Why are we Back-tracking to Pixelated Graphics?

Mobile gaming has been on a swift rise for the past couple of years now, from Battle Royales with great graphics like PUBG to conventional games like Snake Xenzia being remastered and reshaped are the latest trends in the industry of mobile gaming. It’s evolving and enhancing day by day, it’s so hard to keep a track of all the games in different genres being released everyday as the number has risen up to millions per year. 

Although the recent surge in popularity is mainly due to the rise of Battle Royale games that are mainly targeting the mobile platforms such as android and IOS, there are a number of other gaming genres that are trying to scoop in as many players as they can. Some game developers are even coming up with their own genres that are based on some crazy odd ideas like Fall Guys, something that we have never seen before in the history of gaming but it blew away all the records. And talking about odd ideas, look how popular Amazon’s new game has turned out be, Yes! I am talking about New World, players are literally spending a ton of cash to buy New World Coins to upgrade their gear!

But apart from all the popular FPS shooters and open world games with high fidelity graphics, another genre has emerged on different platforms specially on mobile devices that has hit the market by a storm. The 16-bit blocky graphics games are the latest trend and here is what’s making them so good.

The Rise of Pixelated Graphics

Most of these games take their major references from the godfather of pixelated games, Minecraft of course! Pixelated graphics, as many agree, are a matter of nostalgia mostly, people love them because they feel connected to them, these games remind us of our childhood. But it’s not just that, it is the simplicity and the minimalism of the pixels that’s so captivating. Moreover, pixel art games are considerably easier to develop than games with realistic graphics and they require way less PC power to run, which is something that makes these games so widely available, as anyone with a PC or normal smartphone can play them. Most of the Adults of this era have played all the pixelated games of 80s till 2000s on workstations as well as consoles. 

These pixelated graphics have a certain effect on the players that’s so hard to decipher, not only does it remind us of our childhood but there’s more to it as most of the players playing these games haven’t actually played the old ones. The Games in pixels affect in different ways, which helps his imagination, can engage in games of a new experience of game. For example, in games like Minecraft, the player has to use all of his imagination to recreate emotions or situations in the game; the game itself communicates with the players abstractly. The 3D games have a million visual effects, which depending on the direction of art, the experience is different. The game industry always needs different visual styles for different experience games.

There are a ton of games that are using these blocky graphics in their own ways to come up with a unique game, one of the best examples of games that have become extremely popular despite their pixelated and blocky visuals are Stardew valley and Animal Crossing and they both have a pretty huge player base. Animal Crossing has made some changes to make the visuals more appealing and cartoony and apparently a lot of players are falling for it, be it the amazing items in Animal Crossing, the fact that it helps connect you with your friends and so much more.

Games like in the Darkness, 7 years from now or Star Wars: Tiny Death Star have been a great success mainly because of their great stories with immense depth and surely because of the magic of pixelated graphics. Most of us are just too bored with surrealism and photo realistic graphics, the next-gen visuals are just too boring already and players are looking for something to enjoy while laying back in their seats in peace enjoying the graphics they enjoyed during their childhood.

While the world is busy trying to enhance the graphics in every single aspect, Indie developers are just resorting back to that 80s aesthetic to please players all around the world and it’s just actually working so well in truth.