In this work, we are asking the question: what constitutes innovative and genuine game art? Often, developers make use of existing designs and concepts to economize a game. This has led to large numbers of mediocre and imitative games, which make the market more homogeneous and confusing. What is the concept and the environment of the game? With respect to the ongoing research, the gameplay hinges on exploration. This is consistently implemented, which sets this game apart from others. A captivating folklore, supporting progress and safeguarding levels, supporting mood, and critically striking the confirmation to play the game, stood out during our initial evaluation of Tunic. This artifact is intended to provide a robust research contribution with respect to an in-depth evaluation of Tunic, a modern game title, pertaining to the research area of game art and design. This game is not just important for game designers to know what is possible visually, but to show them how to apply this knowledge to their own artwork. For that purpose, we focus on the visual design elements as they make up the visual appearance of the game.

Over the past years, the number of computer games as well as the overall quality has continuously risen. This work focuses on the art design and visual aesthetics of games. A popular master illustration is games featuring retro-style pixel art which makes the work on the picture ideal. Recently, we determined a modern title called Tunic that demonstrates how the art design and visual aesthetics of a game can expose innovative and genuine. We executed a complete evaluation and examined its individual features, attending to why they make up an amazing game art. For the statistical analysis, we scoped it to the art design and visual aesthetics as seen in the images of the game.

1.1. Overview of the Game

Tunic, which has not yet been released, was studied using data obtained from its trailer, images, and descriptions. In the study, we aimed to reveal how strong the visual aesthetics of the game were and show how the visual aesthetic concepts were used in the game. The game was aimed to be used as an example to show that a strong visual aesthetic could be achieved by working on the visual templates of games.

Tunic was liked by many people with its first announcement and was compared to The Legend of Zelda series. Tunic uses art and design at a high level to make the player feel these feelings. The game has a beautiful map and design with colors. These visual creativities show the power of the game and reveal realistic and dream-like structures. Tunic has stunning graphics in many aspects in terms of aesthetics. However, the most striking feature of the highly realistic graphics used in the game is their dreamlike and metaphorical structure. This solid and emotional narrative of the game allows the beautiful and dream-like landscapes, while rich graphic designs are presented to the players.

Tunic, developed by Andrew Shouldice, is an action-adventure game. In the game, players control a fox protagonist and make their way through a variety of increasingly challenging areas, fighting off enemies with a sword and shield, solving puzzles to progress, and uncovering new gear with which to defeat the enemies. The game was first introduced in 2018 and is planned for release in 2022.

In this study, the art design and visual aesthetic concepts presented in Tunic were examined. To achieve this, the game was played in order to observe its art design and understand its concept. Then, the Aesthetic Principles of Visual Design generated from Kemar and Tüfekçi (2018) were used in this study. As a result, it is seen that the Aesthetic Principles of Visual Design are used in the game. The suitability of these principles for games was found and the game was found to have a strong visual aesthetic.

The launch of games such as The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening and Super Mario Bros. led to a revolution in the game industry and the creation of the concept of visual aesthetics. The visual design of games is an important issue influencing the game experience. The attractiveness of visual aesthetics of games can help to enhance the experience of the game and work.

1.2. Importance of Art Design and Visual Aesthetics

The video game, with its versatility and technology continuously renewed, brings the potential of experiencing the visual and audio arts. It even offers the possibility of using this unique feature that fuses with the game and its mechanics or design. In designs where the visual aesthetics become flawless, the player might feel the need of watching for minutes, for example, the beautiful mountain top, creating a mental or actual photography session in a game. Such a design type eliminates the fear of losing something in a game. It is guaranteed that the game has both a visual appreciation in a game of this kind. The time that the designer spent on these systems brings unity and an attractive game to the player by creating a game that works perfectly with all the other aspects in the play-space mosque. Because after all, maybe even sometimes more than players address; visual is the most attractive, temperature it is also the most effective component that makes the game the game.

The significance of the visual and physical aesthetic factors in a video game design process has terms such as game art, visual style, visual design, and the implementation of the visual arts in a digital game. The primary terms that directly relate to the artistic side of the digital game are defined as game art, visual art, video game art, and art in video games commonly. The importance in digital game studies is crossing the borders of being only an option of a video game and becoming the missing piece people have been asking for after what culture and arts have been missing to unify; between culture, arts, and the digital era in which we do live. One of the standout facts of the video games is that they encapsulate all the current technological and cultural possibilities including arts. Its experience of cultural immersion enables the player to walk on an artistically designed canvas in both visual and auditory exactly, like an art painting.

2. Historical Context of Art in Video Games

In the following chapter, visual and artistic aspects in the video game field will be examined. As a result, the TUNIC game’s general artistic context has been suggested. With the game developed in China, it can be exemplified that visuality can be maintained in high quality not only in Japan and Western countries but also in the arrangement of simple designs of the tie, decorativeness, and minimalistic feature. In recent years, it has been in mind that compared to before, the games produced in countries such as Japan, New Zealand, Poland, Canada, and China can rival the most common developers (USA developer companies) frequently in terms of artistic perspective.

Throughout video game history, visual aesthetics and modern art have not been collateral concepts. It is known that art is an important tool in pleasing its targets or making them feel different emotions, and it is a game within its ability to do this. Generally, in contrast to the art that took place on other platforms, it can be examined that there is a difference in the concept of art within the platform, and it is more appreciated. This is also used as a factor to highlight the two areas.

2.1. Evolution of Art Styles in Video Games

Video games have a great deal of content in the form of visual images. This chapter focuses on our ability as viewers to recognize, detect, and understand the aesthetics and style of stylized graphics images of game scenes. This ability is important both for the enjoyment of game graphics and for the intelligence behind designing new issuance technologies. Surprisingly, little research has been performed on typical games with the development of the graphic-specific role that conveys information between humans, better understanding of aesthetic recognition, and game-related styles.

Stylization in art, animation, and graphics has long been used as a means to enhance realism in computer graphics and, relatedly, as an artistic style to be enjoyed for its own sake. Animation studios often seek to explore emotional depth in stylized representations by exaggeration, suppression, simplification, and typecasting. Stylized styles can encode greater amounts of information with fewer artifacts than other animation styles and are used to simplify the development of games for graphics intended to depict a specific era or culture. Stylized representations are also important in the promotion of brand recognition and division of labor, both goals for which viewers must be led towards certain interpretations of game graphics.

3. Artistic Influences in Tunic Game

The character and level designs in Tunic are familiar but refreshing and not too mainstream or common. The character of Tunic game, a small fox, includes a wooden weapon, a shield, a backpack, and clothes with a hat, all of which give him a lumberjack stylistic appearance. The characters are not fully animated, and all of these elements are 3D modeled in a low-poly basic geometric style. The character uses suits and animations of less than ten joint node counts. The game’s character design stays simple and only focuses on the essential character design elements. The visual simplicity of level and encounter designs is intimate, warm, and welcoming. Small islands on the ocean, the ridge next to the village of lone terrace, beach littered with rocks, or in one of the haunted woods… Every place tells a gentle story.

Tunic, a 2022 solo indie game by Andrew Shouldice, received a number of positive reviews from critics. In terms of its commercial performance, Tunic got high remarks from game players. A significant aspect of the Tunic game, according to its players and critics, is its aesthetics. In particular, the simplicity and visual aesthetics in the game art design, including the visual simplicity, minimalism, and complex nature in the level and encounter designs. In this chapter, based on various game designing literature, we will reveal the visual aesthetics of Tunic game and discuss some of the game design principles behind its strong visual aesthetics. The study will contribute to the literature by providing a single-indie game case and discussing its level and encounter design principles contributing to its visual aesthetics.

3.1. Literary and Folklore Inspirations

Media references in Tunic are from personal works of the team rather than from an attempt to recreate or evoke a particular work, being creatively different and evoking unexpected emotions. With its little pea coat, floppy hat, and Kirby-like powers and abilities, the cloaked figure will always catch the eye. Eye-catching game that instantly drew me in, and I couldn’t wait to jump around this vibrant and bell world. The game performed and flowed beautifully, and the world was one that would be a joy to lose yourself in. The visual charm, the sense of mystery, and the highly polished gameplay made Tunic one of the best games of the show. Tunic is ambitious.

Inspirations for Tunic were varied, with themes, influences, and specific inspirations brought into different parts of the making process. Below are some of the inspirations that have driven the many aspects of design that go into the art of Tunic. Tunic has a loving representation of archetypal fantasy metazoans. That is, Tunic’s visual style represents archetypal – quill-covered armadillos, beetles of all sorts, and the like. The game doesn’t break out of that box in its design vocabulary. Every enemy, every avatar, every effect is introduced to them as something they could encounter in a natural world. These visual touches are small enough to avoid visually distinguishing the game as alien or unfamiliar, but ingenious enough to be intriguing.

3.2. Cinematic and Animation Influences

Tunic is a Legend of Zelda-style isometric adventure game starring a cute fox. The art design is clearly inspired by classic 1990s JRPGs, as is much of the gameplay. The world is as colorful as it is fantastic, and the character design is equally impeccable. Tunic has a simple and approachable aesthetic, making it charming and interesting to players of all ages. Players play as a tiny (and very cute) fox trying to survive in a dangerous world. This is evidenced in the creatures you find, many of which are towering cats and crawling frogs that would terrify any player a little.

The CU is the RA’s robotic companion and one of the main characters of Tunic. It is also the character’s friend and the first character the player talks to. The developer of Tunic states that he gets inspiration from several sources such as the Legend of Zelda series. This mixture of influences has created a game that mixes nostalgia and a new proposal for the games industry. In this topic, we discuss the visual design of Tunic characters in comparison to Animal Crossing and film animation. The study shows that the Tunic character design is oriented to bring with the art style classic from traditional animation films, and the inspiration goes back to the artistic development of Animal Crossing.

4. Character Design in Tunic Game

‘To the past with a twist’ – this short sentence began to serve as a very concise memo to be remembered about the challenge Tunic’s visual identity had to surmount. The problem had been described and identified quite clearly. Most commercial games today have rendered background objects and backgrounds. The level of detail in this production has increased in recent years, but characters in action-adventure games (for instance, the most popular sub-genre inspired by Zelda) often remain very simple. Sometimes they simply lack a face.

Tunic is far from being the first game influenced by Zelda, and the necessity to create what designer Andrew Shouldice terms ‘an iconic character’ came about as a more organic side effect of developing certain aspects of Tunic’s theme and mood – the whole process of designing the visual identity of the game started as a manufacturing or a design challenge. Most commercial games have rendered background objects or backgrounds, and currently an increase in the level of detail in the production of scenes and characters is observed in both small-team as well as AAA projects. This paper will discuss motivations and decisions made in producing the art design and visual aesthetics of Tunic’s characters. A discussion about how such decisions may technically help the result to be pleasant in a traditional sense is impossible to skip.

4.1. Protagonist Design

The design of the game character is a recurrent concern in the literature when it comes to establishing guidelines for the improvement of games aimed at entertainment. When working with art design, it is necessary to create a symbiosis between the script and the instructions for creating characters. The player’s ability to have fun depends on art design, and when we succeed, the character or even the game’s story is able to elevate the overall experience and aesthetics of the game. Unlike written stories or theaters, games allow players to engage in the experience. They have visual control and often make decisions. A character must have a physique or image that provides security to the player. Whether it’s their physique or their dialogue, the player has to quickly understand the character of another character so that the interactivity can progress.

Games have existed for many years and are present throughout the improvement of human society. Nevertheless, developments in new entertainment technologies and employees trained to create them have attracted the game’s design process, from technical and non-technical visionaries to the creation of complex structures that try to guarantee that the game will be enjoyable, amusing, and above all, challenging players. Of all these structures, one of the most essential are the game characters.

4.2. Enemy and NPC Design

The gatekeeper was placed at the exit of the cave as a ready-to-force player to find a different route. They rise, look around, and roar at the player when they see the player, and suddenly move forward. Their larger wallet in Tunic was placed at the exit of the cave as a ready-to-force player to find a different route. They rose, looked around, and roared at the player when they noticed the player, and suddenly moved forward. They are tall and far enough to block the entire exit and make players feel worried about finding another way to reach after being caught by them. Their larger size allows players to see confirmation from the first few rooms; they are in a common area, and to warn lazy players that they may be a danger. They are often placed on physically darker thresholds to give players an intuitive clue of danger. We can imagine them standing in front of a theater in a ladybug costume, and the same idea seems fair—although they probably won’t be eaten by the hero afterwards. More pedestrian and draconian overlanding.

This Dinah head is inherently a major world enemy in Tunic because it likes to hide underground most of the time and then go out to find a hero to wear their hat and suppress to make a quick end when it finds a suspiciously clothed fox trying to bring them down. Genius intuition can add a special ability to the player, which allows them to avoid being worn by them. They need special moves to entice them out of the hole and move and flip underground back and forth in response to the player’s particular position. Their appearance should be sensitive and surprise the player, which means they look cute or slightly like dachshunds. But when they are really angry, they will shoot ice-breaking energy and pull the hair-hat down.

5. World and Environment Design

Responsible for ending the composition and extracting a harmony box with elements capable of promoting this harmony, it is the great wall covered with stone on the right side. The sky is reflected in the pond, providing a mirror part. On the right side of the picture, there is a swallow bird. Pushing the door of the temple overlooking the gate. The water is green with its reflections. The scenes are surrounded by natural elements. It is a stone bridge. In the way that the number and high wall will become two surprising elements in the end, cornering a private café. It is probably a large, wooden station with intertwined bridge elements. On the left side of the passage, there is a pond in the middle of the temple. A round carved from stone determines the postures of the lateral and colored tiles. With glass windows balancing the temple’s structure. On the left side of the frame, palm trees are always located next to other newcomer building elements.

Private spaces where communities are shaded from outsiders emphasize a private, isolated, and communal backyard, using a vertex cloud at the entrance created by the coral-labeled stones. Again, the community’s central entrance door is exempt and dominates the image. When the characters cross the bridge, they find a pond in the middle of the village. With that interaction, they show the screen’s path to the fourth stage. The frame sets the point of view of the second stage; looking down. This point of view is already pre-approved by the elements that compose the scene. The area that carries innumerable details names 27 elements that in addition to dyeing the screen delights the spectators. The show created base is a game present in two-dimensional drawings with a camera clipped by frustum placed in the middle of the point of view. The puzzle is complete and raises visual curiosity. Two windows capable of striking with the small flowers parading in the air. The peak of the beautiful mountain silhouettes the central structure. On the game field, there are four green bushes. The walls contain crenel magenta. And the balloons fly tied to strings, filling the sky by joining the lantern objects. Some of the secondary elements generate shadows. Two human figures chatting communicate the courtyard’s scale and a balance between the forms. From the lateral point of view in the rear area, the northern red roof lies on the ground. Then, on the left side of the direction, peach trees shape the open passage leading to the perpendicular. Shows other connected and intertwined wooden bridges: one protected by a fence and the other under the round top of the mountain. The base within structures is identified inside and integrated by five closed doors. In the lower-left area of the scene, there is a ladder suggesting a communication path to the secret courtyard in the woods.

Environment design aims for a stage of the game where the platform and characters are located, a stage where the story is told using items or objects, and a background that forms a composition using all these elements. Tunic is emphasized from an aerial view, and each chapter of the game tells its story by choosing different elements, although created in the same drawing. The entrance doors to the villages stood out from the elements presented in the images. First, in the first stage, where the entrance spot goes through the middle of the scene, a path filled with details is introduced in an upward slope. When crossing this path, there are two flags promoting the location. In the second image, the settlement’s entrance door is shown from an arbitrary and different point of view. The composition of the two presented images follows a positioning with visual harmony and a balance in the relationship between the characters.

5.1. Level Design Principles

Forming an unknown environment for the player, then shifting the excitement by bringing visibility or a particular landscape, is caused by the composition of the scenery. The views are like a kind of reward system for the player. Misplacement can disrupt environmental development discussions. The harmony of the mountains and trees, as well as the color distribution and structural differences, goes beyond aesthetic concern. They draw attention to the constraints and restrictions that the user may encounter in the zoomed-in view or location system of the game. This is in line with the critical point of what kind of assets to import and use, considering the visual field restrictions in open-world 3D games.

In the Tunic game, the visual aesthetics make both screenshots and video composition similar to popular concept art works. Moreover, the isometry of the Tunic game, in addition to the colorful environment, creates similar images to the landscape area of miniature villages. The color diversity of the trees and the architectural differences of the buildings in the forest, mountain, and snowy environments increase the environmental visual richness. Balance symbol, animal, character, rune, or animation modifications distinguish the audio-visual memory of gameplay levels.

5.2. Environmental Storytelling

The visual conflict in this scene is tied to when the bear stopped and what the path looks like. The path should suggest the heat of the desert causing dehydration. One working idea is maybe to switch from the ‘normal’ shader to the desert shader at points where Fruit Bears heal up. If the area has «progressives» (refill points), I could use the distance to the progressive as a multiplicative value. Trying to show progression in a couple of different ways, some being covered in other parts. For instance, if the area has had an artwork pass done, and colored/overdrawn to «light it» where suddenly it was mostly dark and desolate. At feeding places, a player can potentially give water to others.

In Tunic, the environmental storytelling aspect is tied to early 2D Zelda games. The player is able to draw conclusions about what happened in a certain area and why from the location design. Visual storytelling through areas and items may be akin to «show, don’t tell», but it’s more «show, tell, and ask». The setting provides the context and asks the player to fill in details that may interest them, and to do so at any pace they like, adding a layer of replayability. The fruit bears have their final resting place pre-defined. To reinforce this ending of the narrative of the bears, the animated lifelessness of the bears should stop at the spot where they lie down.

6. Color Theory and Palette Selection

There is a limited relationship between the two sectors. One can learn from the design expertise, and the other can provide creative exploration space. In the game Tunic, there is no color theory and selection as the main work. The use of color is limited to the practice of exploring intuitive palettes by artists. In pinlight layer blend mode, by tiling copies of color layers, the game sets different color schemes for different levels of the scene, which were used as an auxiliary design of shadows and terrains. At the same time, the design uses the white diffuse and texture map as a highlighted guide to enrich the level of the shadow and make the plain scene levels vibrant, creating a lively visual effect.

Color has an important place in a video game, both visually and functionally. It has the functions of defining form and differentiating elements on the screen, conveying emotions and narratives, and guiding, controlling, and informing players in interactive media. O’Connor and Hierono have described the colors that appear in the game Tunic and their roles. The character’s skin color, enemy health color, and enemy attack color mainly play a role in the game. Besides, they distinguish the color groups of food and puzzles and describe color in the form of grouped texture screenshots at the scene level. In this way, they looked inside the game, but there were fewer color concepts, and the application of color was not deeply explored.

6.1. Impact of Color on Player Experience

Blue and purple are not used at any other location. Tinting the water in the wider section of the level with sky blue weaves through the landscape and gives the vista depth. The afterimage nature on the black, marking the limit to the area, is so that the player immediately knows they will not be returning there. Contrast after the leaves in close or just a sense of life in the image. Adding silhouette shapes to the left and right of the path will help to ground the metaphor. With the sun at the front door hiding behind a cloud, this ‘illustration poster’ piece would benefit from a more direct light. The character’s pose wouldn’t need to be that dramatic either if a gentle path is close by. With a weaker background, this space could be a focus for a future illustration of this level. The goal of this system is to entertain and provide decorative pathways, landmarks in the landscape that tie with the compass image and a natural-looking way to navigate the level.

We discuss the art design and visual aesthetics of Tunic. The enduring appeal of 3D games can largely be tied to the graphical quality and the visual aesthetics of the games. As a game designer and artist collaborating together, the experience of playing the game and the visual aesthetics of its game world will constantly be iterated as the game is being developed. This is especially true in an experience-driven game like Tunic. The inability to see another side of a block is obvious. The space is read easily. It is clear where the pathway continues and how to traverse it. Contrast (between the character and the environment) has an impact on player experience. The character might be read better if the environment had less contrast. The pose is relatively difficult to read on the green grass. It would help the reading on this specific piece if the path had less saturation after being curved.

7. Animation Techniques in Tunic Game

Visually, a game’s animation standpoint provides feedback to a player about what’s happening in a game. Making animating characters and objects seem more natural and realistic enhances a user’s cognitive experience. Specifically, accurate animation representation of 3D character models can help describe what their internal racing cars’ state is in the player’s mind. Detailed graphics of bones in a moving object help perceive a movement that a player is trying to perform, so that a general understanding of gaming space can be performed. If the animation representation of a model is simplistic, it will fail to correctly illustrate the full range of possibilities the player is used to seeing from real entities.

We will in this part show how to animate some game entities in Tunic. We will cover four types of display techniques, and for accelerations, we will be dealing with truncating calculation. We will see how to display a mesh by a combination of vertex interpolation and texture mapping. We will also introduce other display techniques for displaying 3D meshes. We will describe how we deformed 3D meshes to adapt changes in armature configuration necessary within the animation of game.

In this chapter, we have covered some fundamental graphics related to computer game development. Most of the explained concepts were oriented around static visualization like 3D or 2D graphics as a static image. But one of the most significant differences between a computer game and other forms of media is that a game is a dynamic, interactive experience. This has made demand for real-time, high-quality computer graphics a leading area of research and development for computer science. In interaction with static graphics which are used in movies, ads, or commercials, dynamic and interactive graphic environments are necessary. This implies an additional constraint on drawing static scenes, because there are more frames that have to present a realistic behavior.

7.1. Character Animation

A general overview of the character animation pipeline for Tunic, detailing how character animations are made. The task is to find a concise, easily understandable way of introducing the players to Tunic’s character visuals, and how these characters will be interacted with inside the game. Looking at the project holistically, the game design is for high action, retro-style combat, while also trying to make the process of finding life simpler by making the characters deceptively simple. The characters are going to look simple, as another and more efficient way of saying it, is to say that the Tunic character sprite sheets will be a maximum of 4 x 8. Idling is considered, body movements (including swinging a sword to attack) are examined and jumping is discussed. The typical camera view during gameplay is also illustrated and explained. The result is an interesting and informative video that gives a solid foundation for creating characters.

The animations for the little fox main character in Tunic were inspired by Japanese fox lore and also 3D printing output. The video acknowledges the early work of colleagues at other studios and then guides viewers from model to animation pipeline to the final product. Types of animation for bipeds considered include running, walking, idle, hit, jump, turn to camera, landing, and running to camera. The little fox model is constructed with as few polygons as possible so that dynamic normal maps can be created from the high resolution model using ZBrush. Morph targets, to fine tune some aspects of motion, are then created by hand using ZBrush software. The model is then put through a decimation process to reduce the polygon count. Animation is performed on the base model to avoid conflicts between the base animations and any animations that use morph targets. This is critical for game animations to minimize memory usage while ensuring that the shapes remain unaffected. Simplicity is key in establishing the visual aesthetic for the game while also appearing professional and detailed.

7.2. Environmental Animation

The primary environmental component that is animated or parallaxed in Tunic is world models, separate animated parts in the environment don’t animate/parallax. The term «world model» was used mostly because earth was the first model to be given a moving flower and «world style» and «environment model» are awkward names for a directory to hold models. It also implies that entity/shading models exist to sort of leave it «infiniworld». Tunic does need many of its objects to animate as the player can interact with them and the object’s action when no entity is available comes from the model animation. When entity objects are available, they will move through the scene up model and mask that fades away as inputs as tricks used to help the player and ensure these models don’t flash out of existence when moving between object and entity controlled status.

The last bit of work we’ll touch on for animated environments is making the view distance of the model and the model mask fade away in and out as we walk around. Forgetting to do this consistently is fairly easy to do and you might end up with the view distance stuck on for all of the scenery. It’s just a refinement though and the same process is used as for world model fading. There is a single view distance and model mask and they’re the same scale so there isn’t anything awkward to worry about beyond having the view distance in a model set. As with all fading, it’s best to pull the object transform away to ensure it doesn’t end up in world space when moving into an entity and get blended.

8. Sound Design and Music Integration

This week, I mostly sat down and spent a good bit of time honing the designs of lots of objects in the game, finishing up a first pass to make iterations I like on pretty much all of them. None of the individual objects again are particularly complicated or difficult, but taken all together it’s really a fair bit of work to make them all look and act the way I want them to. However, it’s all essential work, too, part of the integral composition of the game, itself a tapestry of many details and ideas, both intricate and mundane all woven together. Of course, also as the implementation is completed, using the most wow factor-laden software tools – which, being a game company of one, is often just typing as fast as I can whenever I can!

In the game, you are naturally going to spend a lot of time running around, hitting stuff, picking up objects, fighting enemies, and solving puzzles. Because of this, it is very easy and very common for an action-adventure game like Tunic to put very heavy emphasis on the visual design and the functionality of all these kinds of devices and obstacles in the game. In the ideal case, this investment of time and effort will make the puzzles, enemies, and environments seamlessly integrated into the fabric of the world. This process can range from the simple creation of visual assets, all the way up to building very complex enemy AIs and mechanical devices that can move, break, rotate, change states, explode, fire, track other objects, and many other complex interactions.

Basically, this week, I wrapped up some of the work I discussed last week and then did a bit of tooling to help test and develop the game going forward. I also spent some time working on various things related to promoting and marketing the game.

8.1. Role of Sound in Immersion

Exploration involves the possibility for the player to get lost and forget critical goals. All efforts on the art design and visual aesthetics of an environment are only useful when players are engaged and willing to take the time to explore, looking for hidden places or executing combos. In open-world games, where exploration is a big part of the game, perceived audio quality increases ratings in assessments of a sound source in a game. When people hear the same music while doing a repetitive task, they think their workload is decreased. This is a measure of how audio indicates that things are going well. More importantly, music is an indicator of political and mental identity, forcing the player to compromise with the character. This interaction, in turn, leads to deeper gameplay. When considering that meaningful audio feedback can enrich gameplay, achieving the necessary tools to handle the peculiar workflow involved is of utmost importance.

9. User Interface and HUD Design

For ordinary windows and menus, the power button indicates the possibility of inactivity of the game or the command to turn off the device. The game does not have save points or automatic saving, in order to save game progress, it is necessary to complete the lost level again. Because of this, it was decided to use the power sign, on the one hand, as a reminder of the manual saving of outdated games. The idea of immersion of the game space is the rejection of the list of tasks and, as a result, the rejection of the window of the list of tasks, inventory, and equipment. The idea of reflection of the main events of the game is to use unusual cinematics and stage names at the beginning of the scene. Due to the minimalistic design of the cinematics and their pretty unusual, formal embodiment, it was necessary to animate the cinematics, detail the stage names, as well as increase their monitoring.

The design of the user interface implements support for gamepad-style input only. The design of the user interface was necessary in order to display only the most important information, while at the same time leaving a significant part of the game space free of graphic details of the game world. In the case of immersion, minimalistic graphical design, which is of great importance, especially due to the almost complete absence of text, carried only on the creation of visual arts. The mini-map is based on the same map level, which is generated after the character dies, increasing the level of the game in which the player dies.

9.1. Usability and Accessibility Considerations

Participants in this study had the option of trying the trading card deck and canvas print of the game without color in the game’s logo. It is important to maintain the flat shapes that make up the yin and yang of Tunic, a style choice usual in the game’s interface but somewhat controversial for the type of focus group run. Although only eight testers participated in this iteration, previous user tests and discourse in the game dev community regularly bring up the desire to showcase simultaneous consideration of action and reaction stylings within logo designs. Results from this research suggest color preference improvements in logo design, specifically tested with color-auditory synesthetes, who claimed to be indifferent, but may still profit from the experience of heightened associations with their influences in the game. Providing that context by combining a preference test with an associative memory task could reveal more about logo color’s influence. Several visual syntax investigations have already existed and skills learned can be applied across multiple platforms. Moreover, it is not mandatory that any video game made remains completely colorless.

We recognize that there is more than one way people experience graphics in a game. Some players might want to know if a symbol or a high contrast pattern is being used. Classical guidelines for providing alternatives in communication to individuals who have any type of disability come in handy. Recommendations to make content MMI-D (Multi-sensory, Multimodal, and Identity Driven) should be considered during the game’s development for designers to create inclusive experiences.

Considerations of Usability and Accessibility:

In this section, we’ll explore Tunic’s art and interaction design through the lens of user experience and accessibility. We first examine design choices that maximize legibility and usability for gamers with a broad range of visual or auditory functional differences. We then venture into the directionality and visual impacting effects of the game’s art, comparing findings with underlying artistic techniques.

10. Marketing and Promotion Through Visuals

Tunic uses an idyllic art style from which the inspiration comes from a combination of inspirations but mainly from A Link to the Past, which has been referenced in multiple interviews. What has been striking about the art style was the game’s introduction to be vastly different from the art styles used by the genre. The game’s initial art style has been seen as stunning by multiple veteran developers from the industry. This initial art style allowed the upbringing of hype for the game and made the game unique next to its fellow competitors. Host Michele Morrow tracks the game’s journey back to the first reveal, closing out with an interview with Andrew Shouldice. From that interview, a more complete description of the game’s art style was presented with Andrew describing the game’s look as having atmosphere, mood, and art. This presentation created more interest among up and coming game designers and programmers. From the fervor, Tunic got put on multiple «Games A Designer Should Play» lists. The use of an isometric perspective is very rare in the early stages due to technical limitations. With those limitations solved, the game world is fleshed out and recreational players and professional game designers are impressed with the game’s visuals. The use of a charming and extraneous soundtrack is then added to the game to magnify visual differences, helping emphasize how the game design and visuals blend into the visual style and aesthetics. With the development of the game continuing and visual changes sometimes in mind, these visual designs were at times overshadowed but have a big impact on the game.

In Tunic, the visuals are really striking. Both the use of isometric perspective and art direction really grabbed our attention. There is a lot to talk about; from how visual style was used for making unique games to how visuals were tweaked to be different, on the marketing front. Tunic uses polygonal graphics with no textures and a toon-ish shader. There is not a lot of detail. Each environment uses a limited color palette. While the character designs use different colored clothing, there is the same use of the color grey. The pause menu further minimizes the aesthetic by using a minimalist approach to displaying the selected items by only using the outline of each item on the player and the glowing outline around the item in the inventory bar. This minimalist approach is no better seen than this image which shows a clean set of entries, and how the game is utilizing the space.

10.1. Creating Compelling Trailers and Screenshots

Every game trailer contains a unique perspective of an in-game world that aims to thrill and attract players, igniting passion and excitement to jump in and explore its virtual universe. The philosophy we adopted to create our promotional assets is to offer as clear and appealing a view as possible of a detailed and lively scene, within the frame of a character-driven game. To achieve this, we stack layers with different opacities that interact with light, using planes placed in the foreground to balance the composition, generating a high-definition and clear character, unobscured from the visually busy scene. We connect the elements through the shimmering light that filters through the vegetation, interacting with the character, and expanding the image’s storytelling. Finally, we use a master photograph composition where the character appears like a painting placed inside an art frame, highlighting the game’s visual aesthetics and involving the player in exploring the virtual world. Indeed, we think communication is an art, and, as E. Goffman writes, it gives the idea of the whole while leaving something to the audience’s imagination.

In this section, we present work in progress exploring art design and visual aesthetics inspired by Tunic, a visually arresting and beautiful game currently in development. In particular, we discuss the balance of detailed in-game content against a visually busy background, a challenge in the creation of compelling game trailers and key art mockups. To address this challenge, we present techniques to simplify and clarify the scene, with the aim of striking a visually harmonious balance and making the in-game content as clear and appealing as possible.

11. Reception and Critical Analysis of Art Design

We wish our analysis to be viewed by all as a benchmark. However, our analysis is keen. The restricts and potentials of task face analysis had before been highlighted. The rapid rise of Game Studies publishing may also give the impression significant for the future of this field. One could, however, doubt if the quality of publications current in 2021 is yet upward. If, for that reason, participants in this investigation would like us to reach their personal studies, we are eager to discuss them for potential publication in IQ Development. Some stunning questions, however, persisted until the extremely end.

Tunic has achieved broader excitement within the video game industry and enthusiast inhabitants, notably since Reigelman’s triumphant association with Finji. As a result, Tunic has been broadly included in various scientific and industry conferences, concerning, for instance, design, art, musicology, usability analysis, literature, sociology, or Artificial Virtual and Augmented Reality. Between 2015 and 2020, a search on PhilPapers, Google Colab, Scopus, and ResearchGate databases identified 196 publications whose designs, characters, sights, and different art-connected details could be found in Tunic. The confusions and player designs presented by Tunic enthusiasts and industry specialists look to be, however, fully underestimated.

11.1. Reviews and Player Feedback

Ritual_Gamer, an artificial developer, pointed out that «Something about the aesthetic of Tunic is just so absolutely pleasing to me, literally every piece of art they show from it leaves me in a state of being enamored» suggests: «I cannot believe how incredible Tunic is visually.» Ohridt_dungeon mentions: «One goblin has shoes, shelves appear in other areas, this is all charming! The best thing is that tail rabbits do not turn and do not look at the goblin.» The.html argues that the game is going to be perfect, even its small details most find useful, practical, and also artistic beauty in the way to bring the game closer to reality by creating experiences. It’s detailed that the artist made some cool gif illustrations with a little fashion, animals are animated to check their hiding places before firing projectiles. быть Gurok has planned to add a pixel picture on its wall and mentioned that it is a «beautiful aesthetic and experience that might at least remind me of the Tunic game» and «We’re anxious to play the Tunic!» aesthetically categorizes the game as «Dreamy» and «GORGEOUS.» There will be a Nendoroid of a monkey, the character has «multiple expressions and a set of other parts that can be used for various scenes and situations,» said goodsmilecompany. Furthermore, merchandise will not be missing, and it will be possible to acquire figures, bags, watches, telephone cases, mouse pads, among other items.

In a video, Nick Ha, creator of Tunic, shares a bit more about the game’s creation, the story, and gives a look at where and how it all began. The video portrays the game development process, how the indie designer created the wonderful landscapes, the fox’s movement style, attacks, UI details, the little towns, storages, OBA, how forests were drawn using pixel art, showing that most parts of the game are based on Tunic’s art design. Humble Games (2021) discovered the power of love between indie developers Joel and Luisa and the game. Joel releases Tunic’s soundtrack, which became known by its backers simply by Luisa reading reviews. There is a fashion called Tunic in Animal Crossing, and the character stayed with the same clothes once they found it. Sudral mentioned that «I really want to try the game» and «I just can’t wait to play this game.» The fact that it was considered a «very beautiful game with great visual tweaks, camera angles, and adorable details» supports the statement: «We look at all the detail in the game, and everything seems imbued with love, with single-color lighting through the windows. The sun is rising and setting.»

Tunic is a fantasy adventure about a small fox on a big journey and features an original soundtrack by composer Joel Corelitz. It was unveiled in 2018 and it’s expected to be released soon. The game was spotlighted in the Aesthetic section of the Indie Game Market report by Game C’ntrics (2020). Aesthetic preferences are essentially individual opinions, meaning that what is considered by some as art may not be seen as such in the eyes of others. However, as it can be seen from the case studies presented, Tunic received several positive reviews and player feedback on its aesthetics, art direction, and visual appeal. Game Rant (2021) praised the game, stating that «This pixelated look, combined with the game’s isometric perspective, gives the world a diorama-like appearance that is immediately appealing. Tunic’s art direction is a real strong point, one that sets it apart from other indie games.» The New York Times (2018) classified it as the best of E3, stating that «With its striking, stylish isometric views, Tunic captivated everyone who saw it, from the press to the people manning the booths.» TheWindowsClub summarized the game as «It would not be surprising to see Tunic being part of the top indie games ever released. The stylistic visuals are rather picturesque with well-thought-out art directions.»

12. Future Trends in Art Design for Video Games

On the other hand, due to the rapid commercialization and globalization in the field of video games, more new development companies and young developers enter the game development industry every day, making the competition harsher every day. With longer development cycles and heavy investments required, the gaming industry is responsible for developing more efficient methods to foster the creation of profitable and beautiful games. Significant research technologies of producing beautiful images include reinforcement learning, which can generate realistic portrait images, and artistic style transfer techniques, which can quickly stylize a photo to mimic a famous artist’s oil paintings. We anticipate technologies from these games and other general art-related fields will be widely adopted by game developers in the future.

The video game industry has been on the rise and has surpassed the motion picture industry in terms of revenue, bringing in more than $100 billion each year. Video game design has become an important field that evolves from computer science and art design and involves a multifaceted skillset that includes programming, visual aesthetics and art design, story generation, sound design, and many more. However, media in natural language and visual form, such as artsy review and image reviews, instead of quantitative data, heavily dominate research publications in art design. As a result, current research provides only limited understanding into art design and visual aesthetics, as well as the impact of different aesthetics or art designs on the success of a video game. Even for art-driven fields such as digital humanities and cultural analytics, the highly specialized nature has often resulted in cases where most of the relevant work focuses on a few domains, while works geared towards studying video games are just a few.

Our review provides perhaps the first high-level effort on art design and visual aesthetics of video games and presents our findings in a consolidated multi-dimensional space. We anticipate new techniques and novel models arising from recent advances in computer vision, language, and AI to significantly enhance the art design capabilities in the near future. Moreover, the rapid developments in augmented and virtual reality, together with the continuous improvement in game design and mechanics, will further elevate the entire production quality of video games and bring more aesthetic and artistic impact to society.

12.1. Emerging Technologies and Artistic Possibilities

Particle effects will be important; work will also be done on the concepts of dynamic illumination and on extensive simulation with high sightlines that can simulate the vapor in the air. Horses, fog, and plants will change at different times of the day. The quality of these different elements will determine when they will be used in the project and modified. Imagine having the same level of detail and quality generated from the own models in collision and animation. The point is that such rich and detailed models require a high cost to run performance on existing hardware. With new process equipment, the types of visual richness listed above may be possible at a very low cost when used in combination at no cost.

One of the main goals of Tunic’s technological development will be memory optimization. It is essential to make a very complex game with a small team. The guiding principle in Tunic’s art design is to produce a seamless, stylized world, and the developers want to achieve this with an extraordinarily rich level of expected graphical output. The objective is to incorporate various elements of advanced techniques in the game as a whole instead of small parts of its creation.

Tunic is a game that will adopt available technologies with excellence, exploring all the potential they present. Because of that, it is beneficial to engage in the discussion of what the upcoming jump of visual processing can be and what the game visuals can represent in the middle of the exaggerated increase in hyper-realistic output games. Even if those games are not the type of game that you want to make, attention and care must be devoted to experimenting, the development of aesthetic and design in visual solutions, and at the same time working on a paradigm shift that can influence the direction the game might take in the future.

Emerging technologies make it possible to test the limits of digital visual creation and to overcome them. Artists can now create characters and environments that were only abstract possibilities a few short years ago. Today’s consoles and desktop computers are increasingly powerful, and no one doubts that the leap over the next decade will be even greater.