What to Play If You Like Unusual Art Style in Games: Top-10 Titles

Sometimes games attract us not only with their engaging mechanics but also with distinctive visuals. If you are looking for something aesthetically pleasing or unusual, have a look at our top 10 games with quirky, minimalistic, or beautiful hand-painted art styles.

Stillsun Ark

This vibrant pixel-art JRPG looks mind-blowing, with vivid colors and retro-style graphics. The game has a sci-fi flair and features turn-based combat; it is set on a distant planet where the sun never moves.

Frost Kin

This atmospheric adventure is a melancholic Arctic story featuring stunning visuals of a lonely winter desert. The surreal environments, brought to life using Godot, serve as a background for a tragic poignant story.

Lost & Found

In this indie game set in a small town in 2007, you can find everything: pixel art, paper characters, and even clothespin NPCs – the developer used a mixed-media technique to create an immersive and unique world.

Scarlet Deer Inn

This witty medieval-style platformer features real-life embroidery: animations crafted from physically embroidered frames, which were then adjusted digitally. You can also explore the medieval town and uncover its secrets, feeling the fairytale-like, eerie atmosphere, accompanied by authentic music. And you can pat the geese (also embroidered).

Cuphead

A co-op platformer that became a fan-favorite hit, also bringing back vibes of old-school cartoons from the 1930s with their faded colors and twisted animations. The visuals are brought to life using authentic techniques of the era – traditional hand-drawn cel animation, watercolor backgrounds, and original jazz recordings.

Effulgence RPG

This unusual retro sci-fi RPG brings you to a text-based world. It features tactical turn-based battles. The models composed of symbols are partly procedural, partly manually crafted, and the developer shared that he relied on procedural ASCII a lot.

Mixtape

This game might be criticized for the prevalence of narrative elements over dynamic gameplay, but you can't deny that the atmosphere and vibe there are almost tangible: you can immediately feel this nostalgic, wistful mood of the last night of the best high school friends, crafted with amazing painterly graphics and a lot of subtle details, like polaroids and road trip maps. If you are interested in how Mixtape's visuals were made, check out our breakdown offering a behind-the-scenes look at the project.

Gris

This indie gem is a sorrowful personal story, crafted with fantastic watercolor-style graphics that reflect the character's complex inner world. If you liked this game and its visuals, check out another project from its developer, Nomada Studio – Neva, which also explores deep feelings and portrays them in a subtle, painterly manner.

Sable

The post-apocalyptic sci-fi setting is fascinating, with its melancholic minimalism, vast deserts, and mesmerizing landscapes. Explore the world on a hoverbike, discover remnants of past civilizations and ancient wonders, and uncover Sable's story as she searches for her place in this mysterious world.