Guys, how do you relate to low-res games in terms of low resolution, low polygons and low textures?

@Superku: Sounds like the game "Stranded" but with realistic graphics in British Columbia... why BC? Whatever, sounds interesting. But it could be a bit frustrating if the player has "to stumble upon" the story, you should throw in early breadcrumbs which guides the attention. LOST was all about the plane crash in the pilot but in the very last seconds you can hear the monster and see some damage it does to the environment - what a mindf***!

Normally that's perfectly fine for me if the game allows to don't use low but full HD resolutions. I don't mind playing something that looks like Quake 2 or Turok or similar (in fact I've wanted to use such a look some time ago), however, I really hate the Minecraft look with its ugly textures or for whatever reasons.
Why do you ask?

Hm did not know "Stranded" but it looks rather antiquated. I see your point, maybe one could add some ascending smoke in the distance to attract the player and to introduce him into the story, if he so wishes to pursue it. BC because it's my yearly place of vacation and I think it's suited for this type of game. It hosts several dangers in form of animals and nature, has a lot of beautiful places, thousands of mountains that limit the view distance and is barely populated.

HeelX@ I'm actually developing a horror game (since a long time already, but cause of HDD crash, I had to start working from scratch), which will have postprocessing pixilezation shader. And I really love the feeling of this kind of games, they are awesome!

That is the point, the game won't have these, all content lacks of a certain amount of detail that cannot be achieved back in the days of N64/PS2/Gamecube technically-wise compared to nowadays games. I'm quiet struggling these nights with a theory.

I know. There are pixelated games (and I mean with pixelated unfiltered textures like on the PS One or Nintendo DS), though, that get the feeling right. Minecraft is as ugly as hell, no doubt.

I am quite fascinated by the idea to make a PAL-game (resolution wise, but highly advanced antialiasing) with N64 or at least Gamecube/PS2 general tech limits in terms of texture and polygonal limits to settle on a certain degree of asset-details, while applying modern additional effects and shading like parallaxed perpixel lightning or super fancy bokeh DOF, SSAO and that stuff. It is hard to describe this kind of technology mix but I think that this solves the general asset creation problem in terms of time and money, while allowing a top notch visual presentation. In fact, I believe that these constraints will also lead to better gameplay for some reasons, which goes beyond the scope of this discussion.

I've assumed that, and personally I would hate that, too. A forced low/ pixelated resolution can be okay or at least for a while, but as a player I would demand to have the option to switch to my desktop resolution when I'm sick of the pixelated look.
As I've stated before I tried to go a similar approach but was not sure what kind of effects I want to implement into the game from a perspective of consistency, esp. such stuff as modern looking water shaders or similar or post-processing effects.

At that time, I had a very low spec PC for GTA San Andreas. Finally, I chose to play in 640x480 with 4x Antialiasing than to play in 1024x768 without Antialiasing, because it looked and performed better. So, I saw only a third of the pixels and it wasn't pixelated for me.

But I see your point.

What if the game is rendered as if it were displayed on a PAL-sized CRT display? So, the game is rendered in 768x576 with 4x Antialiasing or more and with appropriate shaders it looks like you play on TV, but rendered in your desktop resolution with all necessary triplet-patterns, geometric foreshortening and overglow?

Hm I think I need to see that in action before I can render a verdict on it.
Btw. I have been playing on the Project64 emulator some month ago and the visuals (+ resolution most of the time lower than PAL) didn't bother me in the slightest (the bad rendering of Playstation titles normally does bother me, though, they somehow look pretty different).

Random throw-in: "Stranded" is not the original game... you should take a look at "Schiffbruch"

Since this thread is about game related ideas, I would like to reserve a title: Moment of Fate™

A game about seizure inducing scenes?