Game environments are the artwork that turns a barebones area prototype into a finished experience. The environment transforms games such as Shadow of the Colossus from a boss rush into a somber, moving experience. The creation of game environments seems intimidating, but there’s a set of skills and processes developers use to bring a project from conceptualization to completion. Read on to learn about game environments, the ways they’re made, and what types of game environments are out there for inspiration.
What is the definition of a game environment?
The definition of a game environment is the artwork other than enemies, characters, or directly controllable parts of a video game. Environment artists collaborate with designers in the development process to ensure the game appears as a cohesive whole to players. A game environment is simple to understand for realistic games, but its boundaries are less clear in more abstract games.
The environment art is the only thing players see when they play through a level. The world immerses players and creates the atmosphere the designers are targeting. A key in Quake has the same function in all levels, but it appears as a keycard in enemy bases, a physical key in medieval levels, and a rune in runic levels. The choice of key type alone tells the player they’re not in a traditional, sci-fi shooter setting.
Game environment art in puzzle or casual games is the playing field itself. Designing game environment art requires more creativity in these traditional games than realistic AAA titles. A high-detailed, narrative-driven world like in The Last of Us gives the artists much detail to work with and lets them use the real world as a model. A game like Tetris gives artists an open canvas with no boundaries or guidelines. Environment art in abstract games has many variations as a result.
The game environment is thought of as distinct from the gameplay, but isn’t. The environment is what developers use to guide and intrigue players. Each area tells part of the world’s story through its layout and environmental storytelling. The world needs to be full of locations and details that are interesting to look at to keep players engaged.
Game environment art is often confused with level design. The two are closely related, but the interactive component of the game environment is the domain of the level designer. Level designers know what mechanics the player has to interact with and what kinds of enemies and obstacles the design team is working with, plus they have a rough blockout of the level prepared. The level designer communicates the scale of objects so artists know how big to make cover, passageways, or jumpable gaps. Level designers have ideas about the colors and shapes that guide the player’s eyes, but they don’t decide every fine detail of the aesthetic. The finishing layer of paint a level receives is the job of environment artists.
What is the role of the environment in game design?
The role of the environment in game design depends on whether the intention is to tell a story, guide the player onward, or simulate an experience. The art in the world tells players how the world is lived in and what happened before they got there. Environmental storytelling is still important in a game where the story is secondary, but the art needs to highlight players, enemies, and goals while keeping other elements in the background. Environment art, in all cases, has to set the right mood.
Game environments tell the player nearly everything they need to know about the game world. The Krogan capitol on Tuchanka in Mass Effect 3 tells the story of Krogan decline through the level itself, for example. A violent people without a home in the modern day, the magnificent structures show the great feats the Krogan were capable of in the distant past. The small patches of greenery offer hope of a return to this state, but the planet’s dilapidation is proof that the Krogan have failed to hold onto peace in the past. Players’ doubts about the Krogan are strengthened because they’re expressed through the world and not dialogue alone.
The environment art serves to lend credibility to the world. The realistic aspects of the world, when they align with the game’s design pillars, sell the idea to players. Design pillars often conflict with reality, so the game has to feel like it follows its own rules even if it isn’t realistic. Consistency makes it easier for players to grasp how to interact with the game. Being unable to walk over a small pile of rocks seems silly and frustrating, especially if the player traveled out of their way just to find out there’s nothing there. Players stop looking for direction or meaning in an environment that doesn’t deliver consistency.
Design has a crucial part to play in the environment, as the art leads players forward organically. Telling players where to go and what to do through dialogue and map markers alone is tiring. Constant explicit guidance leaves the player feeling like their hand is being held through the entire experience. Using landmarks to signpost the way forward makes navigation feel like self-driven exploration.
FromSoftware’s Souls titles show environmental signposting in action. Souls games are well-known for showing distant objectives early. The areas are made to appear so far away that players don’t even realize they’ve reached a distant goal until they either turn around to look back or loop around to their starting point. Dark Souls 3 takes this visual design a step further by showing off completely disconnected pieces of the map in the distance.
The environment art transforms the way players perceive a level, even through the lighting alone. One of the reasons players criticized Halo: Combat Evolved Remastered was the far brighter lighting. Glowing blue lights look appropriate in an alien cruiser, but the level 343 Guilty Spark is an entirely different experience. The dark, bleak, abandoned underground facility full of mystery lost much of its tension with the remaster’s bright lighting. The visual art of the environment ended up working against the level’s goals.
Variety is important for grounding the player in the level. The Clockwork Mansion in Dishonored 2 shows how complexity works to enhance a level. The walls, floors, and rooms themselves are all on mechanized tracks, letting the layout of the building shift and change as the player moves through it. To minimize confusion, the mansion is divided into five zones: the atrium, guest area, private area, laboratory, and assessment center. Each section’s aesthetic is unique and there are clear transitional points between them, helping players mentally map out the area despite the complex layout.
How to make a game environment?
To make a game environment, the disciplines of 3D modeling, texturing, materials, and lighting work together to create a cohesive world. A single artist handles all of these tasks for the assets they work on, although lighting is separate in some studios. Learning from brief tutorials is possible, but more detailed knowledge requires personal practice. Each of these steps occurs one after the other to create a full environment. 2D game environments have a different process, but that process varies widely and anyone capable of 2D drawing is able to build a 2D environment.
3D modelers use a variety of tools to bring an area to life. The smooth, organic shapes of a natural environment are often created through modeling the environment manually. Engines such as Unity and Unreal come with terrain editors that let artists and designers paint the terrain. Brushes let them raise, lower, pinch, and otherwise manipulate the surface. Vegetation tools give the option to paint on premade brushes and trees that make building the world quick and accessible.
Procedural generation gets natural-looking results at a high level of control without manually sculpting every crag, crack, and crevice. The process of procedural generation involves creating a set of assets and giving the game rules for how assets ought to be combined. The disadvantage is that creating such an algorithm is slower than modeling by hand unless the world is very large, since so much trial and error is required to get it right.
Custom modeling is a required step for 3D game environments. Procedural generation requires premade components to stitch together. Even terrain modeling requires the addition of extra props. The lead artist on Firewatch needed to supplement with custom-built rocks because the Unity terrain editor wasn’t up to the task. Many game environments don’t take place in nature either, so the terrain editing tools aren’t enough on their own. Maya, 3DS Max, and the increasingly popular free alternative Blender are the most commonly used modeling tools.
Texturing the terrain and objects in the environment is the next step after modeling the assets. Texturing is the process of creating a 2D image that shows the color and appearance of a 3D object. The largest studios have dedicated texture artists, but the 3D artists in most studios model and texture their work. Texturing is done with a few different methods: editing together reference photos, painting them by hand, or generating the texture with algorithms. When building these textures, artists worry about texel density. Texel density is the number of pixels in a given area, often pixels per centimeter or pixels per meter. Keeping a consistent texel density prevents one object from looking sharp and another blurry.
Materials work with the textures to make objects look like they fit in the world. How matte, shiny, rough, smooth, transparent, or opaque an object is depends on its material. Modern games tend to use physically based rendering (PBR) in their materials because it lends more believability to scenes, even stylized, cartoonish ones. PBR mimics the way light bounces in real life, showing its results most clearly in reflections and indirect lighting that comes off objects in the environment to brighten up shadows.
Photoshop, Substance Painter, Substance Designer, and 3D Coat are essential tools for making textures. Photoshop is the all-purpose tool for editing textures. The limitation of Photoshop, though, is that the artist is working directly with a 2D image. Building up textures for any 3D object is complex, especially so for organic shapes like a human face, so artists use software like Substance Painter to paint materials directly onto the 3D surface. Substance Designer, its companion, is used to create and preview those materials. As another alternative to these two programs, I highly recommend 3DCoat.
Materials are the next crucial step which tell the game engine how the surface reacts to light. Creating materials is most commonly accomplished in the engine. The engine’s own materials system and features don’t always match external software, so building them in Unreal/Unity/any other chosen engine means the artist doesn’t have to adjust materials twice.
Lighting is a crucial element in all games. Light draws players’ attention to certain areas and sets the tone of a level. Bright zones mark areas of safety in a horror game, but signal danger in a stealth game.
Lighting is often baked for video games. Older games always had baked lighting, which meant that the artists set up lights in a scene, saved the lighting to a static texture, then applied that texture in-game. Calculating light and shadow in real time was simply too expensive. Baked lighting is still commonly used, but modern titles with high graphical fidelity like Hunt: Showdown or Uncharted 4 use PBR materials to better mimic the effects of lighting. Ray-tracing enabled cards are able to calculate real-time lighting in games like Cyberpunk 2077.
I find that the most challenging environment art to make is in casual puzzle games. A busy environment behind the play area is exhausting to look at for long periods of time and takes focus away from the gameplay. A flat gray or black background isn’t an option either, as it makes the game look dark, empty, and oppressive. Finding the balance here is tricky, and research is an important component in deciding on the right aesthetic.
What is game environment modeling?
Game environment modeling is the process of creating the 3D forms that make up the environment. Environment modeling refers to both the larger mountains, terrain, and buildings in the environment, and smaller items like bushes and street signs that adorn the world. The modeling process takes place in 3D software like Maya or Blender, which are essential tools for an artist. 3D modeling involves two main disciplines: hard-surface modeling and organic modeling. Most objects in a game environment belong to the hard-surface category.
Hard-surface modeling is the process of creating 3D objects that don’t deform, which is the case for most environment art. This variety of modeling contrasts with organic modeling, where a 3D artist creates human figures or animals that bend, move, change facial expressions, or flex different muscles. Creating such detailed models requires carefully restructuring the surface of the model to make sure areas that deform bend correctly and light reflects off the surface in a natural way. This process of restructuring the model is called retopology.
Game artists have more freedom to choose from a variety of modeling styles in game environments since they’re hard surfaces. Box modeling, subsurface modeling, and boolean operations are the major paradigms of 3D. The high detail in organic models, in contrast, means artists nearly always start with sculpting in software like Zbrush, which lets the artist mold models by nudging, cutting, and building them up like clay. The disadvantage of this approach is that the result is much too high in detail to work in a video game, and requires retopology whether it’s an organic or hard surface.
Box modeling starts with a simple cube or other primitive shape. The artist then extrudes out pieces of it, molds it, and edits it until it matches the final shape. The final result has a much lower number of polygons than a sculpt does, so it doesn’t need to be retopologized. With smooth shading and high-res textures, a box model’s able to look realistic without breaking the budget. Creating rounded surfaces is much harder, though, and requires a different approach.
Subdivision surface modeling starts the same way as box modeling, with a primitive shape. The artist then subdivides the surface to a level higher of detail, adjusts the model, subdivides again, and repeats until the model looks the way it needs to. Subdividing tends to smooth out sharp details or any protruding pieces of the model, so it isn’t ideal for every situation.
Boolean modeling is a third approach to environment modeling that’s able to be combined with any other approach. The advantage of boolean modeling is that it’s intuitive, as the process doesn’t require working directly with the model’s geometry. The boolean approach allows the user to subtract one primitive shape from another, or combine two shapes into a single object. Each object is composed of simple shapes, and the software knows which shapes were used, so undoing any of the individual steps is possible without reworking the whole 3D object.
What are the types of game environments?
The types of game environments are 2D and 3D games, with each type further dividing into open-world, linear, and procedurally generated experiences. The type of game environment is related to the style, but any art style is possible in any type of game environment. These types are simply common categories of environments in 2D games that have unique properties. The needs of the game development process rather determine the distinct blend of environment types and styles.
2D games require fewer steps to create, as they don’t require texturing or retopologizing models. The artist has complete control of every pixel. The challenge in creating 2D environments is the level of minimalism. With fewer dimensions and details to work with, the artist has less options for how they approach the environment. 2D puzzle games or card games don’t always resemble activities that occur in real life, either. Figuring out the best backdrop for a game about matching colored jewels/candies/beads is no easy task. Looking to similar experiences for inspiration is the best option in this case.
A middle ground between 2D and 3D games exists where the game takes place in three dimensions but uses only 2D sprites. These 2.5D games include examples such as the original Wolfenstein 3D, which doesn’t allow the player to look up or down, as they are truly only in a 2D space with simulated 3D. Other games with a 2D viewing angle like Ori and the Blind Forest use a 3D environment with the 2D images to create a parallax effect, which is when the background moves slower than the foreground, implying a three-dimensional distance between each layer.
3D worlds have a much more open layout. Game artists aren’t only thinking about how to make a space look appealing, but also how players move around it, whether they clip into any parts of the environment, and where they need to be blocked in.
Open-world games are typically 3D and such game environments contain large quantities of environment art. An artist created every rock, tree, bush, river, and mountain visible in Skyrim. The amount of art makes the open world a drain on manpower and performance.
Game environment artists manage creating open worlds by building a repository of reusable assets. One rock twisted around, hidden partially underground, or placed among other rocks looks entirely different, letting the artist re-use assets. Game artists make sure distant objects are low-poly or, if players are able to approach them, have multiple LoDs (levels of detail) so the game engine’s able to switch out the low-poly model for a detailed one up close.
Linear games are easier to deal with than open-world games because the player’s viewing angle is restricted. A level that takes place entirely indoors doesn’t need to consider what the sky or exterior environment look like, while an open-world game lets players leave that area and see it all. The artist knows exactly what angle the player views content from and where they’re able to draw the player’s attention.
Common game environments in both open-world and linear games are urban and natural environments. Games draw heavily on the real world to add depth to the newly created one. Fantasy games are inspired by medieval Europe, westerns resemble 19th-century America, and science fiction expands upon scientific reality. Artists must research other games that use the same setting or genre to ensure the world feels consistent and readable.
Environments in procedurally generated games are created by the computer, so artists craft individual pieces instead of a whole level. Certain art pieces appear next to each other more frequently. Oak trees in Minecraft grow in hilly, grassy areas, sometimes interspersed with birch trees. The artists need to work closely with the tech team to make sure the trees, rocks, caves, and biomes combine and transition between one another smoothly. Previewing the results lets artists know whether the numbers of each asset are correct or if they look right alongside other computer-placed assets.
VR game environments have different goals than most games, so I’m only able to speak briefly about them here. Performance is a huge concern in the VR space, so many VR games opt for a low-poly art style to focus more on gameplay. Even in more realistic experiences like Half Life: Alyx, artists now have to worry about the game space at a much higher level of detail than other games. Every table and shelf needs to be scaled correctly so players are able to reach them properly during normal navigation.
The following is a quick summary of the types of games before we get into specific styles.
- 2D
- 3D
- Open-world
- Linear
- Procedurally generated
- VR environments
What are the different game environment styles?
The different game environment styles fall in a range from highly stylized to naturalistic. Styles are combinable or modifiable to create a new twist on an existing aesthetic. A list of different styles and games that use them is a helpful source of inspiration for game artists.
Cel-shaded games use modified shaders to mimic the lighting of a cartoon or 2D animation. Cel shading is the process of applying lighting in flat sheets of color instead of in a gradient, like with realistic lighting. Artists often combine this effect with black outlines to more closely mimic the look of a cartoon. The advantages of cel shading include enhanced expressiveness, bold colors, and a resilient look that doesn’t age as poorly as realistic games.
A realistic style is most common in big-budget AAA titles. Getting realistic materials, 3D models, and animations for the whole game world is a huge task, and it requires a huge budget to carry out. Rockstar spent a supposed $500 million on Red Dead Redemption 2, and the fidelity is apparent in every character, animal, and environment. Realism looks great when done right, but it’s a huge risk. The gameplay still needs to be solid to engage players. The more realistic a game is, the more glaring each mistake becomes.
Hand-drawn games are animated by drawing most frames individually, as all animation used to be done. By their nature, hand-drawn games are 2D. Cuphead is a well-known example that draws on the nostalgia of 1930s animation with its hand-drawn bosses and environments. There’s no limit to the medium, though, and it’s possible to make hand-drawn games with digital tools.
Low-poly art is one of the most common styles used in indie games. Games used to have low-fidelity 3D graphics because of hardware limitations, but, used intentionally, they feel nostalgic and create a striking atmosphere. The aesthetic is especially common in horror games, where the dark, blurry, pixelated environments are unsettling. Low-poly artwork is much easier to create than the more realistic options, which is essential for indie developrs with a much smaller art team than a AAA studio.
Pixel art used to be the only option for 2D games, just like the low-poly style. Pixel art is low-resolution, with characters allotted no more than a few dozen pixels for their whole range of actions and expressions. Pixel art games often have a limited color palette in order to mimic the older technology, although modern games don’t keep this limitation in all cases. The beauty of pixel art games comes from how the artists choose to depict the world under the constraints of a limited toolset.
Minimalist games overlap with pixel and low-poly styles but take the visual simplification a step further. The minimalism limits the environment to a few colors and simple shapes. Games such as N++ use gray for the character, walls, and background, distinguishing the three with different shades alone, resulting in playing field that is clear and distinct. Superhot has only three colors (white, red, and black), putting the focus on the gameplay above environmental storytelling or high fidelity.
A geometric style is another way of referring to simple, often casual games that consist of primitive shapes such as squares, circles, triangles, and simple lines. The oldest games, even older than pixel art or low-poly games, belong to this style. Tetris is a classic example, where nothing but the puzzle gameplay itself is important. Entirely geometric games have little narrative or grounding outside of the mechanics themselves.
Monochromatic games use different shades of a single color for all the game art. The art feels very cohesive as a result, and it strikes the eye as unique immediately. Monochromatic games nearly always use black or a darker color that gives the game a somber tone. Limbo’s solid black and No Case Should Remain Unsolved’s dark blues make them feel gloomy and depressing.
Handicraft (cut paper, yarn, claymation aesthetic) games look similar to children’s crafts or animated movies and are most closely associated with family-friendly experiences. Nintendo games like Yoshi’s Woolly World and Paper Mario are classic examples of the genre. Paper Mario puts a handicraft twist on the Mario formula by letting players fold into a flying paper plane and turn sideways to fit through narrow gaps.
What is the best environment for games?
The best environment for games depends on the genre and audience. Hardcore, AAA games rely on a realistic environment to impress the community with their detail. Indie games use low-poly or pixel art environments to emphasize contrast. The fewer resources of an indie team make dedicating an entire team to horse animation like Rockstar impossible.
A realistic, 3D game environment is the standard aesthetic in shooters, sports games, racing games, simulation games, and adventure games. Several of these genres simulate reality. Sports games put players in the shoes of pro athletes and racing games in the driver’s seat of a racecar, both inaccessible experiences for the average person. The expectation of a realistic aesthetic in these games is more of a convention than a rule, though. Shooters like Borderlands aren’t grounded in reality at all, opting for a cartoonish aesthetic.
Linear experiences have the broadest range of art styles and levels of accessibility. RPGs, platformers, action-adventure games, beat ‘em ups, twin-stick shooters, many genres fit the category of linear. A linear environment is desirable when the designers and artists want complete control over the experience. Every player is guaranteed a certain difficulty, intensity, and pacing curve as they complete the experience. The environment artwork is much more efficient to create because the artist knows the player’s path.
An open-world environment tends to have a realistic aesthetic, and only AA or AAA studios have the budget to make them in most cases. An open world requires a large investment in content, with serious gameplay challenges to solve. Players have the option to play content in any order, and going through to make sure the game accounts for conflicts between tasks takes a significant amount of time. Environments of this type ought to be built with great care. A small team is capable of it, but usually on the scale of a game like Diablo, which has an isometric perspective and procedurally generated regions.
Procedural generation is a cost-effective choice for indie devs, especially solo devs. A procgen environment is most common in sandboxes and roguelikes. Derek Yu made waves by developing Spelunky, which brought procedural generation to a platformer. In a 2D game like Spelunky with refined core mechanics, procedural generation makes the experience fresh. Most players at the time didn’t expect the levels to look completely different after they died. The procedural generation requires constant tweaking by designers, though, to make sure the gameplay is engaging and varied for each level.
A game environment enhances gameplay when it’s integrated with the game’s mechanics. This system requires cooperation between programmers, designers, and artists. The environmental destruction in Red Faction Guerrilla is a classic example. The artists need to build their structures out of individual breakable components, which calls for a different approach than making a building that’s only explorable.
The shortest way I’m able to sum up the approach to selecting a game type is that it depends on the emotions and feelings the player ought to have during the game. These core considerations are the primary concerns when choosing an environment type or art style. The second set of considerations, which are by no means thought of later, are the budget and time. A hyperrealistic open world isn’t the best choice for a small design team that wants tight control over the player experience.
What defines an action game environment?
An action game environment primarily consists of the arena around the fighters. Action games have a minimal focus on environment or story compared to other genres, so the principles of an action game environment aren’t clear to an artist looking at general advice on building game environments.
An action game environment presents a backdrop that stays out of the way of gameplay first and foremost. These environments keep the physical challenges in focus by making sure the most detailed objects are those directly relevant to the game’s mechanics and systems. Any other object is less detailed, less bright, and tucked out of the way. Glaringly incorrect details are smoothed over. Artist Devon Fay at Riot Games says that it’s very easy to get the scale wrong when building props for the environment. It’s distracting and de-immersive if even one object like a chair is far too big or too small.
The style varies depending on the type of game. Action game genres range from fighting games to platformers, shooters, action-adventure games, and beat ‘em ups. DNF Duel has 2D, anime-style characters with 3D backdrops, while Tekken sits on the other end of the spectrum with naturalistic (though not fully realistic) visuals. Somewhere in between are 3D titles like Street Fighter which go for a less natural aesthetic.
What are some video game environment ideas?
Game environment ideas are design concepts drawn from and inspired by other games in the same genre. Looking at how numerous games handle the same game modes, maps, and environments gives artists ideas about how their game ought to look. Consistent visual language builds on players’ past experiences and avoids confusion. When players are able to read the intention behind the artwork, they feel more at home in the game you’re creating.
The environment itself serves an important function in gameplay. The artwork guides the player, indicates what kind of game they’re playing, and relies on their knowledge of other games to make learning new systems easier. World maps and level select screens in a huge variety of games draw on the same visual language, ensuring the player always knows what they’re looking at. Think of the world map in games as old as Super Mario Bros. 3 or as recent as Overcooked.
Gathering references is crucial to getting genre-specific expectations right. I did research when working on the art for Sort Express to make sure it worked like other matching games. Many mobile games give players a reward for seven victories in a row. I looked at how Royal Match and other similar games handle player failure and represent each additional win in the streak. Royal Match calls it Lava Quest, where players step along stones over lava and fall in if they fail. I took the idea and changed the aesthetic, making the environment a fog-filled mine, with each step in the streak taking place over a bottomless pit.
The most innovative games often take cues from their predecessors. Players don’t know what to expect when they see something entirely new. A familiar element is necessary for the world to feel grounded and safe to explore. Super Mario 64 still retains the same dreamy, cartoonish environments of prior entries in the Mario series, despite the move to 3D. Players still know to jump into question blocks and chase after coins.
References come from other related media, not just video games. Borrowing inspiration from movies, classic artwork, and books draws on the visual language that people have already been exposed to. Concept artist Ray Lederer said that he took inspiration from Lord of the Rings when building concepts for Skyrim. The art team at CD Projekt Red looked to Blade Runner and Judge Dredd when building the futuristic world of Cyberpunk 2077.
