Don’t you also use Steam’s Wishlist button just to bookmark a game that has nice artwork? Whether or not I have the intention to play, I put these pins when something catches my eye and I don’t want to forget about it.

You can probably tell just by looking at these what kind of art style I like. If you know some other games with artwork I might like, please tell me on Fedi. I might update this post here, or make a new one in the future.

No preference, just alphabetical filename order. ( ^ω^ )

After Love EP

I love the simple linework and clear, flat colors. Every little line has it’s purpose, and still the squiglyness makes it playful. Just adorable.

The characters in game look hand-drawn, just like the title art. (I haven’t played the game though…)

Citizen Sleeper

Citizen Sleeper 2 is on my pile of shame because I started it because of the nice art. No surprise to find this here I suppose. Both games’ title artworks and in-game art has a really nice style, but showing only the title art doesn’t do it justice:

There’s even an artbook at itch.io

Gunbrella

Really pleasing composition mixed with a cute character style, and some interesting elements like the tentacles. I haven’t played Gunbrella, so I don’t know what these are about. I like how the upper left guy is mostly negative space, just like the evil looking guy’s upper face.

Katana Zero

The flash of the blade, the striking colors and that center column both focusing the main character and illustrating the backdrop of the city. The flowing robe of the swordsman and his pose look dynamic. Would be cool to find a version of this without the text and print it out or so.

Mecha Jammer

Mecha Jammer didn’t get very good reviews because it seems to have a lot of bugs. The in-game graphics are also really nice pixel art, but I mostly love the title art. I have no idea if these are characters from the game, but they look badass. I like the palette with the glowing outlines.

Mio: Memories in Orbit

I have no idea what this game is about. Much like the Citizen Sleeper title art, this one has some kind of city in the background. All the way in the back it looks like there’s a cylindrical roof, like in some kind of space colony, but it could also be ancient ruins inhabited by robots. Who knows?

The background city has a fairly low contrast, but the composition is “closed off” by some contrasty buildings in the front, and the tentacles of light coming off the main character break the rigid lines of the buildings a bit. Just a lot of rules of composition at work here that make this pleasing to look at.

Tunic

What I’m showing here isn’t the title art for Tunic. That one is nice enough, but the game has an in-game “manual”, the pages of which you find throughout the game. They come with these cute little illustrations like what old Famicom games used to have.

For example if you check out the Metroid manual:

In older games this made more sense because the games were very limited in what they could display or how much text they could even display. Now that games are hardly limited in what they can show, it’s nice that a game like Tunic still finds a way to put in a couple of these flavor images.