I have a crazy idea.
I am working on a historically accurate (as much as it can be) visual novel set in Ancient Egypt right now, and before today, I thought I would make it look just like a regular visual novel with realistic CG, but I'm having second thoughts know, and here's my new idea:
What if instead of backgrounds and character sprites looking at the screen I would make the whole game play like an animation movie made up of individual Ancient Egyptians drawings? Like in the Ice Age cartoon.
The idea would be to blend modern graphics with Ancient Egyptian drawing style, and this could also be used to denote different scenes (e.g. sunflare would give the impression that the characters are outside), so that would eliminate the need of backgrounds. The drawings would only change when you click to continue the story.
I made a mockup with pictures from Google: https://imgur.com/tWVUr01
And another drawing style: https://imgur.com/a/zwAU01K
The way I imagine it the characters would move their heads and hands, have emotions, take different poses and interact with each other (e.g. a character could be killed by another with a spear, etc.)
However, the question is whether it would be interesting to follow and wouldn't it be like too much movement for such a game (some people don't like things moving when they're reading, and these sprites would change with nearly every reply).
Another thing I'm really concerned about is that it would look cheap. My current artist can draw the most beautiful environments that can captivate people, and reducing her to Ancient Egyptian drawings seems counter-productive. I mean, if you were to look at screenshots on steam, would you really consider buying such a game, even if the interface looked pretty, and the characters weren't too shabby?
Thanks.