I’m just kind of curious how people perceive various art styles for indie games.

Say you had three indie games which were otherwise identical in terms of gameplay but one was pixel art, one was hand drawn and one was 3D. Which would you be most inclined to buy? Also, suppose the price started going up for each. Would you feel like any of them would start to feel like a better or worse value at certain price points?

Let’s assume that the art styles are competently done for each and for the sake of simplicity, generally appealing to you. Any other thoughts you might have about this would be interesting to hear too.

  • simple@lemm.eeEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I’d go with hand-drawn in general. They’re the hardest to make but usually end up being the most beautiful. Games like Gris, Cuphead, Hollow Knight, etc.

    But I think more than which general artstyle is how well implemented it is and the general aesthetic they’re going for. Like, when you say pixel art, it depends if it’s something that looks like NES games and super high level pixel art like Hyper Light Drifter and Owlboy. If it looked like those, I’d take pixelart any day. On the other hand if it’s really pretty 3D like Hi-fi Rush and Guilty Gear Strive, I’d go for that.

    So in the end it depends on what’s the most visually appealing. It doesn’t really matter whih

  • kartoffelsaft@programming.devEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I don’t think this can really be answered until after the fact. Anything that I (and I suspect most) people could say about an artstyle are going to be particular to an instance of that artsyle. If I’d give advice as someone who is neither an artist nor a game designer, what attracts me more than anything is a unique artstyle, which, if I’m gonna give a brutal opinion, starting from a vague category like ‘pixel’, ‘hand drawn’ or ‘3D’ probably won’t get you there.

    I feel like I even struggle to answer your question at face value because it doesn’t align well at all with how I conceptualize game art. For example, Cruelty Squad is a game that I don’t think I’d have gotten if not for it’s artsyle. Like, sure, it’s 3D, but it’s a lot more like a PilotRedSun animation than it is a game like TF2. Or take a game like Factorio: most of the assets of that game are pre-rendered 3D sprites, so despite being artisticly unique in a way that interests me it doesn’t fit into the categories you’ve asked about. The best I can say is “I dunno”, and I don’t think anyone else can answer it further than that.

  • Sev@feddit.ukEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I really despise that 3D no texture / low poly look. On Reddit when you see those ‘I have a dream, quit my job and now I’m making ………. Game!’ posts, some concepts sound amazing; aaaaaand it’s one of those game.

    Settlement Survival is one. Big Banished fan, and Ss’ graphics just look worse to me. Like a cheap mobile game.

    Not to say all of these are bad, Deep Rock looks gorgeous and smashes it in the art direction department

    2D I don’t mind as there’s a lot of wiggle room to play with stylistically.