and a really crappy dungeon crawler that never was finished. I kind of gave up, went back to musician roots ( cause I was better at that ). A few years later, I started doing web development as a freelancer and that lasted for nearly twelve years. A lot happened, got married, worked as a chef for a day job, had kids, got divorced, gave up work as a web developer ( didn't have the time for a side job, and that work just sucks - a lot of work for little pay ). Took about five years off from programming, and then a couple of years ago, I stumbled upon unity. I finished a block breaker style game, which sucks. and then teamed up with a local buddy to start a game we have called Wild Realms. So far, it has been a blast developing the game. A top down 2d survival game. you can check out the dev blog at http://wildrealms.dev 

I really feel confident when I say I know I can develop anything at this point. Every challenge this game has presented has been doable and solvable . This is due to my years of programming experience, and now that I am doing something that I actually truly love, I am more happy than I have ever been.

Wild Realms is still in development, nearing a prototype finish. I am not sure if we will be able to do a polished version at some point. We will just have to see. After the prototype is finished, I want to have a hundred people play test and give feed back, and if it is remotely confident with critique, I think we will polish the crap out of it and see if we can land some funding for a polished version.

The project started in march and is about half way finished. At first I was getting concerned that a polished version would take three times as long, until I started clocking how much time I actually spend on it. With kids, a wife, and a full time job, I have been getting up at three to four in the morning to work on it. I spend on average, eleven hours a week on the game, which helps me put it into perspective, especially for getting funding.

Anyways, I am also a musician, and would love to contribute to your game in that way. In any case, you got a great idea. Twist it up a bit, give it a new name, add or remove something from the abadox story line, and you got your own game.

Yeah, Abadox is pretty hard core  XD Too hard for me, to be honest. I could get to the final level when I was a kid, but couldn't beat it without an invincibility code--now I can't even get to Level 2  =P  I always loved the look of it, the music, and the general concept, tho.

I know I can make more changes and call the game something else, but I still want to attempt a legit remake. For now, the plan is to focus on the first level--which will be fairly short and partly a tutorial--and basically make a demo out of it. Then I can see about whether or not copyright issues would be a problem. If the copyright issues are too expensive or too much of a hassle, I can go back and make whatever changes are necessary and it wouldn't be that much more work.

I feel like I'm in a similar boat as you. I did have a job at a video game company, but I don't have that much to show for it, since it was a poorly-run company and almost none of the work I did ended up in any finished games. There was one online Hot Wheels game where you needed a code from a toy package to play and another called Real War, which was a war strategy game that few people know about (tho the voice work was done by R. Lee Ermey, who I got to meet, so that was cool ^.^).

And since then, I've been wanting to come back to making games in some way, particularly the Abadox idea, but I just never really committed to it until recently. Part of it is getting inspired by the indie game boom that seems to have happened fairly recently (or maybe I just didn't discover it until recently =P).

I am also cursed with lack of time due to a full time job (which is partly why I took so long to respond--sorry 'bout that). I was a full-time YouTuber for a few years, but I eventually had to admit that I wasn't making enough money to justify it, so now I'm an office assistant who edits in her free time. I'm impressed that you have the drive to get up so early to get some programming in. I sometimes draw during my lunch break and I made a habit of doing live streams on Saturdays, which I turned into art streams, which is how a lot of the artwork I posted here got done. I also get up about an hour earlier than I need to in the morning, so I can usually squeeze in some video editing then.

Anyway, what the hell, let's give this a shot! I understand that you're currently working on another project (best of luck, BTW!), and probably won't have time for this one immediately but that's fine. As you can see, I'm still in the planning stage, so it'll be awhile before I'll have something that's even ready to program or add music to. I am almost ready to start modeling these creatures and the main character--I've just got about three more drawings I want to finish first.

Your work is classic and awesome! Do you have a plan on giving it a story?

Keep up the good work!

Thanks! It's not gonna be too heavy on the story, just enough to set things up and help the player along.

Basically you play as a guy who gets separated from his ship and crew as it gets swallowed by a giant monster and you have to go in deeper to save the ship and escape. Meanwhile, the science officer will be talking you through it via communicator.