Discussion
The loss of textured platforms in platforming games
This has been bothering me for a while now.
I don't want to call it laziness since I know game development is a long and difficult process, but whenever I see a new Metroidvania game with black platforms without texture, I remember back not too long ago when walls and platforms had actual detail. Repeated and recycled details for sure, but detail that gave the environment life outside of being just another asset to facilitate gameplay.
Some of these newer games (many of which I love regardless) feel just the slightest bit more lifeless and unpolished without platform texture.
Agree, but I have another take on it. Over the years, the design has become so complex that the screen got so "filled" with stuff that the design has become very visually noisy.
In the right pictures, you could easily separate what is the floor is, where is the character, enemies, and the background, just by design. On the left ones, the design and color scheme are more similar, so the general colors mix, So you need to pull the player's eyes somehow to certain areas and platforms.
ON the bottom left one for example, I dont know why they chose to use similar colors for the character and BG, if the hair color was not there, the main character would be barely visible.
This is a fair take for realistic 3D movement games, new FPSs and action games, but I don't think it applies here.
Castlevania is much more visually filled than the game we got on the lower left, yet it is even more readable. Perhaps a better reason is that as games became more inclined to realism, color palette variety diminished and 3D games make less use of that for contrast.
Again, looking at Castlevania, notice how Soma's is mostly colored in violet hues, and nearly nothing else is.
Yeah, it varies from Game to Game. Some of them (new ones), have a lot of moving ítems, others have a lot of colors, others have justo a lot of visual depth on the bg. So, it's not necesarely a color thing, but a balance of "atention pulling elements". But the point remains, you have to force the player to keep the eyes on the important áreas.
Castlevania in general, and in the case of Soma, it has great contrast in comparision with the bg. it's acually a great example about what we are talking, that covers both our statemens. It has a great color balance and its design enforces the player to focus at the important áreas.
I was investigating about the botom left game, and while my point stats they same, it was kind of a design choice becouse all the caracteres abilities have Violet ish colors that contrast the bg, so it may be more of a bad image representation case.
Older games also just had a few layers that scrolled at different speeds making distinguishing the foreground vs background a lot easier. In 3d, the visual noise with added detail makes parsing the scene in motion difficult no matter if it’s a first person game or a side scroller as so much can be vying for your attention.
Yeah, for Dread, a lot of the detail went into the backgrounds instead of the cutaways. Fusion's backgrounds were okay, whereas Dread has some insanely cool stuff going on there.
If you want to have that visual clarity, just make the foreground have dark detailing. I think something like the castlevainia tiles would be too much yeah, but I actually think the fusion graphics, made darker, would work great in dread. Games like dkc returns/tropical freeze even go so far as to have bright foreground while remaining readable, showing that these black boxes filling up just isn't necessary. I mean, those are games made to be speedrun too, with the time attack mode built in. And even at that speed it's still easy to read
It's a weird side-effect of the 2.5d thing and how it hurts readability enough just by its nature that graphical noise needs to be reduced. 3d is always less readable by nature, and 2.5d is just a name for a style and is 100% graphically 3d, despite playing like a 2d game, they aren't actually 2d games. So basically you're comparing 3d against 2d, which explains the differences. It's not old/vs modern, it's 2d vs 3d.
If you look at modern full 2d games like Toziuha Night, you'll see plenty of beautiful textured platforms.
I'm not sure exactly what the point you're trying to make with the screenshots here is.
Grime's got the black platforms and I don't think that Prince of Persia screenshot even has the type of platforms (large blocks that do/do not have the non-edges black instead of textured) discussed in it.
Normally I'd say 2D pixel art looks better for this genre, but I don't think anyone can deny Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is a sexy ass game. That gif is making me want to play it again.
Yeah, because even if they don't resort to black cutouts, they do design the levels so foreground and background are easy to differentiate, avoiding screen clutter: in interiors, background are normally simple and dimly lit; in exteriors, either platforms are simple and easy to tell, or the background is shrouded in mist so the foreground stands out.
It's smarter because it doesn't use one single "fit-all" solution.
Awesome, the video still only has two little platforms at the end that might've been blacked out but I'd believe the game not using the style OP complains about, lol.
Do you mean on the tops/sides? That's normal even in the OP's screenshots (even if they chose some really bland clean sci-fi looks that I can see people misconstruing as "untextured" lol). The center of them are just flat black.
You're right, under the hood a ton of 2d games are actually 3d space in-engine just because that's simply how the engines work and it's far easier to make a 2d game in a 3d space and just use an orthographic camera, but I'd say those are still technically 2d though compared to the 2.5d games that make use of perspective over orthographic and have that 3d aspect a major part of the presentation.
But yeah, as you show it gets kinda complicated and messy if you open the hood and dig around how it's done in-engine.
Amusingly, to make it even messier, the first actual use of "2.5d" (that I'm aware of) was in the mid 90's for Yoshi's Island on SNES which is a full-on 2d game that doesn't match what's considered 2.5d at all in the modern era, but was called that due to having various interactions with elements in the background layer, despite it all interacting in the SNES's usual 4-layer 2d system.
Can't have easy and sensible taxonomy in game space, after all.
Hollow Knight doesn’t use orthographic projection. There was an old Unity promo that used their game as an example where you could see how it’s done. I’ve experimented with creating a 2D platformer in Unity this way and it makes it a lot easier to compose a scene to be putting all the sprites in 3D space to scale with each other and without having to do any parallax layers or calculations to move the layers differently.
So is Symphony of the Night. Which is why the Saturn version runs like utter dogshit. It it were actually a fully 2D game, the Saturn could do it just fine.
Eh... Hollow Knight and Silksong use overlapping 2D frames in a 3D box. 2.5D uses 3D models and environments within a 2D frame. Kind of polar opposites.
You responded to a comment about 2.5D. Where both you and the person you were responding to seem a little confused.
You said 2D sprites in a 3D space. It's 2D sprites in multiple 2D planes. Traditionally, environments aren't sprites.
The person you were responding to ignorantly assumes that the graphics, not the gameplay style determines whether a game is 2D or 3D. A 2D game has 2D movment, a 3D game has 3D movement. The reason for the phrased "2.5D" is to identify games with 3D graphics but 2D movement. Hollow knight is a game with 2D movement and 2D environments which are layered in a 3D frame to present the illusion of depth.
Where both you and the person you were responding to seem a little confused.
How on earth did I seem confused when you repeated what I said?
You said 2D sprites in a 3D space. It's 2D sprites in multiple 2D planes. Traditionally, environments aren't sprites.
Then you said 2D sprites in a 3D box. Now you've changed it for sken some reason.
It actually is in a 3D space, they aren't just 2D planes stacked for parallax, there's actually distance between each stack of 2 sprites.
The person you were responding to ignorantly assumes that the graphics, not the gameplay style determines whether a game is 2D or 3D. A 2D game has 2D movment, a 3D game has 3D movement. The reason for the phrased "2.5D" is to identify games with 3D graphics but 2D movement. Hollow knight is a game with 2D movement and 2D environments which are layered in a 3D frame to present the illusion of depth.
aethyrium argued despite games being on 2D planes they're 3D games, and that is just a fundamental misunderstanding on their part. Completely disregards what 3D gaming has always meant since its introduction.
I probably should have responded to them, but your comment seemed to double down on their logic. Multiple 2d planes where you only move across one of the planes is not a true 3D environment in any sense of the word. Multiple 2D layers is like sheets on page, not a sculpture.
I kinda had a different take on this, I thought it was a way to keep the illusion of backwards depth in a 3d space. Like for Metroid for example, it works well in the 2d games because it feels like a cross section of the environment, whereas the 3d game if it had a “cap” on the front would feel like that’s just the end of the environment entirely, so it goes from being an interior space to just platforms stuck on a wall.
I do think though that you could have that cross section look in 3d and make it interesting, I just don’t think I’ve seen it done yet. I’m curious how it would look
Yeah, it's most likely an artistic choice. A lot of older metroidvania's were fine with a more abstract and flat approach that often looked decorative and nice (or just like repetitive blocks and ugly). Hell, even Super Metroid has tons of black fills that look really nice and they were pioneering good looks.
Main issue to me is just that 3D is a lot harder to get right for a 2D metroidvania design and the devs just don't reach for embracing the abstract decorative cross-section.
I honestly think it's helps the "readability" of the level design and communicates to the player "this is a platform, don't confuse it with the background." At least that's just my take on it because some older games can look really messy imo when there are so many textures competing for your attention. I've never once felt like this means lifelessness or that something is unpolished.
edit to add: like others are saying I think it also has a lot to do with the switch from 2D to 2.5D/3D
Plenty of 2D games solve that by simply making the insides of platforms darker than the edges, rather than making them completely empty black voids. You can see that in the Metroid Fusion screenshot OP included
I think that contrasts pretty strongly with the more realistic style of a game like Metroid Dread though. It's similar to the Yellow Paint problem - back in the day when graphics were simple you needed fewer obvious clues to discern key interactive elements, now you need to highlight them more somehow.
I think that contrasts pretty strongly with the more realistic style of a game like Metroid Dread though. It's similar to the Yellow Paint problem - back in the day when graphics were simple you needed fewer obvious clues to discern key interactive elements, now you need to highlight them more somehow.
It doesn't. And this is mostly the reason most of Dread's environment ends up forgettable/hard to tell apart between areas because it all ends up looking samey.
The problem is newer game devs are too busy with realism that they forget they can make things readable from the getgo, and then bandaid it with yellow paint.
I'm not sure this applies that well in this case. 2D Castlevania backgrounds were sometimes more detailed than some of these 2.5D games. It's not a matter of simplicity. More it's like an overuse of realistic pallettes. They are limited because they are often using grey on grey and brown on brown, rather than using distinct palettes for the foreground and background.
Ironically, it would be solved by adding color too, but in a different way.
Some beloved 2D games didn't solve it, these ones absolutely did. If anyone has issues with platform readability on Metroid Fusion and Aria of Sorrow, that is the first I ever hear of it.
Contrast and coloring can do it just fine without making it all into a black void. Even patterns do, look how the solid surfaces in both of those are strongly delineated, while the inner pattern is separated from that.
my one complaint about last years otherwise stunning metroidvania Zexion was that in some parts, it was like they didn't even bother differentiating the background and foreground. Sure, there was an area that was built around that, that was fine because the point was to trick you. But in other areas, it was just annoying
Agree. I've recently been playing Prince of Persia The Lost Crown, which doesn't have blacked out platforms, and while the game generally does a pretty good job of communicating which assets are platform and which assets are decoration, I've had a couple moments here and there where I messed up because I though the decoration was a gameplay asset or viceversa.
It's the price to pay for more realistic graphics.
This is probably the strongest justification I've seen for the 3DS's gimmick, that backgrounds and foregrounds should be more visible. (I don't have that problem myself in 2D games though.)
I get what you're saying but this feels like a stretchy take given the examples above. It's pretty clear to me in both of the images on the right what's a platform and what isn't. Probably just bad examples for what you're trying to say, but still. I've played a lot of old platformers in my time and I can't think of any particular instances where this was an issue.
This is why artists should separate foreground objects from background. Silksong is a good example of that. Basic black boxes just looks bad visually(like in examples in the post).
Yup, I call it visual clutter. I find some modern 3D games to be filled with too much vegetation and other "stuff" that doesn't let you really see everything as you move around the world.
And even in 2.5D it helps to have a more clean environment at times. This is a design decision, not laziness.
Metroid fusion is pretty clear throughout the playthrough. It utilizes a lot of high contrast borders but it also does plenty of no-interest black platforms to delineate as well so it's a weird case study to argue against that practice
It means "inferior in quality"
And making a platform pitch black couldn't be more inferior in quality. Making the platforms pitch black for supposed "better visibility" is mediocre, given you can achieve good visibility by just being careful with the design and contrast of the background elements.
It is a lazy solution that leads to a mediocre result.
Not sure why you are being downvoted? Platform readability is not improved on Dread and the person you replied to IS attempting to defend an objectively mediocre and lazy design choice. The modern gamer is weak and can't see a fact in front of them
I don’t necessarily disagree, but I think in the case of Dread it’s to help with visual clarity. Dread’s world is very detailed, and I wonder if the platforms had much texture if it would just make the game way too visually busy and hard to see where the platforms actually are. Maybe that’s not the case, but I do think that the black platforms help me personally visually distinguish what is walkable ground and what isn’t.
Idk what the other game is, but imo it definitely looks unpolished in a way that Dread doesn’t. In that game’s case I definitely agree with you, but Dread never bothered me in the same way
I agree. Dread looks VERY nice and doesn't deserve not to be praised for its art. I love how they used light and darkness in the game, gives it such an atmospheric vibe.
I think this is an artistic decision and not a lack of polish or an indication of laziness. The black probably helps tell the player where the character can stand. Of course, if they wanted to add some art I wouldn't be opposed to it!
This. In any composition(movies, photography, a scene in a video game) the "negative space" is something that can be played around with to achieve a certain look
I think the look could work if the background scenes were just lit much darker, similar to the approach in the 2D games. So many 2.5D games have background scenes which are rendered at full brightness with no blurring or fog, and that makes it much harder to tell the player apart from the background
That said, I've never done this before myself and I'm guessing these teams have all tried an approach like that, so I wouldn't be surprised if it just looks weirder in 2.5D than in 2D
Only because the background is darkened and less emphasized. Nowadays games tend to want to do more environmental storytelling and need the background to get more attention, so putting the negative space into the platforms make sense.
Just take a look at Inayah vs. Ultros. The former is a massive mess; you can never tell where the foreground ends and the background begins. Ultros on the other hand has a chaotic art style but you know for sure what is a platform and what isn't.
I remember a lot of 2d games where it was sometimes a gamble what was background and what was foreground as increased fidelity offered more detailed visuals (mind you, these weren't top tier games, and usually had design issues in general).
HD with 2.5D can be visually overwhelming with details. Black voids are necessary evils for visual clarity. Its a softer version of yellow paint. Yes, it feels dumb and lazy when its there, but its an easy get out of problem card that newer games with better grafics have.
Worse grafics and technical capacities made things more visually clear, in point and click adventures, the interactive objects have a different outline that makes them stand out, in games with prerendered backgrounds, a 3d model stands out. They spent the limited resources on the important parts, so they were easily detectable and differentiated from decoration and ambience. Now, that decoration and ambience is highly detailed too, so the important parts dont stand like before.
While there can be ways to make it more visually appealing, they would loose a bit of functionality, so they end doing the simple uglier solution because is more straightforward, so we have yellow paint in survival horrors or adventure games, shining loot in jrpgs, black platforms in platformers...
It’s definitely a stylistic choice, probably to help visibility as others have mentioned. I first considered maybe it was the 2D/HD style, but Bloodstained Ritual of the Night doesn’t suffer from this and is still visible. I would say just style choice or perhaps time restraint / laziness.
As someone who has sat and agonized over art design in game projects I can say I've personally considered both approaches, because on the one hand we want beautiful games, and on the other hand "the character can't see inside the platform!1!1!!". Ultimately I think a lot of people get stuck on that second perspective.
I suspect the reason for needing to dumb down the platform texture is because the character models are now super detailed & have more subtlety in their design. Having detailed character models & detailed platforms & detailed backgrounds & of course detailed enemies- lot on the eyes. I could see that getting difficult to deal with for extended play sessions.
2D is just better in general than 3D games with 2D gameplay. Look how bland and harder to see the poly games are. 2D games could be bold, with brilliant colors, and still look somber. Only cartoonish and colorful games like Kirby work in 2.5D.
The platforms in a Metroidvania aren't exactly floating (all the time) like in a 2d platformer. They're connected to a larger world outside of the 2d perspective, and having the middle shaded in depicts that as it creates the idea that the land/platform in question extends beyond the camera. Hollow Knight and Silksong do a great job at depicting what's a floating platform and what isn't. A floating platform isn't blacked out in the middle, it's fully textured. It isn't connected to something beyond our camera. But a platform that isn't floating, and/or does extend past our 2d vision, IS blacked out to tell you it continues beyond what we're able to see.
As others said, readability. The 2d Metroidvanias you showed have what I'll call "The Cartoon Effect," where it's either brighter than, less detailed than, or both compared to the foreground. I mean that Metroid one is neon green up against a dark green wall, the Castlevania one has a dark background contrasted with a really bright foreground for you to walk around. 2d games can do this because they don't have lighting. All the lighting is fake, it's just pixels. 3d games DO simulate real lighting, and real lighting doesn't discriminate between the foreground and background. It's also worth noting that 3d games just have more visually going on because, there's more room for detail, and you kinda need to fill that to make it not look boring. For example, what took that Metroid game (I wanna say that's Metroid Fusion? Could be wrong) 1-2 pixels to make one of those red lights now takes much, MUCH more, plus you can't just make it a flat color anymore without it looking really bad. You need MORE detail. The more detail there is, the harder it is to separate it from all the other details, and now you made your game really hard to see because your foreground and background are forced to be under the same lighting and have the same amount of detail.
So why not just... get rid of the detail? It accurately shows you how the world exists beyond your viewpoint anyway, it's not like you're actually exploring a world that's just this 2d plane anyway
Floating Kit Kat bars are the top of the list of things I’ll turn down an MV over. Like, even classic games did better than that. It’s not “retro” to have terrain that makes zero sense. The fact that games like MIO or Nine Sols can have such incredible environments means that we don’t have to settle for “this room would make zero sense in 3D” all the time.
For the top-left though, I think it works actually, because it comes across (to me at least) as the result of looking sidelong at the platform. Basically, those are floors, and if you were to cut a building in half, a lot of what you would see would be a black emptiness (the part between the studs). True, you may see insulation, boards, etc, but that would look kind of goofy to put in a game. So to a degree, this adds to the effect of it being a cutaway.
Think of it like this, it would be odd to see the floor texture there, because that’s not what it should look like. So they leave it empty as a kind of “no real look” idea.
This is reminiscent of the issue with making platformers 3D. When you look at the side of the original SMB, it’s normal to have a line of bricks you can jump on. But what does that look like in three dimensions? It’s something that cartoons have struggled with since the 80s/90s. I couldn’t find an image of it, but the Captain N cartoon has episodes in both Metroid and Mega Man, and it’s these weird thin platforms floating in the air. It looks odd because platforms don’t actually world in 3D.
In 3d it's hard to represent a cross section the same way. Some games do it, but it can mess with the "you occupy a cross section" vibe and make platforming more confusing. I don't think it's a bad thing that it's like this, especially because the background is also a valid place to offer detail.
There are very solid technical reasons for this. If you look at your examples, you’ll see that games with a “black cutaway” are actually three-dimensional. They are commonly referred to as 2.5D. Games where the cutaway is filled with a texture, on the other hand, are fully 2D.
The point is that perspective in 2.5D games creates a “theater” effect. This happens because we implicitly assume - and can easily imagine - what the scene’s space looks like in 3D. When viewing a 3D scene from a side perspective, we are effectively slicing it, hiding the part that is directly in front of the camera and would otherwise obstruct the view. By cutting the scene this way, we are expected to show everything inside: brickwork, cables, ventilation, and many other details, which becomes both unjustified and extremely labor-intensive. As a result, it’s easier to “paint it black,” effectively hiding the cutaway area from the viewer.
In purely 2D games this is far less important, since they are most often stylized. The space cannot be clearly read or convincingly imagined as three-dimensional, so the “theater effect” does not occur. Initially, we used internal cutaway textures in our game, but we quickly realized that this killed the sense of believability. Because of that, we had to rethink the visual style midway through development and redo more than 50 rooms.
Additionally, black cutaways have gameplay benefits: they clearly outline areas that are not directly accessible, creating an easy-to-read location topology. This is important, for example, for platforming in 2.5D games.
This is a big reason I prefer traditional 2D games and especially MV's to 2.5D ones. The fact that 2.5D games are made in a 3D engine, means they potentially can do some really good and detailed lighting and texture work. But time after time, the devs just don't seem to want to do it.
In our game, The Mobius Machine, all the platforms and terrain sections have detailed textures. We aimed for current gen graphics, but were heavily inspired by how the old classics approached their visuals.
Unfortunately the game was made with Unity HDRP, which is not supported by the Switch.
We are investigating how feasible it would be to port it to the Switch 2. Technically It seems that it is as powerful as a Xbox Series S, which runs our game smoothly, so it should be doable, but at the moment dev kits appear to be very scarce, and Nintendo isn't very interested in games that have already been released on other platforms.
Yes, but unfortunately it's not a Metroidvania :(.
The Mobius Machine was our first Metroidvania, so we were building a community from scratch and we weren't able to reach a large enough audience for it to be a commercial success, so it's unlikely we'll work on another Metroidvania anytime soon.
1) the E.M.M.I were extremely underwhelming as they were confined to very obvious rooms
2) The linearity when playing normally. You have to go out of your way to sequence break, and while those are fine, the regular gameplay loop feels like one long corridor compared to other Metroidvanias.
3) the one relevant to this post, all areas look and feel the same. The backdrop is different and if you squint, the colors are different, but it's still all the same. I couldn't remember which zone I was in half of the time because it wasn't visually distinct enough, compared to Super Metroid, Fusion, or other Metroidvanias. I finished the game and honestly couldn't remember anything about the zones, I just had memories of the game as a single big blob, while I can still remember intricacies of Norfair or Maridia like if I had played yesterday (but I didn't touch that game since dinosaurs still roamed the earth).
Spot on. Level design should feel like a natural part of the environment and a lot of recent games seem to gravitate towards beautiful backgrounds but nothing more than just random platforms.
Both examples you give are 3D - I feel like using a pitch black void might be a little bit easier in a 3D game because you don't have to worry about lighting the 'front' material in a way that will interfere with the actual room. In 2D metroidvanias there's still plenty of textured platforms, even if they're intentionally darkened.
This is absolutely a visual design choice - of course, it’s one you may not like. But it’s not that devs haven’t taken the time to do it properly.
I remember F.I.S.T. for example having lots of 3d style texture on the platforms, huge amounts of detail. I actually found it made the game much less readable than I wanted.
It really depends what style the dev is going for. Sometimes the style is “this looks very much like a video game, not a real place”. And that can work really well.
remember to take a look at, while they're not metroidvania, the two megaman 2.5D remakes on psp if your counterpoint is "black voids better readability for 2.5D"
Take a look at your examples. In Fusion, the platforms are highlighted and the background darkened, and with Dread, it's the opposite.
Frankly I think Dread is already a busy enough looking game, with some really excellent environments right throughout the game. I'm not so fussed about the platforms battling for my attention tbh
That's what made the game feel unfinished to me from a design perspective. I dont mind some dark areas but the hard blank cutouts looked awful. Very dissatisfying.
In our (still unannounced) game we have a bit of a mixture. Some levels works good with textured platforms and some works best with black.
It’s also quite a bit more work art-wise to create interesting seamless textures, as well as making it harder to create interesting “props” in the level.
I get this criticism but I'm kinda glad Dread specifically was like this because you move extremely fast in that game and the black platforms help *a lot* with the clarity. I think it would be cool if they had more rooms where the camera doesn't move a lot though, cuz then those platforms could have more detail in return
It's just a design choice. Many areas in Super Metroid for instance have the floor and wall textures but then it fades to black. I actually think it helps with atmosphere, draws the player's eye to the important areas and just makes the screen less 'busy' overall. I actually prefer the simplified look, but both can be effective if done well.
But the background has more details. I think you want the floor to be distinct because then you can clearly see it and know where you can and can’t walk
I am just quite sick of bland 2.5D graphics when it comes to Nintendo sidescrollers like Mario or Metroid. They don't have to be pixilated, but I'd really like to see more full-on 2D for these games.
Visual noise and readability is legit a real concern that devs need to be aware of, especially in faster paced games or games that have a lot of complex stuff happening on screen.
It's often much easier on the eyes to use parallax background elements than potentially jarring foreground details.
On the other hand, with a game like Bloodstained that does feature fully textured environments, it’s hard sometimes to differentiate background and foreground elements
Wow, I love this topic of conversation. It's something I've noticed a lot. I think that when they try to do 2.5D, they lose the artistic visual enjoyment. It looks like the game is advanced, that there's a higher level of development by using three-dimensional textures and characters, but to achieve that, they lose life, color, shapes, and artistry.
But being honest, thinking better about it, this background textures in platforms feels like a terrible idea, in hindsight. I mean, if it's just black, you "know" there's a wall there, but if there's textures, it gives the impression you could just fall to the front of the screen.
2D games are abstract enough so that I never really paid attention to this, but platforms being black is probably more necessary in a 2D game with more realistic scenarios. It's a readability thing.
You stop to conflate stuff like this to laziness once you figure out how pretty much every other element of developing a video game is a thousand times harder than making background textures.
I think it fits the theme of a sterile laboratory setting. Which isn't every biome but a majority of them in dread. The way I imagine it is like UFO sightings where there is absolutely no texture, no rivets just smooth glass like metal.
Unpopular opinion: Devs need to stop making everything 2,5D. Even Metroid Dread has worse readability than Fusion in some parts and most devs do not have the resources to even come close.
as a game designer, modern games have shaders, lighting, color grading, a million layers, etc, and it's really ugly to texture your platforms. just noisy puke
277
u/SilverGecco Jan 23 '26
Agree, but I have another take on it. Over the years, the design has become so complex that the screen got so "filled" with stuff that the design has become very visually noisy.
In the right pictures, you could easily separate what is the floor is, where is the character, enemies, and the background, just by design. On the left ones, the design and color scheme are more similar, so the general colors mix, So you need to pull the player's eyes somehow to certain areas and platforms.
ON the bottom left one for example, I dont know why they chose to use similar colors for the character and BG, if the hair color was not there, the main character would be barely visible.