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Mount & Blade comes to mind. It was originally created by a husband and wife team; she did the graphics and he did the coding. It was a pretty captivating game for it's time, if you liked that genre, and was really one of the first open world first person perspective games, with mounts no less. The important thing is that it was a team that put it together. And people are still buying it, and playing it, and modding it.
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Congrats.
That's a part of one of the first lessons in game design: creating an enticing look and feel that meshes well with gameplay, world design, lore, art, etc.
Everything must tie together well, and must look appealing. It is the single most important aspect of game design. Games that do not get this right will flop. -
I think fitting graphics are more important than realistic graphics.
Many games use unrealistic graphics, but they do so consistently (Minecraft, Borderlands and countless more).
If some of your graphics look like Borderlands, some look like Far Cry 5, some look like you've built them yourself while high on Crack, you haven't built a good game, but you might just have hit the level of a mediocre asset flip.
So good graphics should probably be consistent graphics.
See Dwarf Fortress for reference. It doesn't have good graphics (it's ASCII), but it is consistent. -
GameJolt is a place where indie game developers get together, maybe you can find someone there.
Be sure you're actually willing to work together and create a fun finished game. It's very common for game developers to ask for art, but never get past the first stage of development.
It's also important you keep communicating, sharing and discussing; if they're doing it for free it's just as much their game as it is yours.
If you're willing to pay, you can always look at places like Fiverr. -
Related Rants
Me if i was a game dev
"I won't need math to make games!"
"Graphics don't matter."
I ranted a while back about gamedev being hard to get into for me, and, today, user @DOSnotCompute posted a similar experience.
I had a couple more thoughts, so thought should post them here (FUCK! It ended up being too fucking long! sorry!)
So I was watching the making of mortal kombat 3 on yt, which was pretty amazing btw because I got to see the actors of the sprites in game which were engraved in my and thousands of others kids minds.
Anyhow, the creators of the series, John Tobias and Ed Boon, were interviewed and what not. And it hit me that while both were the designers, John was the main artist and Ed was the programmer (at least for MK1). Another game that comes to mind Super Meat Boy, and I bet hundreds of others did the same.
And it got me thinking, maybe that's my problem, I just need an artist.
And I think the reason why I never thought of that is because of this idea that graphics don't matter.
"you don't need an artist. You don't need graphics. The most important thing is the gameplay."
What a load of shit.
A lot of people believe that because they got tired of polished AAA games with automatic and predictible gameplay.
People started parrotting this knee jerk of a conclusion since then.
It's dumb. Imagine if Infiminer, one of the games Minecraft was based on, which btw looks terrible, had all the same features Minecraft had.
I would still not touch that shit with a pole.
Graphics ARE important. Games are on the VISUAL medium.
That doesn't mean you're sucking Sony's dick on every AAA release or that every game should be made with UnreUnityCocksReloadedEngine.
Some level of visual craft is required for a game ro be considered such.
(btw, I think most of you guys here get this, not trying to pander, just that I want to make it clear that I'm not accusing this community of being guilty of this)
If a game looks bad (given, bad can be subjective), if it gives the impression that it wasn't seriously made, then you kinda lower your expectations.
People get hyped on games that look good, because it means that the game could be good. Games that look unoriginal or terrible won't get played, wether they're good or not. And I think it's a reasonable reaction.
How many times did I hear things like "Look at x video game from the 90s, the graphics are terrible but it's fun as hell".
That is an absurd statement. The level of production some NES games went through is insane. We're talking millions of dollars for games that today might look primitive.
The graphics weren't shit back then, and even today you could say that they are simpler but also of excellent craftsmanship.
I'm not into creating art, I hate it in fact because you can't quantify the success of produced art.
So, duh, find an artist. Ok, how? This is the part where I have no fucking idea how.
You start spamming shit like "I need an artist" online? I dunno, something for another post I guess.
I guess the most healthy thing I could do is making demos that might look like shit just to get experience so that when I get to find an artist, I have practice already.
rant
gamedev