I just can't explain HOW GOOD those soft non-outlined modern pixel art games look. Like pixel art with modern light physics, *chef's kiss.

This video is great. What I think the community needs from this video is a part 2 describing the different method of perspective within each style of pixel art. For instance, objects that might appear more 3d as a background novelty or the tile set that isn't just a side view (shovel knight, the messenger) but rather a realistic surface a character moves on (blasphemous, chasm).

Wow, there are some really solid diagrams in here.

this is a small thing but i really appreciate the chapter labels in your videos, they help make the video easier to actually learn from instead of watch once and forget

Adam, I VERY rarely comment on any KZfaq videos; I listen/watch while at work and not signed in to my account, or on the TV. I felt compelled to tell you that I sincerely appreciate your videos and you inspire me to explore game development as a hobby. With two small children and a full-time job, I have been thinking about the game ideas I have and what I could reasonably achieve. Your videos are always educational and inspiring and I just wanted to say thank you, pal.

Absolutely love your tutorials. I just started getting into pixel art, and I mostly watch your videos when I'm creating my sprites! Only been at it for a week, but I've done 5 sprites so far. Thanks for the content, I appreciate you greatly my friend.

17:14 As a artist im working on a comic book in pixel art style and "the last night" game style looks so inspiring 😀

I love how chill yet informative your videos are Adam, Always an absolute pleasure to watch. Thanks for all the time and effort you put into these! Keep up the great work ^^

Fantastic explanations and review of styles and their characteristics. This really helped give me a better idea of the genre. You also have a great voice for teaching! So calm and chill. I could listen for hours.

I love undertale, stardew, and deltarune style. Very charming and unique

Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery will always be my favorite

Your videos are amazing my friend. I've watched a lot of videos and read a lot of guides about pixel art over the years, in order to improve and understand. Many have helped me but yours are on another level.

Amazing presentation, subscribed :)

I just found your channel mate, you are literally answering all of my questions. I want to develop my first game in pixel art. Your content is super helpful for people that is starting at this world. Thank you bro

Great video as always man, always appreciative to hear your thoughts on art

This video is giving me such a nice framework. My mind is running creatively with a lot of ideas within the limitation concept.

Hey Adam. I really enjoy your videos. They're done very well, and you're a very clear, calming presenter. I appreciate that they're presented naturally and are realtime vs. edited.

Your videos are always exactly what I need, in my constant existential game dev crisis. Two years into my indie journey, I'm confident in my code, but I've barely scratch the surface with the aesthetics. I'm producing a slew of competently designed, but hideously ugly games. I didn't realise when I started how important the visuals were going to be, but it reminds me that, as a kid buying 8 bit games, I would always immediately turn over the box and look at the screenshots to judge whether a a game was worth buying. IMO people are more likely to buy and enjoy an average game that is pretty, than a clever game that looks bad. Games are 5% sound, 15% gameplay,, and 80% art.

I love your videos because I always come away with some sense of "I hadn't thought about it that way." Keep doing what you do. This is super helpful 🙂

your analysis are always really interesting, helps me concider different aspects of the pixel art medium.

The Last Night is one of the most amazing looking games (that don't exist yet) I've ever seen. I've seen the kind of argument made here, being used not so nicely very often in the community. "The value of pixel art lies on low resolution. If it's high-res, than it's just digital painting". I don't agree. I used to play a lot of MegaMan X4 when I was a kid. I took me years to realize that the game was Pixel Art. I always thought games from the PS1 era used some sort of special "photoshop" to be made and only looked pixelated due to the resolution of the console. The same thing happened years later with Symphony of the Night. The next generation, on the PS2, pixels were (mostly) replaced for polygons. I think The Last Night is kinda in the same fringe area and embraces it. It's the kind of stuff you need to pay atention to notice the pixels, and could definitely be done using photoshop or a 3d software like they clearly know how to use, and definitely know that it would take a lot less work and time. But they didn't. Pixel art is not used as a response to a limitation, or down-resed or tiled to take less time. It doens't scream at you, pointing every pixel. It's subtle and deliberate. The artists are pushing the medium to it's limit, while preserving the process and its essence. Marvel vs Capcom 3 went 3D and modern, and even though it looks good, it just doens't look as good or feel the same as MvsC 2.

This was a super informative analysis of art styles. Thank you so much!

My favorite video you've done so far! Keep killing it homie!

Thanks for introducing me to Songs of Conquest. I love the grainy mature style.

I love this type of heavily analytical approach to explaining a topic/view on topic 👍

oh wow i really needed this thinking of a style to go with for my rpg. Thanks for this video

What a joy! Great classification! Thank you, Adam!

It's very helpful to understand the challenges associated with each style! Thank you.

great video! I love the idea of using pixelated graphics to create some mystery/ambiguity. a character without a lot of defined facial features can feel more open to personal interpretation, or a world with blocky colors can feel like a hazy window into a dream

Regarding The Last Night: I think the value of it being pixel art is that pixel art still does read better than other forms of 2D (vector, illustration, etc.) due to its inherent limitations. I think mainly due to lack of anti-aliasing and the hard limit on details.

Really interesting topics, and really enjoyable to hear a conversation on :) Listening to stuff like this really makes me want to make more and more

The last night is hands down the most beautiful pixel game I have ever seen... Such a shame that it never got released

Dude deserves more views. Wonderfully informative.

In response to "would The Last Night have had the same impact if it was using just 2D sprites?" I'd say definitely no. It was the single reason it blew up and many games followed in it's footsteps (and actually released). It was a modern, novel look with a retro soul, like steampunk or even some types of cyberpunk (the neon-bathed kind at least).

really good video, didn't know I needed this until now

Man, I can't believe how good of a teacher you are. As far as explaining concepts and then exploring them in greater detail, you're going professor mode

I'd argue that with The Last Night, pixel art is a signifier of an experience and a very important one. I'm reluctant to say "retro experience" here despite most of the indie games I personally enjoy are following the footsteps of the older, pre-3D gaming genres and tropes. There's certainly a difference between what is considered AAA-experience and this "chamber music" feel that pixel art is capable to invoke. By stripping away all the purist restrictions, or rather by overpowering those with masterfully implemented modern technology, pixel art of The Last Night only gets to reveal its core function. Wow that's heavy lol

This is a very high quality video. Thanks for making it!

The Brackeys of Pixel Art Style. Love your tutorials!

Excellent presentation, well prepared and great delivery!

This newer 2d 3d mixture is really beautiful.

I really like hisez pixel art tbh, I just love sprites, idk what it is, but it's just something I love.

God bless man, just got started and this helped me alot. I am an author and writer, 3d artist and pen and paper artist, but i have always liked pixel art as a medium. This helped me decide some of the routes i can go. Gold.

Hey Adam. I really admire your content. It really shows the value of deconstructing the games I love, to learn where I can make improvements in the games I’m developing. I’d love to see a video on how you use Leonardo for the production of your content.

I’m a simple man, I see Momodora I click it and like it

really nice break down and enjoyable and authentic talk to listen to not like most trying too hard youtubers. thanks for the upload

A few more great looking pixel art games: * The Messenger (two different pixel art "worlds") * Sea of Stars (very beautiful!) * Children of Morta (also pretty good)

Pixel art is simply beautiful and fun. Waiting for many more games like this.

Hey, it so thoughtful, thanks for sharing your experience)

Great video here. Also good to see that I am on a good track with my own minimalist artstyle.

i have nothing to do with pixel art or even indie games and i still watched it, because your way of explaining things is so understandable and interesting and sooo calming i love it so much!

This was very informative with teaching so many design choices, I can’t wait to experiment more on this. Thank you for the lecture Adam

You are a wonderful teacher, thank you. I learned a lot from this video

I plan on making a RTS games soon and this helped a lot picking a style for my game

I really liked your video, other explanations tend to take for granted that all pixel art should be like the shovel knight style, I didn't even knew the minimalist approach, will try to pull of a mix of minimalist but with little more colors 😅 thank you!

I always appreciate how good pixel are games is like stardew, owlbow, undertale etc. They give me a very classic style like chill vibe. Didn't know there's a whole topic about pixels.

I was looking for a video like this! I am starting with my first game and I chose to go with pixel art, as it goes well with rpgs. But I couldn't figure out the style I wanted, and this video explained everything so I can pinpoint what I want to create and explore exactly what I need

If you keep giving such good advice, I'm never going to finish anything... because I keep learning new things and wanting to implement them to what I'm doing!

As is often the case, Adam proves his mastery of the medium by condensing all of the classes of Pixel Art into terms that even I, an everyman, can understand. I have found that there is a style out there which fits my 2.5D expansionist fantasy. I loved your description of why the beauty of "The Last Night," seems muddled, in spite of the gorgeous cyberpunk thematic. I was never able to put into words why it looked a bit... off. You were more than elegantly capable of doing so.

I love Dead Cells, and Hyper Light Drifter Style!

Great video! Wouldn't Castlevania Symphony of the Night be considered an early example of a game with a post-bit art style? When the PS1 launched, everyone was expecting 3d games only, since it was a novelty at the time, so it made sense for Konami to explore many more 2d techniques for pixel art, so that they could "match" the other 3d games in terms of graphical beauty. Also, the jump in technology from the SNES/Genesis to the PS1/N64 allowed for many new technical tricks to be applied. In my opinion, the game aged very well, since it applied new techniques to pixel art, which was already very well defined and explored.

Thank you, very helpful, clear and concise :)

I'm just getting into pixel art and this video was extremely interesting, I'll 100% check your other videos .

dead cells is by far my favorite. i think its just because it uses colors in such a nice way.

Great video man , appreciate it!

Great video, gonna help me a lot!

The style I'm going to use is one forgotten in the MSDOS SVGA times. The 2 people from the UK that did it are no longer with us and I want to make them a homage so that everyone would remember their beautiful style that none seemed to adopt despite of how beautiful it was. I'm studying their style very hard and hope I'll be able to pass on the style and immortalize it eventually, just like how Undertale and others harkened to styles of the past. Well, it's a long way for me in pixel art work but I shall persevere ⚔

From someone who grew up with an NES, Octopath Traveller (1 & 2) is simply stunning 😍

I loved last night, it gives a totally new feeling to games. this video was very useful, it solved my question with my own style

Wonderful analysis! ❤

An extreme amount of value in this video. I am new to this space, but far from an artist; I am just simply interested in the subject, perhaps to introduce my kids to this field. New Subscriber. I appreciate the great content and detailed breakdown that is simple enough for a noob like me to understand.

I love Momodora's style, its at the sort of perfect resolution where theres just enough information in the pixels to sort of imply both the fluidity of the motion and the anime style its going for, like with each movement it feels like I'm seeing something with higher detail being distilled into the best possible pixels to represent that motion, especially in the limbs.

Thank you, i love pixel art. I have now good recommendation list to buy from.

Wooooooooooow. This video is awesome!!

I love eastwood, chef rpg and stardew style

A game that I appreciate its pixel art is Warspear Online, thanks for your video 💚

This video is sooooo good!!!ty

This is also really interesting relative to the recent "lofi" style that uses just straight up 3d with really low fidelity textures. I've been a big fan of that for a while but i never considered how it could almost be in the same vein as Octopath or TLN

i believe the pixel artstyle for the last night is important, because it was one of the first instances where we saw high quality post processing mixed with pixelart. i always shied away from using post processing for my pixelart, instead i would draw that effect on a separate texture and blend it with the scene. the last night came out of the blue and showed everybody that you can break the rules and go nuts with your artstyle.

really nice video! i'm trying to make an undertale-like game, and this helps me figure out what i want to do for the art, since i don't wanna copy undertale too much. thanks :)

Adam inventing terms that may potentially be used in game development terminologies in the future

Good video as always!

Man, great Essay, the way you analyze and categorized the styles, it reminds me to the ones of Chris Solarski I had on a Gamification course. Kudos!

I didn't go to school for art, game design, or anything like that...but I'm pretty sure this is collegiate level

That was helpful and entertaining!

I don’t think you can really appreciate the art of The Last Night unless you see it in motion. If you only view the still images, then it’s a lot easier to come to the conclusion that you have where you wonder if the pixel art is justified. I loved the video BTW. I always learn so much from listening to you. You have great insights. ❤️

This is a legendary video

Thanks for this!

These discussions are great. I can definitely see GDC reaching out to you in the future to talk about Insignia.

Really interesting analysis! Honestly just wanted to comment on that :b

Sword and Sorcery REALLY lacks contrast between the characters and the environment, the characters are really thin and use the same color palette as everything else without adding any distinct elements to the characters (no faces and barely any human elements of any kind, they're mostly straight lines and squares), I find it weird that the people who came up with such appealing environments really missed this essential art/design principle that is even more important in games

I really enjoy this level of analysis of pixel art, even from the standpoint of having zero artistic talent (meaning I can't draw to save my life, not that I have zero creative motivation in general...), and just having a lot of appreciation and nostalgia for it from the games of my childhood... I don't know if you're familiar with it, but I always think of Seiken Densetsu 3 as being kind of a high-water-mark for pixel art of that era... of course lots of beautiful stuff continued to be made specifically for fighting games, from SNK in the late 90's with stuff like Last Blade 2 and Garou, the Metal Slug Series, Street Fighter Alpha and 3 series... and really never stopped, with ArcSys coming in with Guilty Gear, BlazeBlue, and Persona Arena to take up the slack during the PS2-3 era, and by the time they went 3D there were a ton of indie developers making 2D fighting games. Is there any other genre that kept up the tradition so well from back then until the recent rebirth of pixel art via the indie scene in the last decade? Perhaps 2D shooters, but even most of those, even Touhou, were 3D to some extent after a point in time. I'm sure JRPGs did also, I recall Radiant Historia being very very beautiful, and that was a late DS game. Metroidvanias, also, I suppose. Anyway, what's neat about Seiken Densetsu 3 in particular is that it has the same kind of super high quality pixel art as games like Chrono Trigger or Tales of Phantasia, but it also has a continuous day-night cycle which is so well made that one cannot really perceive clear distinct changes in the colors while playing, it truly looks like all the colors of everything are gradually changing with the movement of the sun, as they would in modern 3D games that very commonly do that with modern tools that just weren't available on the SNES. I've always marveled at what they had to do to get it to look so good and smooth, I can't recall any other legit 2D game from back then on that technology doing that kind of thing. If you're ever looking for a video idea, day-night cycles in pixel art games in general with SD3 as an example could be interesting.

This was really nice, deserved a sub. Great line up of pixal art examples. Imo Momodora is a really beautiful game and works well with the action platform / dark souls vibe. Of course octopath is maybe one of the ''best'' on the list, but for indi quite a tough cookie to crack The last knight I can appreciate as an artist but damn it's hard to tell what's going on, all examples look like ''a piece of art'' dunno what the gameplay is about though. Nonetheless, minimalistic approaches such as kingdom two crowns are also so classic and timeless. Going to check out a review of sword & sorcery because it looks interesting. I love pixel art games and you clearly show that there is no defined way of doing them and that there is still a lot to explore. Good luck to all indi devs out their, stay strong.

love your videos! just curious, what is that black and white game to the left of shovel knight?

God I just want the consistency to be able to develop the game I can’t stop thinking about lol.

Amazing ❤️

I love minimal so much and I’m really trying to do it for my first game. But it’s so hard to make the characters readable and distinct for me, especially when trying to make fighting animations or walking, feels like everything just becomes a mess so quickly. Would love some tutorials specifically on how to make unique and readable monomial character sprites !

"hopefully after watching this video you will have the confidence..." NOPE, you just shattered it and im now questioning all my art lol :P no, good vid

One of the best pixel art gamea recently was definitely dead cells Edit: and hyper light drifter

Thanks!