Game design atlas

Art styles

Antique print and engraving

Fine hatching, open paper and historical print composition evoke illustrated books. Print-like visuals do not imply a physical printing process.

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• Align hatching to volume
• Keep major contours clearer than internal lines
• Unify paper color and line density

Reference gamesAviary Attorney · The Bridge

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Art styles

Bold-outline flat cartoons

Closed bold outlines and simple flat fills keep small characters readable in busy scenes. Reusable simplified forms matter more here than elaborate comic illustration.

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• Use consistent stroke weights at the same scale
• Separate actors and props by major shape
• Keep effects from filling silhouettes

Reference gamesCastle Crashers® · BattleBlock Theater®

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Art styles

Black-figure pottery graphics

Terracotta grounds, dark profile figures and ornamental bands evoke ancient Greek pottery. This is a specific graphic language rather than a label for all ancient settings.

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• Make profile poses and props clear silhouettes
• Limit terracotta/dark value relationships
• Use bands to frame structure and regions

Reference gamesApotheon

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Art styles

Plastic-brick construction

Discrete parts, connection rules and plastic surfaces form a construction world. An original project needs its own part and connector language.

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• Unify part scale and connectors
• Make joins understandable
• Keep gloss off essential placement cues

Reference gamesLEGO® Builder's Journey · LEGO® Bricktales

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Art styles

Physical miniature production

Physical sets or figures enter games through photography, scanning or digital integration. Unlike digital dioramas, physical fabrication is part of the workflow.

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• Choose capture or scanning first
• Match physical scale and digital collision
• Unify lighting, camera and color management

Reference gamesLumino City · Harold Halibut

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Art styles

Soft-bodied toy 3D

Blunt forms, yielding contacts and physical motion make characters feel graspable. This digital treatment implies neither stitched cloth nor a particular soft-body solver.

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• Keep body masses simple
• Make contacts and weight shifts visible
• Distinguish actors with shapes and markers

Reference gamesHuman Fall Flat · Gang Beasts

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Art styles

Cinematic realistic 3D

Credible materials, anatomy, environmental scale and cinematographic lighting support realism. Cinematic framing still needs clear information for continuous play.

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• Establish scale and material references
• Light actors and routes clearly
• Match detail density to camera distance

Reference gamesRed Dead Redemption 2 · Kingdom Come: Deliverance II

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Art styles

Volumetric brushwork 3D

Brush-like marks and loose color masses help form spatial volumes with open, painterly edges. This describes a visual result, not one shared rendering technique.

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• Relate mark scale to object volume
• Keep moving contours readable
• Separate solids, atmosphere and effects

Reference games11-11 Memories Retold · Dreams

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Art styles

Wireframe digital worlds

Lines, grids and a few luminous surfaces define digital space. Designed structure and interaction hierarchy matter beyond a debug wireframe view.

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• Control line weight and density
• Encode functions with color
• Preserve depth through transparency and occlusion

Reference gamesRez Infinite · Darwinia

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Art styles

Point-cloud exploration

Sample points gradually reveal space, making observation part of exploration. This differs from continuous wire surfaces and random particle effects.

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• Use point density to explain surfaces
• Give sampled colors clear meaning
• Keep discovered routes traceable

Reference gamesScanner Sombre

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Art styles

High-contrast noir 3D

Strong values, selective detail and staged lights organize 3D space. Unlike flat silhouettes, cameras, cast shadows and volumetric occlusion keep changing.

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• Hierarchy comes from dark/light areas
• Separate essential edges from dark backgrounds
• Do not identify interactions by light hue alone

Reference gamesWhite Night · MADWORLD

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Art styles

Live-action video

Filmed performances become interactive through editing, search or branching. Video clips are the main assets; a cover is only a directional illustration.

See the traits

• Define clip/interaction structure first
• Maintain actor, wardrobe and prop continuity
• Keep subtitles and controls independently clear

Reference gamesHer Story · IMMORTALITY

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Covers are original AI-generated style illustrations. Game names reference publicly visible design choices and remain the property of their owners. This atlas does not supply screenshots or assets from those games. Prompts and combinations are original drafts for new games.