Games with cool looking, cheap art style

Kevin Albers · Jun 2008

I'm doing a bit of research on games that have an art style that is fairly low budget yet looks cool. A couple examples include -
Patapon http://i12.photobucket.com/albums/a217/youaremykilikiller/tgs-2007-patapon-screens-2007092003.jpg

and
Flow http://cache.kotaku.com/assets/resources/2006/12/flowgamedev.jpg

Anyone have other examples they like?

Murdoc · Jun 2008

Just look back at the 8 bit -16 bit era and imagine smooth edges; lots of good stuff back then.

SHEPEIRO · Jun 2008

anything which uses "cel" type shading in the textures ie, okami, wind waker et al, are much faster to produce for art because the texturing time can be reduced greatly while the consistency of style and quality is equally as high or higher. i have worked on two projects that use this type of texturing and it can be really cool to be able to get things done at speed and inject some flair and artistic flambouyency into the texture creation process.

check out madworld or killer7

flaagan · Jun 2008

Cave Story is one that comes to mind.

rooster · Jun 2008

cave story would have a fairly intensive work process wouldnt it? its all hand placed pixels
edit: obviously i mean tiled gfx, but it seems like hard work to create to me

blankslatejoe · Jun 2008

How about Fez?

[ame]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVwoTR5kWCQ&feature=related[/ame]

Kevin Albers · Jun 2008

Wow, that Fez "rotating 2d universe" bit is super cool.

pior · Jun 2008

Rez
Vib Ribbon
Jet Set Radio

D4V1DC · Jun 2008

That was pretty damn cool, Joe thanks for posting.

monster · Jun 2008

Geometry Wars Retro Evolved

leilei · Jun 2008

Does pure procedural generation count? I still am fond a bit about .kkrieger after all these years.

Peris · Jun 2008

leilei wrote: »

Does pure procedural generation count? I still am fond a bit about .kkrieger after all these years.

Don't know if that could be considered cheap. Yeah it's a free game, but a lot of time went into it, and it probably took a lot longer to create those procedural textures than it would if they were created by an artist in photoshop.

dejawolf · Jun 2008

awesome awesome game.

FAT_CAP · Jun 2008

Lost Winds for Wiiware - by Frontier games

http://www.frontier.co.uk/games/lostwinds/

Theres some great concept art from the game on the site aswell.

Kevin Albers · Jun 2008

Thanks for all the replies! I've been checking these games out and really digging all these interesting, cool art styles.

Richard Kain · Jun 2008

Basically, realism is expensive. Stylism is considerably less so, though this fluctuates depending on the style. Any rendering technique that requires less complicated models or textures is going to cut down on the time necessary to create resources. For 2D games, using 3D model sourcing for the sprites can actually cut down on the time it takes to produce them. (depending on the complexity of the sprite, and how many different angles it will be viewed from)

The game industry and the movie industry do have quite a few parallels. One of these is a quest for a cheaper and less time-intensive way of achieving the desired effect. In the film industry, there are any number of short-cuts and cheats that special-effects wizards use. In the game industry, they use things like normal maps, baked light maps, and other such techniques to improve performance while maintaining graphical detail. The best way to shorten time and expense for art assets is to....get creative in how they are produced and used.

Ninjas · Jun 2008

Mad World

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/34108.html

Ferg · Jun 2008

I'm pretty sure this game was actually pretty complex in terms of art for it's time, but always loved the style, and it would be much easier to pull off with today's technology

(another world, 1991)