Hey so I used to work at an Art House that cranked out art so maybe I can help from that perspective first and foremost.
For this project I’d recommend you sell it to artists on how easy it would be to generate said art for this, RCR inspired characters with basic attack animatoins is something a decent 2d character artist can do in their sleep, and they should be able to modify reference art very easily, so don’t think your rate should be based on a typical 2d character generation, this would be like 5x easier than that.
I don’t know what your budget is, but I don’t think it would be too much to offer maybe 20 dollars to a few artists and ask for a single custom rendition of a river city ransom character, with the promise of a bigger chunk of $$$ if you like their work.
Give them a spritesheet for reference. Let them know they’re competing for a larger gig where they will make more $$$ to finish a character set that are all based on one core character. Don’t pay until services are rendered fully at each stage (first payment for the single character test, second for the bulk finished bit of work).
It’s a lot harder to find an artist to finish a half finished set of things than for them to do things in their style all at once. But this seems like a pretty basic project anyhow so you shouldn’t have too much trouble finding someone. So really sell the artist on that. "Hey I know your rates are 40 dollars per character, but since you can probably knock these out in 30 minutes each with very basic animations, how does 40 dollars for a base character sound, and then 20 bucks for a few with unique heads and clothes that you can mix and match. Look for an artist who has sprite sheet animation in their portfolio in a style similar to what you need.
Again reach out to a few, offer them maybe 20 bucks for a quick test drawing of a single character (you’re going to have to pay each artist you give a chance that does a decent enough job), then pick the one who does the best work the fastest and seems eager to do a good job and offer them a solid chunk of money for all the work, maybe agree to 25% of the payment after a good chunk is done then 100% once you are happy with the final product. You can really tell the good artists right off the bat by their attitude, their ability to do things fast, and communication.
Ideally they work in an art program that’s easy for you to get your hands on so you can tweak a few things here and there like color swaps once they’re done. If possible ask them to give source files if they have layers in them so if you ever need more work done and need to use another artist, you can get them going really fast.
Also find a quick contract you can send them by just googling something very fast, just get a signature so you have some kind of paper trail that you own the assets, you paid them, that sorta thing. No need for anything too crazy here or legal research, just having this is better than nothing keep the email in a saved folder so you don’t lose it.
Here’s a really good place to find artists and you can pick based on your price range, but just because an artist is affordable doesn’t mean they aren’t good, and don’t forget you can sell your project based on how easy it is to make art for, so you can approach better more expensive artists but sell them on how easy it is to make the art.
https://business.fiverr.com/categories/graphics-design/game-art/character-design?source=drop_down_filters&expert_listings=true&ref=pro:any|style:pixel
This guy looks like a solid bet:
(Always look at the extended portfolio and expect the quality of the worst work)
Be affable with artists, but also stay proffesional. Get the work you settled on and don’t let them try to weasel out of it or start slacking off. There are great artists out there who will do amazing work for a good price so long as you let them know exactly what you need and don’t waste their time and make payments timely. It helps to have a paypall account ready to go.
Now’s also 100% the time for you to lock in the resolution you want these assets at, do you want a total 8 bit feel? Or maybe something just a tad more high res? Unlike 3d art you can’t really upscale 2d pixel art without losing the “feel” of those pixelated assets and it’s imprtant all the pixels on the screen be about the same size or it looks janky, so make sure you’re 100% happy with how unity is rendering these assets before you spend money on this stuff.
As for the gameplay i’d recommend just playing double dragon and river city ransom over and over again, find that one new addition you want to add that you think will make it unique. The game looked fun to play in the video. Personally I liked the control scheme of double dragon a lot. Both buttons together for a jump kick, double tap to run, etc. There are plenty of perfectly usable action formulas out there, adding a few more animmations to them, and polishing up the system overall would go a long way. I’m not a huge beat 'em up player TBH, but streets of rage comes to mind, final fight. Just nice crunchy sounds, immediate, impactful combos, a good range of damage dealing attacks and attacks that stun and hold enemies in place. You gotta find the right balance of being able to button mash on enemies and them being able to deal damage with tells the player can react to.
Best advice I can give is don’t go down too many rabbit holes trying to make the game innovative. Just do what’s been done before but better. Maybe really go in and add nuance to punches, or add new combo chains that didn’t exist before. Nothing too crazy hard to pick up, just things that when you add them any idiot can figure out and enjoy. I’d suggest just really painstakingly making each attack super polished and fun, add more frames of animation so it’s smoother, work on the stun frames to it feels just right. The devil is really in the details, so you gotta just start putting these attacks in and start thinking about the super tiny things that make the combat feel right, if the game can queue attacks, how far the enemy gets knocked back on punches, how much for kicks, how much for punch 1, how much for punch 2, maybe you can add special attacks that do damage over time, maybe some that lower armor and cause bleed particles, maybe different chains of button mashing execute different attacks that can stun, bleed, or tap back a little life. U don’t want to start getting too crazy, at the heart you need to rely on the combat feeling smooth and responsive.
I’d suggest you do a deep dive and search lots of channels on Youtube and try to find people talking about the core mechanics of fighting games:
If there were any weakness in my game it would probably be the near quarter combat mechanics, i just rely on positional type elements, so it’s probably more a side scroller than a beat 'em up.
I would recommend you build up your combat system around one all encompassing move, wtih variable animation frames, toggles for follow up combo attacks, sounds, if it does knockback, if it does mini stuns, etc. Give this ability setup all the bells and whistles of combo mechanics, jumps, knockbacks, etc, and if you’re able to quickly iterate on this system and try new combos and mechanics easily then you’ll be able to “find the fun” a lot easier. This is the stage where the better foundation you build up, the game will be much better down the road.
Same goes for an AI system to plug and play enemy attacks to quickly iterate on enemies, so i would recommend you put in extra care to create a test setup with property pannels set up easily accesable in unity, maybe a couple abilities for the player on the left docked in unity and pages of enemy AI abilities docked on the right side, and just create a perfect white box where you have debug tools to quickly spawn 1, 2, 3, or more enemies easily and just create your perfect sandbox, focus on that iterable, easily played white box area where you will test your play before you start building up levels. Try not to indulge in too much content early.
Your video was really well done too. The project looks cool, best of luck and let me know if you need any more thoughts of feedback.
