As much as games should nail a compelling story and fun and satisfying mechanics, art direction is also one of the most defi🍌ning elements. And perhaps one of the most underrated and more niche art styles seen in games is the psychedelic aesthetic, purposely designed in a way to m🐲imic the hallucinatory effects and colors of a trippy psychedelic drug experience.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网: 8 Great Indie Games Wi🅘th Unique Art Style෴s
These indie game gems have unique art styles.
The use of a psychedelic style in game design is very versatile, as you'll see it utilized in a variety of genres from unique RPGs to Metroidvanias, shooters, and rhythm and music-based games. If you seek to be astounded by bright-colored la💃ndscapes and trippy environments that overload the senses, these psychedelic games achieve it best.
10 Ultros
Ultros is a psychedelic Metroidvania that's from the publisher of Clair Obscur, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Kepler Interactive. This 🌞game takes you to an interstellar location known as The Sarcophagus, or what's described as a "cosmic uterus," and there's ܫalso a black hole involved in the narrative that puts you through a time loop where you lose your abilities, evoking a sort of roguelike element.
Seeing a Metroidvania done in this art style and atmosphere is refreshing and bold. The environment design and color choices are all 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:wonderfully Lovecraftian and psychedelic, and there are many mysteries within The Sarcophagus to explo💛re, including the titular creature Ultros that's being held there.
9 Post Void
Psychedelic '90s Doom made in 2020 is the kind of retro aesthetic that 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:boomer shooter Post Void brings. It's a fast-paced experience involving trippy environments and gory animations. The lighting, music💞, and sound design also add to the intense and well-crafted levels, which are procedurally generated.
Post Void gives you various weapons like a shotgun, Uzi, pistol, and knife to mow down enemies at lightning spe༒ed. The pixel graphics, animations, and art direction are perfect for a psychedelic shooter design, and you have the unique health bar system taking the form of an idol you hold in your hands, fill෴ing up as you kill enemies.
8 ♍ Children Of The Sun
Children of the Sun
- Released
- February 1, 2024
- ESRB
- m
- Developer(s)
- ও 💞 René Rother
- Publisher(s)
- 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Devolver Digital
- Engine
- Unity
- Platform(s)
- PC
You've probably played sniper games before, like the Sniper Elite and Hitman series, but you've never seen such a unique one💞 as what Children of the Sun has in store. There's limited movement, and the gameplay is seಌt in stages, where the protagonist must find the best vantage point to start killing off their targets, as the bullet will൲ only travel POV-style from one target's position to the next.
Children of the Sun is like Sniper Elite with a psychedelic coat of paint and graphics and visuals reminiscent of Lorelei and the Laser Eyes and Anger Foot. The mechanics of sniping serving more as a strategic puzzle is brilliant, and the world and revenge story surrounding the titular cult are quite trippy, but do you expect any less from 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a Devolver Digital title?
7 Thumper
In Thumper, you are a space beetle in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a rhythm game-driven psychedelic odyssey on a seemingly never-ending track that plays out a bit liꦯke the light cycle scenes from Tron. The colors and visuals are pretty mind-bl🙈owing, and the music and sound effects are very cool with how they go with the flow of the track as well as the animations of the Silver Surfer-esque beetle protagonist.
Throughout Thumper, there will be bosses you have to take on through the rhythm mechanics, and the fights are simply mꦅesmerizing. Even more psychedelic is t𓄧he main enemy in the game, a giant metal head with spikes.
6 Hypn♏ospace Outlaw
Hypnospace Outlaw
- Released
- March 12, 2019
- ESRB
- t
- Engine
- Construct
- Platform(s)
- 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:PlayStation 4, Linux, PC, macOS
- Developer
- 𒀰 Tendershoot, ThatWhichIs Media, Michael Lasch, Ratalaika Games S.L.
- Publisher
- 𒁃 Tendershoot, ThatWhichIs Media, Michael Lasch, Ratalaika Games S.L.
Take a nostalgic trip back to the '90s with Hypnospace Outlaw, an internet simulator game that's set in an alternate version of 1999, just before the feared technological disa꧑ster of Y🉐2K. In this game, you'll patrol the digital space as an Enforcer for the Hypnospace Patrol Department, tasked with rooting out the outlaws in cyberspace who are harming other internet users or causing viruses.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网: 10 Games Inspired By The '90s
Whether♚ you lived through it or your nostalgic for a youth you never witnessed, these games will give you a taste of what the '90s were all about.
Just imagine that one effortless minigame from GTA 5 where Michael had to clear viruses and all sorts of lewd ads from the internet, and creating a more complex game out of it with trippy pixel art and psyche🦩delic landscapes and UI that calls back to the '90s.
5 ไ Everhood Series
-
Everhood
Systems
- Top Critic Avg: 82/100 Critics Rec: 77%
- Released
- March 4, 2021
- ESRB
- E10ಞ+ For Everyone 1🌜0+ // Alcohol Reference, Fantasy Violence
- Developer(s)
- Chris Nordgren, Jordi Roཧ🎐ca
- Publisher(s)
- Foreign Gno🧜mes, Surefire Gameဣs
- Franchise
- Everhood
- PC Release Date
- March 4, 2021
- Nintendo Switch Release Date
- 𝔍 🍬 March 4, 2021
-
Your comment has not been saved
Everhood 2
Systems
- Released
- March 4, 2025
- Developer(s)
- 🌱 Chris Nordgren, Jordi R🉐oca
- Publisher(s)
- 🍸 Foreign Gnomes
- Franchise
- Everhood
- PC Release Date
- March 4, 2025
- Nintendo Switch Release Date
- March 4, 2025
- Platform(s)
- 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Nintendo Switch, PC
Everhood is a very interesting game, mechanics and aesthetics-wise. It's an RPG adventure with rhythm-based music battles and features a colorful, psychedelic pixel art style with a world design reminiscent of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:RPG Maker games. The protagonist is also a wooden doll trying to recover a missing arm, and the overall gameplay and UI a𒅌rဣe simplistic yet still unlike anything in the genre.
In 2025, the developers of Everhood launched a sequel, which carries over the same aesthetics but also updates the design in significant ways. There's a new protagonist, the adventure is now much longer, there are plenty of new enemies, so✤ngs, and locations, and th𒈔e mind-warping psychedelic visuals are even more refined.
4 Hylics Series ❀
Hylics
- Released
- October 2, 2015
- ESRB
- t
- Developer(s)
- Mason Lin♑droth
- Publisher(s)
- Mason൲ Lindroth
- Engine
- Unity
- Platform(s)
- PC
A JRPG-inspired psychedelic game by a solo developer via RPGMaker is what the indie💛 hidden gem Hylics series entails. The landscapes, characters, an🅷d enemies are as weird, abstract, and psychedelic as possible, and the turn-based combat encounters are just as mind-boggling and unconventional, leaving a very original and creative mark.
The overall aesthetic of Hylics feels like Fantastic Planet crossed with Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and it is quite the visual overload, though an oddly satisfying one. Five years after the launch of the first game, developer Mason Lindroth made a sequel, which follows the same art direction and party-based combat mechanics, but also introduces an airship, a 3D world and character design, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:and stop-motion.
3 🐈 The Artful Escape
The Artful Escape
- Released
- September 9, 2021
- ESRB
- E10+ For Everyone 10+ Due To Alcohol Reference, Language, Mild 🌟Suggestive Themes, Use of Tobacco
- Publisher(s)
- 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Annapurna Interactive
- Engine
- Unreal Engine 4 🅘
- Platform(s)
- PC, PS4, Switch, Xbox One, PS5, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Xbox Series X, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Xbox Series S
- Developer
- 𒁏 Bee🐻thoven & Dinosaur
168澳洲幸运5开奖网:On🐬e of the most star-studded inꦛdie games 🔯that has a cast made up of names like Lena Headey, Mark Strong, Jason Schwartzman, and the late Carl ♏Weathers, The Artful Escape is a musical psychedelic odyssey with platforming mechanics, and features all sorts of vibrant landscapes and alien creatures you'll encounter in the Cosmic Extraordinary.
18 Bestꦬ Annapurna Interactive Games, Ranked
Annapurna Interactive 🥃has launched some gems in recent memory. Here are its best games, ranked.
The main protagonist of The Artful Escape is 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:teen musician Francis Vendetti, who wants to reinvent himself as an artist and break out from the shadow of the late musical legend who was his uncle, Johnson Vendetti. The story blends poignant writing, an original premise, psychedelic sci-fi and fantasy, and folk music, and it's especially great if you also enjoyed 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the genre-bending film Sinners.
2 🎐 La💦yers Of Fear
- ESRB
- m
- Developer(s)
- 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Bloober Team
- Publisher(s)
- Aspyr
- Engine
- Unreal💃 Engine 5
- Platform(s)
- Switch, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:PlayStation (Original), Xbox One, PC
Now better-known for 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:the uniꦬver🐬sally acclaimed horror remake of Silent Hill✱ 2, Bloober Team's Layers of Fear was one of the earliest horror masterpieces you could say the studio achieved. It's a first-person walking simulator-style horror game with an incredibly eerie atmosphere and some of the most mast𒁃erful set pieces and jump scares that can get you like any well-made horror film.
Where the psychedelic part comes in is the mind-bending, haunting, and surr✨eal changes in the environment, marked by splattered paint dripping and pooling from different directions. Layers of Fear's story indeed revolves around a troubled painter with a dark past, consumed by guilt over his marriage that ended in tragedy and driven mad by his art.
1 ܫ ♑ Hotline Miami Series
-
Your comment has not been saved
168澳洲幸运5开奖网: Hotline Miami
Systems
- Released
- October 23, 2012
- ESRB
- M For Mature 1🅘7+ due to Intense Violence, Blood aꦡnd Gore, Drug Reference, Strong Language, Crude Humor
- Developer(s)
- ⛄Dennaton Games
- Publisher(s)
- 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Devolver Digital
- Engine
- gamemaker, phyreengine
- Franchise
- 𒐪 Hotline M🌱iami
- PC Release Date
- October 23, 2012
- Xbox Series X|S Release Date
- October 23, 2023
-
Your comment has not been saved
Hotline Miami 2: Wrong Number
Systems
- Top Critic Avg: 74/100 Critics Rec: 48%
- Released
- March 10, 2015
- ESRB
- M൩ For Mature 17+ due to Intense Violence, Blood and Gore, Sexual🐭 Themes, Partial Nudity, Strong Language, Use of Drugs
- Developer(s)
- Dennaton Gameꦡs, Abstraction Games 🌞
- Publisher(s)
- 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Devolver Digital
- Engine
- GameMaker
- Franchise
- ♉ Hotline Miami 𝓰
One of the earliest games to really embrace the wild and unique psychedelic and pixel art aesthetic was Hotline Miami in 2012, a game so influential that it even had 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:an Easter egg homage in The Last of 🌟Us Part 2. It's a top-♛down, surprisingly gory and viol𝔍ent shooter with a beloved soundtrack set in 1980s Miami, seeing you as a vengeful figure ordered via an answering machine to kill members of the criminal world.
Hotline Miami 2, cleverly titled Wrong Number, continues the top-down story of violence and psychedelic themes from the original game. The most interesting aspect of the sequel is its use of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:a non-linear narrative that switches between different t🎐imeline♐s, like you'd typically see in movies. Both games were also published by Devolver Digital.
168澳洲幸运5开奖网: 8 Best 𒁃Games With A Watercolor Art Style
These watercolor-style game♛s are definitelꦦy soft on the eyes and will effortlessly warm your heart.
Your comment has not been saved