Realistic
The world tries to look as if it were filmed with a camera: accurate materials, complex lighting, small touches like dust and scratches. This style depends on computer power more than any other and ages faster as hardware moves on.
Games
Games catalogue
You won't find a list of titles here. Instead, there is a map of how games can look in the first place. One world resembles a movie still, another an illustration from a children's book, a third a mosaic of chunky squares. Every style has its own rules: what to draw in detail, what to simplify, which colors to speak to the player in. Once you know those rules, you'll understand faster what you are seeing on screen.
A game's style is a promise. It hints in advance at what the world will be like: harsh, cozy, unsettling or funny.
How this section works: it is a catalogue of visual styles and of what is worth looking at in a game world, not a list of titles. We describe how each style is recognized, what it demands from artists and what it gives the player. You won't find names of games, companies, technologies or devices here.
Visual styles
Six recognizable ways to draw a game world.
Hand-painted
Surfaces look as if they were colored with a brush: soft transitions, visible strokes, a warm palette. Part of the lighting is often painted right into the texture, so the picture stays beautiful even on modest settings.
Pixel art
The image is built from large dots, and the artist places each one by hand. It is not a relic of the past but a craft of its own: a tiny square has to hold a facial expression, a glint on a blade or a leaf swaying in the wind.
Low-poly
Objects are deliberately built from a few large faces and look like paper figures or cut gems. Attention shifts from small details to silhouettes, color and light, and the scene reads very cleanly.
3D models (in Russian)
Outlined “cartoon” look
Objects are traced with a dark line, and shadows fall not smoothly but in flat patches, like in a comic book. This technique makes characters expressive and easy to recognize even in the most chaotic fight.
Dark stylization
Muted colors, deep shadows, distorted proportions and lots of space swallowed by darkness. Mood matters more than accuracy here: what you can't see is scarier than anything drawn.
What to look at in a game world
Four things that bring a scene to life regardless of style.
Light
Where it comes from, whether it is warm or cool, how it changes over the in-game day. Well-placed light guides your eye to the exit, to an important item or to danger.
Materials
Wet stone glistens, fabric softly scatters light, rusty metal looks rough. When materials differ convincingly, the world feels tangible even if it is drawn in a simplified way.
Animation
How a character shifts their weight, turns, stumbles, how the wind bends the grass. Movement is what most often reveals whether the creators put their heart into the world.
Scale
How a game conveys size: haze on the horizon, tiny figures at the foot of a tower, the hollow echo of footsteps in a huge hall. A sense of space comes not only from distance but from how the details are chosen.
Read next
- Guides
Guides to the picture: choosing graphics settings, taking great screenshots, reading a scene and finding out why a game stutters. Our article catalogue lives here too.
- Reviews
What to look at in a game's graphics besides the amount of detail: style, scene readability, light, animation, smoothness and accessibility.
- Mechanics
How a game builds a frame: model, texture, material, light, shadow and post-processing, and what to turn down first when things stop feeling smooth.
- Glossary
A plain-language dictionary of game graphics: terms about models, light and materials, plus the options you see in the settings menu.
What we rely on
- Reference material on computer graphics (in general terms)
- Blender School editorial material
We describe the general principles of game graphics. Every game lays out its settings menu differently, options go by different names and change with updates, so look for the exact wording in the game's own tooltips and help screens.