Top 12 Games With Unique Styles (That I've Played)

He who says that video games cannot be a form of art is a fool. Why would it not be art, exactly? Because it’s “for kids”? Because of the direct interactivity the player has with it? Because it’s for uncultured swines? Or perhaps is it because the unfortunate, enduring stereotype of the average gamer is a 12 years old kid screaming obscenities at other 12 year olds while playing Call of Duty or Fortnite?

This is all unfair. Video games are art.

One example of several. This list will be full of them.

Video games can tell enthralling, complex stories that put the player in moral dilemmas. They can contain soundtracks that a player will enjoy above any other music. They can provide personal challenges like nothing else ever could. They can look anywhere from 8-bit to the most modern CGI, or switch it up with seldom-seen styles. Or they can have none of that, because like all forms of art such as movies, music, paintings or literature, there are examples of the amazing and the horrendous.

Today, I focus on style. Much like plot, the graphical style of a video game is determined in the early phases. The sky is the limit! Sure, AAA titles will go for the best CGI they can manage, while indie games will do whatever they please - but there's always the odd title out there that does something out of the ordinary. If there’s an attempt at making something special with a concept, not only will the graphical design show it, but the concept might extend to gameplay as well. This list will be filled with examples of great creativity.

For this list, I’ll only take into account games that I’ve played; I may have beaten them or just given them a try.

12. Auditorium

Oooooh, pretty.

As I was building this list, I realized that games that go for a very special style are frequently taking inspiration from a different form of art, a different craft. Video games that play around with music are fairly common, though most of the time it’s a track playing and the game plays along to it. In Auditorium, which I reviewed a long time ago on this blog, you solve the puzzle in order to create the music. It involves redirecting a stream of “music” into the required areas, which will turn its white form into color. You can even feel the music getting more complex the more goes into the required zone, hear instruments adding themselves to the track. As far as music puzzle games go, this one put a spin on the idea, one that helped its style.

Which one of these will play Megalovania now?

11. Just Dance (Franchise)

As an example, this choreography over a song that makes
numerous references to comic books features backgrounds
mimicking Jack Kirby's art.

Perhaps a controversial choice, which is why I’m keeping it low on the list. What’s so “special” about the way this game looks? Music plays, some character dances, you dance along to it, right? On the subject of style, it’s more complex than that. Every level has its dancer(s) and choreography, but it also has its own background and animations to go with them. Usually something related to the current song, no less. If one doesn’t think it’s enough to make this list, something else made me decide to include Just Dance on here: This is one of the most colorful game series I’ve ever seen. Between the fluorescent colors worn by the characters, almost every level hits you with a barrage of flashy, fun colors. I struggle to think of a level where I didn't enjoy the general aesthetics. The people at Ubisoft work hard on making these games feel like a party is going on in your TV, and they make it as inviting as they possibly can to make you join in. There’s an art to partying, didn’t you know?

I never get tired of showing these.

10. Monster Loves You!

Reviewed last year on the blog, Monster Loves You! is a work of interactive fiction in which you build your little monster from its very first moments all the way to adulthood and beyond, and seeing that character change through the interactions it has with its fellow monsters. This game reads itself like a fairy tale book, including a handful of winks to actual fairy tales. The cutesy style of the images and the similarly cute situations make this entire game feel like you could read it to a kid. It breathes “bedtime story for children” for most of its duration… well, I say “most” because some endings would be nightmares. The story feels harmless enough, but then you get to special endings where humans or monsters are either enslaved or killed in war… Let’s say it’s 95% child-friendly. Hey, that's still better than some real fairy tales - reading the earliest versions of Little Red Riding Hood will scar you for life.

9. Pop-Up Pursuit

Well that's an impressive pop-up book.

Now that’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. I reviewed this game from the Nintendo Wii Shop Channel’s WiiWare section, and it’s bad. Really, really bad. So bad that even 6 years after I published that review, I would probably still put it on a Top 12 list of the worst games I’ve ever reviewed. However! The one good thing I can say about it is that it takes full advantage of paper and books to present a style that’s somewhat fresh. Everything is made of paper: The characters, the worlds and every item. It pushes the style further than other games that also took the paper aesthetics. Of course, since that time, we’ve had more games that push the paper idea even further beyond, but this was a notable example. Now if only as much effort had been put on gameplay as there was on style…

8. Evoland

From a Zelda-like...

If video games are art, and this list is all about video games taking inspiration from all sorts of art and craft, then a video game can definitely play around with the styles of older games as a base concept. Evoland begins looking like a Game Boy-era RPG, then slowly evolves graphically to 8bit, 16bit, all the way to Wii-level CGI. The game controls evolve alongside the graphics, and the dungeons start playing around with various conventions. Things start as a regular turn-based RPG, then we have a Zelda-like dungeon, then we have a cave level that plays like an action RPG. It’s a trip through the evolution of action fantasy games, and though the game ends looking like your average video game of modern years, it starts in a unique way and sticks to its concept. For something that aims to parody more than homage, that’s really good!

To a different Zelda-like.

7. Scanner Sombre

Wow.

I feel like I’m rambling about this game at every chance I get lately. I just really like it. As far as style goes, it’s definitely doing something I’ve never seen another game do. Save for the tent at the start (and something at the end), this game is set in complete darkness. The player creates the path by scanning the world around, sparking little dots of color all over the walls and obstacles, eventually allowing them to find their way through the cave. The end result is beautiful, no doubt. And the upgrades to the scanner allow for an easier time navigating the world. By the way, aside from dots lost in the depths or vanishing in watery areas, no dot created on a wall ever disappears, so even at the end of the game, you can look at the 3D map and see the whole path you’ve walked so far. Then the scanner’s “glitches” come around, and you’re never quite sure that you’re actually alone down there… Oh, I LOVE talking about this one!

Wooooooow- is that a demon priest??

6. The Paper Mario series

I guess it breaks my rule of talking only about games I’ve played, since I played only two of five Paper Mario games, but I wanted to acknowledge the three I haven’t experienced. The franchise kept finding new ways of pushing the concept further, which is why I bundle them together.

The first Paper Mario worked as a proof of concept, introducing the idea of 2D paper cutout characters navigating a 3D world.

The Thousand-Year Door added paper abilities to Mario, allowing him to fold himself, origami-style, for special effects.

Super Paper Mario went for a 2.5D style, as the game can shift between 2D and 3D almost everywhere – so things hidden in one perspective can be seen in the other. It does somewhat ditch the paper cutout idea for this idea to work, unfortunately.

"Hello, I am a shiny sticker paper."

Sticker Star… well, as the name suggests, explored what would happen if suddenly stickers came in that paper universe. It also went a few steps further in exploring the results of characters being flat and foldable.

Lastly, Color Splash touched on the life stream of this cartoony art – the colors being drained by villains, and restored by the hero.

And thus each game tries something special, expanding on the core concept, resulting in a very stylish sub-franchise of the Mario games. (The quality of these games, especially the last two, is a different debate that we’re not having today.)

5. Virginia

It all feels like a movie.

So far, most games have taken on the style of a different art or craft, and incorporated it to their look more than anything else. Games have also become more cinematic as time went on, taking some cues from the universe of film and television. That said, most games are still playable, interactive experiences. Very few video games can claim that their base gameplay is taking on the codes of filmmaking to tell a story. Virginia thrives to do this, featuring a 2-hour story in which your input is very limited. But you can use that limited freedom to see more than a movie would show, which is still good. It is, however, “filmed” and edited like it’s a movie, something that very few games can claim. It’s a great style for experimentation, though it’s the type of style that takes over much of the development of a game that utilizes it, so few if any franchises are actually capable to play with that style – that’s why non-franchised indie games are more likely to try it out. It’s a commitment, hence why it’s still fairly rare. But it’s an avenue I wished gets tried more often.

Sometimes you'd wish you had soem video game powers
to survive this movie plot.

4. Muramasa: The Demon Blade

Have a reminder that this was all hand-drawn.

Nowadays, everything is done on computers – for coding, that’s a necessity, but for design and spriting? Who says those things must be done on a computer? The art of hand-drawn animation has unfortunately fallen out of vogue over the past 20 years. It’s not entirely gone, but hand-drawn animation is rare nowadays. So when a game goes the extra step by having absolutely all of its art hand-drawn? Not only is it rare, but the extra effort can lead to absolutely marvelous results. Muramasa: The Demon Blade is a Wii game embracing the anime aesthetic like none other, and every single sprite, background and detail was lovingly drawn before being incorporated into the game. That said, it’s not the most famous hand-drawn video game, and it’s certainly not the most recent one either…

Again: Hand-drawn. I know it's hard to believe.

3. Kirby’s Epic Yarn

Even though it's all thread, you can somehow feel the
heat of this place.

So far, games on this list have taken inspiration from hand-drawn animation, movies, paper, retro games, storybooks or music… There’s a reason I kept saying “other arts or crafts”. Crafts in particular. Who would imagine building a game that takes inspiration from cloth and fabric? Well, after Kirby’s Epic Yarn, and Yoshi’s Woolly World, we no longer need to imagine - we have it, and it works. There’s great thought put into the world of a game such as Kirby’s Epic Yarn, in which everything follows the set theme. Everything is wool, threads, patches and buttons, with fabric patterns like plaid and stripes in the backgrounds. It’s all so fluffy and comfy! The game is actually very easy, getting to the end is very simple; unlocking everything is a tad more difficult, but easier than teh average path to 100% completion. Then again, any reason is good to come back to such a creative universe.

You can drive a wool-mecha!

I haven’t played Yoshi’s Woolly World, which does disqualify it from this list, but I look at the woolly Yoshis and I swear my pupils turn into hearts. The little wool figurines are so cute!

2. Cuphead

It's like visiting the 1920s!

A video game made to look like a cartoon isn’t exactly breaking new grounds. Now, if it aims to copy a particular era of cartoons, with all the designs and tropes that were commonplace at the time – cool, cool. Made with the production methods of the time, meaning good ol’ paper and pencil? Now we’re talking. I know I already covered hand-drawn games with the Muramasa entry on this list, but I feel that Cuphead has gone far beyond. Barring the fact that it’s a video game, it’s a love letter to the 1920s-1930s era of animation, especially the Fleischer Studios cartoons where characters squash, stretch, and transform all the time. The music? Ragtime, big brass band, music of the time. Hell, if you want to stretch, the game’s levels being 2D run-and-gun, a genre seldom seen nowadays and more closely attached to the ultra-hard games of classic earlier consoles, is another nod to the past. And every single second of this explosion of style is enjoyable. Insanely hard, but so worth it just to look at it.

Boo-yah!

1. MadWorld

Maybe a tiny bit hard to make out what's going on...
But damn, it's so worth it.

I have played some of this game and it’s in my collection. I haven’t beaten it yet, but you bet I am planning on it eventually. I first heard of MadWorld in the Nintendo Power magazine, and already knew this would be special. The game itself is in 3D, but it’s all in black and white, save for splotches of red, for blood. If you’ve ever seen the Sin City movies, you already know that style. I don’t believe it’s been seen in a video game before, or since - black and white maybe, but not with that included exercise in tone. Of course, mimicking the style of those gritty comic books and movies makes a lot of sense considering MadWorld is another massively violent story carried by horrible people in an uncaring, dark world. The difference is that, in comparison to video games or movies that take themselves too seriously with such concepts and ideas, MadWorld improves everything by adding a thick layer of self-deprecation and overall comedy to everything it does. It’s a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously, which is what works best for what it it. The tone may not be serious, but damn – Sega took the designing of this game extremely seriously to arrive to such a fantastic result.

Expect a review... uh... someday.

That’s it for the list. Have you played, throughout your years as a gamer, similar stylish games that didn’t make the list (either because I haven’t played them, or never heard of them)? Share those with me, I’d love to hear about them.

Next time: A movie review!