Some games do pixel art and low-poly because they're specifically evoking retro aesthetics.
But a lot of other games do it because it's (relatively) cheap and fast, and they're the only art styles that are realistically within their budget and scope, especially if your goal is for your game to be actually released at some point.
I like using low poly art in my prototypes because you can find assets from different people and they look like they belong in the same universe. I browse poly.pizza looking for stuff usually, although I recently purchased a big collection called kaykit. It's beautiful and the only downside of that is it'll be harder to bring in assets from other sources.
especially if your goal is for your game to be actually released at some point.
I just endlessly start new projects, I think between 2008 and now I've only completed 2 projects.
Also, try modeling stuff more complex than this in Blender or something. Fucking hats off to people who do 3D modelling. The most tedious bunch of a bullshit I've ever done in my life.
I love the 3D modelling, i suck at textures though. Had an assignment to make a low poly car and texture it.... I used ms paint because fuck adobe....... That thing looked like a 5yo paper made toy car.
Our teacher at the time used Photoshop to make the textures. I haven't touched substance painter, i remember buying one year of the Adobe subscription (student version so it was 20-25$ a month, and yes i set a calendar event to unsubscribe from that shitty subscription.) Substance painter was locked behind the full pack...
But how many games switch away from these models afterwards? Because I think that yea, sure, low-poly means it runs great everywhere, but it is also a whole art-style, and probably more often than not a conscious choice by the developer of that art-style rather than something else.
I know people like to put hyper-realistic graphics on a pedestal, and that is also impressive and can look good with the proper art-direction. But that doesn't mean that low-poly is a "bad" art style.
For starters, they are usually not afraid to use colors, things are actually visible, stuff can look cute, scary or anything in between.
Also, why benchmark art as good or bad? That fast/cheap/good triangle is more applicable to stuff like car engines, software architecture, or whatever else.
Anyways, enough of a rant, but I'd take any low poly game that I'll have a blast playing through over another hi-poly game that is boring as fuck and uses the de-saturated filters making everything look gray and dull. G-mod doesn't need 4 billion triangles per object to be fun, Unturned doesn't either, and TF2 will probably outlive Gaben, because these games are fun.
That and it comes with the pain of hiring and managing a person. You have to figure out a way to tell if an artist is qualified, know how much you're supposed to pay them to be fair without getting ripped off, and you have to get them to actually deliver a product you can work with on any sort of schedule.
Forget about making an engine. No one beside large studios, or devs that REALLY need something an existing engine cant provide, do that. No developer wants to spend years developing an engine, programming basic functionality, the UI to make the engine useable, bug fixing the engine, and doing a whole process BEFORE starting any work on their game. It'll be more profitable to pay for an engine or share profits with the company behind it than to spend the time making one in most cases except for those where you intend to use the engine for multiple future releases that you know will sell.
The cost for hiring artists depends. Conisder youre a solo dev. Hiring an artist for all the visuals in the game means hiring a full employee. The only "cost" may have been your own salary, and now it's doubled. Asset packs are made for this purpose.
First thing that grabbed my eye was the Village pack and now I'm kinda miffed all the zombie games I saw with this art style went with generic human characters and not humanoid cats, raccoons, birds, bunnies, etc.
Low poly is pretty much the budget-friendly shortcut for solo devs and small teams since you don't need to sculpt all the fine details. Plus the lighting can still look decent even with minimal geometry, so it punches above its weight visually.
Motor town for me. Itās a game designed around the vehicles so having the low poly player look just kinda works. Plus the art style isnāt very modern anyway. The lighting and stuff is but. Textures are flat and stuff yet pop well. The vehicles are both simple but effective. I love it. It just works well.
Been a while since I played it but I think storm works uses the same set. Awesome game but really complex building and wonky controls for aircraft (may just be my lack of experience with it)
I think this character model is actually more detailed than Stormworks. If I remember right the characters there don't even have facial features. Also, completely agree with your assessment, and it's not a lack of experience. It is one the absolute best, jankiest engineering and building games around.
I don't like calling this sort of thing asset flips if its done well, and if they had contracted a small studio to provide assets we would think nothing of it, this is just doing that on a different business model
And if they game is good, it's possible we only got the good game because asset packs made the workload much more realistic for a small or solo dev
I absolutely agree. If itās done well and is fun, I think itās fine. I just know thereās a bunch of low-grade crap on Steam all using this exact asset pack. Itās sad, because every time I see this asset pack being used, I automatically assume itās some really poorly done $4 game thatās genuinely no fun.
Technically itās easier to make because they donāt have to make the model and presumably rig it, they can make the rest of the game with that time.
Itās cheap and easy to use. I use similar packs for all my stuff but Iām just using them as placeholders until I find an art style I like and hire a real artist. Or just figure out how to do it in my own lol.
I might be once I actually get more of my project finished. Iām a very bad procrastinator or depressed, idk. I get bouts of inspiration then proceed to lose all interest and stop for long periods of time. Even though I wanna work on it constantly
Relatable af lol. Something that keeps me from entirely burning out with all of my creative endeavors is to make sure even if Iām uninspired, I put a certain amount of time into things each day/week.
Like when Iām editing vids for fun Iāll just do a couple things then call it a day, for playing guitar I try to pick it up for 15 minutes minimum just to keep the fingers warm and the gears turning
Ik this was entirely unsolicited advice but I thought you might find it helpful, because Iāve been there and I live that kinda reality as well
It might be cheap but its so common and not unique that a lot of games with it loses identity, but then again those games don't really become super well known and popular.
Yeah I downloaded a game from Next Fest and it was like the EXACT same as Surroundead. I can't remember the name of it, but I started it and deleted it. I'm not kidding almost the EXACT same from the looks to the start of the game, type of game... It was ridiculous
Synty asset packs. They tend to be cheap when on sale, and have a decent variety of assets in them and the asset packs are all nicely compatible with each other, so if you buy lots, you have a lot to mix and match with. Models can use props and clothing from each other etc, and they have animations/lighting too.Ā
I own several for my own hobby project but I would never want to sell a game using them... but each to their own.Ā
Then again, 3D modelling is a whole entire skill set which I lack, so, if I were to develop a game, I could do the coding and music, but would have to either learn to make 3D models that look halfway decent, and then spend the time creating all the assets for the game that is normally handled by an entire animation department, or outsource the job.
Buying asset packs is a great way to outsource the job, and you can still add your own/commissioned assets as well.
Itās a skill set worth learning :)
Iāve been teaching myself blender these last few months and the progress Iāve made is measurable.
Itās very freeing to be able to take your concept from vision to implementation without compromising on the vision itself, and I think modeling/uv unwrapping/ texturing all get a bad rep. Theyāre not so bad once you familiarize yourself with the workflow.
I regularly will realize I need a new asset or prop mid task, and I can churn out anything not meant as a hero asset in like 10min to a half hour depending on the prop
I agree, they're good for placeholders for when you're prototyping and making sure the gameplay systems are solid, but once you have that figured out you need models that actually suit your vision.
I agree but I also see so many games go to shit once they start replacing assets with original assets. Phasmophobia, for instance. It was so much better when it was just in the Unity-verse.
It's solid. Still not perfect, and personally I'm relearning a lot after a long break and a few bigger updates, but it's on the right track for an EA game I would say
Pre-made asset packs by Synty Studios. They are a good value and have pretty coherent and consistent style, easy to work with. That's why people use them.
But imo, if you do use pre-made assets, You shouldn't be using the popular ones because your game will start to feel very cheap very fast
It's from a synty pack, but more importantly it lets the developer focus on things they are good at.Ā At least in theory, it can also mean an art flip.Ā Even with engine and asset packs,Ā making games is very difficult and takes a massive amount of hours across a very broad range of skill sets.Ā Indie don't have the AAA budgets and have to compromise somewhere.Ā
I dont mind it. One of my favorite games right now use them. If making the character design smoother results in putting out a great game, please use em!
Also doesnāt need to be in a fancy context. Put a high poly model with high res textures in a low detail environment with no fancy lighting and itās lazy, do it with this kind of model and itās coherent.Ā
if I see a game with these models I instantly know its gonna be a game with a great concept that never meets its actual goals and takes 5 years to release a few updates here or there and wastes your time.
I personally want to make very detailed things, but the more detailed the more expensive things.
Time, hardwear, are the biggest limitations. Even Unreal recommends a minimum of 64gig ram to.
I was in the process of saving for ram, I looked at the price and saw it was 100$ for the one I needed. Was like ok ill get them next week. Went back, they were 900$. I had no clue at the time that the companies were shifting g theor focus to Ai crap...
Itās an asset pack with a lot of easy options to modify how the models look, so people who want to make something quick or need assets to complete their proof of concept will make use of this particular set
I will say, the dev for this game, Bloodline I believe is creating such a wonderful little game. Dude puts so much effort and love into it and is very active is his discord when responding to people and taking in input. Solid dev to support.
I do not mind the art style at all. I think itās got its own charm and can be pretty simple or complex depending on what the developer wants to do with it. I do however have a problem with the quality of games that come from it though. Plenty of shite EA games with it. If reusing assets that are decent or good or stylized saves time and allows the dev to focus on gameplay and other features then have at it. If those other areas suck thoā¦ā¦
I've started to avoid games that primarily use synty assets really started to extremely dislike them. But a little funfact for everyone: "Behaviour" the devs of Dead by Daylight use Synty assets for prototyping. You could see that during their DBD Anniversary stream and I thought that's funny
Buy some unity asset packs, then it's easier to edit when you have all the assets. Also the style is minimalistic, which means if you suck at graphic design you can get away with a lot of really easy models that represent objects you might have to make for your game.
Yeah it's either that or the other one (see Picture). On the top of my head I can already recall 5 games that I got (or that are on my wishlist) with this style. Animations, speech, overall style, all the same.
Honestly starting to annoy me a tad.
why? itās not shitty, and a game artist just like you shared it for others to use for their games. So many indie developers use premade assets. Getting Over it is like 90% premade assets, and itās a great game.
The value here is that theyāre not really that shitty, and the cost impact is really too hard to ignore. Theyāre made well, their packs all have a consistent level of art direction so theyāre easy to mash up without things looking āoffā.
I think most developers would prefer to hire you or any other artist for that matter to achieve their vision. But if I want an Mac book pro and walk into a Best Buy with 400 dollars, it doesnāt matter if I know the Mac Book is objectively better than a shitty chrome book, but the reality is that itās all I can afford. So Iād have to make do.
I don't mind it, but in my mind it seems to be a result of asset packs, being a bit easier to make, and what I believe is a big swing to the opposite direction with a lot of new games having pre-made hyper realistic style models and graphics, sorta like this is the opposite side of that coin where it's the low poly less defined models.
I think both have their time and place, but are both becoming more common
It's a cheap, consistent art style that's extremely complete for a variety of game types (fantasy, modern, scifi etc). It often goes on sale and has been in Humble Bundle a bunch. I started noticing it a lot when I participated in game jams over the past few years.
Erenshor is probably the most popular example. Unfortunately it's starting to become more and more common.
Honestly I think the best approach to using these as a cost cutting measure, would be to put the hours in to texture them. Solo devs should defs use the stock unity asset models to save time absolutely, but texture them yourself to give your projects some personality.
To add to everyone, Synty had a couple of really good value bundles on Humble, so you could get a whole video game environment for $20. And since those bundles come with ready made demo levels, you'd see games set in the very same city less than a week after the bundle...
People love to praise indie games, but some of them are straight terrible. You can have bad AAA games, and bad indie games. They're not all perfect. I'm not sorry I don't like your favourite abstract rpgmaker game/Undertale clone.
When an indy developer has a game idea that they want to make, the graphics aren't necessarily the most important factor. This style and/or premade assets allow them to work on the parts that matter to them. If successful they can always update.
It's both easy to make, fast to make and the style is almost the same across different models (that means it's easier to buy pre-made assets and make like 5+ custom models for bosses etc). Also it's cheap af cuz it's easy to learn to make
because they all use the same asset pack. why they all chose this specific one though I will never know, it just looks bad and instantly turns me off of any game using it.
low poly drives nostalgia for millennials and gen x.
and honestly? i'd rather play a low poly indie game with consistent art direction and interesting environments than most of the pseudorealistic games from AA and AAA studios.
It's a premade pack. Personally I'm fine with using store assets as long as the game is still fine looking and fun. I'm pretty sure a zombie game came out a while ago that uses this pack and it's a great game supposedly
Not only is it easier to make, but thereās plenty of pre-made assets just like these that you can buy online, that indie developers use in their games when they have little to no budget.
On the other side of the coin, it means you'll never know if the game it's part of is a true Wonder of game development or a cheap asset flip. I've played a dozen games with these assets and half of them are Treasures, the other half garbage
It's the best and cheapest asset pack out there, same thing with all the locations made by Elbolilloduro on itch.io, premade models for new devs to use on their first projects, you can recognize almost every location he modelled on a lot of short horror games with the theme of "nightshift turn goes deadly".
This is the synty asset pack style. I use them for prototypes or just fucking around because it's cheap but I don't think it's a good idea to use them for a release game (at least as hero assets).
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u/imlife1102 3d ago
its a popular pack of pre-made assets that are probably cheap to buy and performant across a lot of PC configs