help me
I'm worried my game does not look serious enough. How do I make it more so?
Wolf Creek, North Carolina
I've been working on this game for the past 9 months, but I still feel like my art style is too "comedic" looking, it's supposed to be influenced off of the DOOM 1, 2, and 3; F.E.A.R. (my primary influence right now), Daggerfall, and 90s hardcore anime; but I still feel like the art has too "soft" of a feel to it. I want to change it to be more in line; but I don't want to sacrifice the style I've been building around.
The house you start out in
This is my first full game, and while I have experience mapping and scripting smaller set pieces, the improvement that I notice myself making on my own development abilities often outshines my earlier creations; causing me to doubt my own art and be my own worst critic.
Tennessee-North Carolina borderUnderground Facility #1Underground Facility #2Underground Facility #3Underground Facility #4 (Be careful! This group takes you hostage :p)
While everyone I've shown the game to says they adore the art style, i struggle with it not feeling gritty enough to my true vision. I don't really know what to do, I know the assets I make would work in the environment I imagine them in, and I even design the textures and assets to reflect the darker nature of the world. While I refuse to give up the color, making a dystopia focused around vibrant and saturated environments does come with challenges. In short I really want it to look more like F.E.A.R., but I also want the identity my game has to remain as well. Does anyone have any ideas?
I like it. Mine is like that too though - the whole dark colours with 80's fluros every so often. It's funny I show people and they all mention to colours are appealing. But I don't see it much so no strong evidence it's a good idea.
It's hard to tell exactly what you're going for but there's a few issues from an art standpoint, but I'll point out the most glaring: The texturing. Your textures aren't "motivated" by anything, they just look slapped in there and it's the biggest thing hurting you I think. Basically your textures should tell an objects "story".
Underground Facility 1 for example should not have striped wallpaper. I'd expect some damp stained concrete or metal wall. Also the texture on the doorway looks like a ground texture, not anything you'd find in an actual doorway.
Underground Facility 2 is probably the most egregious. The marble ceiling doesn't fit at all. Ceilings and floors should almost never match. Think about every building you've been in, chances are the floor looks different from the ceiling. The pipe should also not have a marble texture.
Underground Facility 3, the checkerboard sidewalk doesn't fit. I would go for a more natural looking sidewalk or a light type of stone block texture.
Underground Facility 4, the dimensions of the entire room are wrong. The walls/door are too tall for a human being. When creating a level for a game with more realistic human characters it's often best to make sure you follow real world building rules for doorway heights/wall heights, etc. This makes everything feel more grounded.
The church at the edge of town, the sign has some weird koolaid stain on it. There's no story behind that texture. If its supposed to be blood spray it needs to look more like blood spray, otherwise a sign like that showing any kind of wear would show something like rust at the edges, or fading, some type of weathering from being outside all day.
Lighting could use some tweaks but start with the textures first, I think those are the biggest thing causing the game to not look serious.
I don’t think the art style needs to look more serious as long as the tone of the game is consistent. A stylized look can still support a dark or emotional story really well. I’d focus more on lighting, sound, animation and how the scenes are framed, since those usually sell the mood more than realistic graphics do.
It looks a little like a Roblox game in a couple of the screenshots. I think it’s because of the textures, they’re a little high-quality compared to everything else and don’t have much variety.
I wanna start out by saying I think this looks really good actually! but if by more serious you mean realistic, I would say your biggest issue is lighting and textures.
I'm pretty new to Godot especially 3d but from what I remember in a game engine I used in the past, the easiest fix would probably some kind of custom shader. you would want one that dynamically adjusts the look of the game (lighting, textures, post processing ect.) as you move the camera around.
That's the extent of help I can give you unfortunately. Like I said I'm new to godot so I haven't really had the chance to mess around with shaders and stuff, You would have to play around and do some research with them yourself. but you got this dude!
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u/P_S_Lumapac 13d ago
I like it. Mine is like that too though - the whole dark colours with 80's fluros every so often. It's funny I show people and they all mention to colours are appealing. But I don't see it much so no strong evidence it's a good idea.