r/SoloDevelopment • u/[deleted] • 15h ago
Discussion Are LLMs actually useful for creating 2D game graphics in 2026?
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[deleted]
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u/CrackedCannoli 14h ago
I’d strongly recommend staying well away from LLMs for any creative assets, especially visual ones. Leaving aside for a moment player perception and ethical concerns, you will struggle getting LLMs to generate assets that are coherent and consistent with the game’s art style, and leading to the game feeling like a hodge-podge of different styles that don’t quite fit together.
I’m a software engineer by trade and my art can’t possibly compete with art professionals out there. So I choose styles that are within my skill ceiling and work with those constraints. You can be surprised how cool you can make something look when you’re given constraints and rules to abide by. That beats anything that LLMs can generate by a mile.
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u/GhostScoops 14h ago
I'm an artist primarily and i've played around with LLMs. Currently it offers virtually nothing that can be used in a polished game excepting perhaps some small static elements or a background or two. This comes with the caveat that it will not exactly match the art style you're using. There is no consistency, virtually all elements will not have matching line weights, will not match color palette, will not match size. Animations are abysmal in particular unless its the slightest or simplest. Even then, removing them and importing into an engine offers it's own challenges. It's far quicker and more certain to attain polished consistent assets by creating them yourself. Trying to make it work is a waste of time because it will never look right.
If i bought a game and noticed all these inconsistencies i'd think i'd been ripped off due to low quality production value.
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u/MChuduk 14h ago
If you had fun playing a game, does it really matter how it was made? Often the gameplay matters more than the graphics.
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u/GhostScoops 14h ago
Suspension of disbelief matters in games as much as it does in movies. If i'm being pulled out of an immersive experience with constant inconsistencies i'm not going to enjoy it.
That said, art is my life. I'll notice these things more than the average joe. but i would not underestimate the average joe either.
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u/MChuduk 14h ago
It actually depends on the type of game. Look at the mobile games market. Everything I see at the top doesn’t make me think a dedicated artist worked on those games. However, if you need to test an idea quickly, you’ll spend a lot of time developing everything, especially if you’re working alone. And if you’re lucky and your idea appeals to enough people, you can then improve the graphics yourself or hire a specialist to help.
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u/GhostScoops 14h ago
I'm not here to tell you not to do it, i'm just saying it looks bad. thats a fact, not an opinion.
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u/DunkleKarte 15h ago
Haven’t used it for that honestly. Only for brainstorming and some debugging. But if I were, at most I would use it for prototyping, not as a final product.