Hi friends! Good to have you back! :,) Something important first:  I don’t
want to say anything negative here or blame something! It’s only a
comparison and of course a subjective view on things! If you wanna
kick me anyway, use these tools: Mail, Twitter or Facebook.

Like in school, we start with some boring theory:

Boring Theory

Think of this as a 3D scene where the rings have different
distances to the camera. Could you tell which one is more near or more far
away?
Same question again. This time you should get a way better idea of how “deep” the scene is and which ring is more in the background than the others. Right?
That’s one aspect of doing a compostion and i think it’s an awesome tool to tell the viewer which elements of the image are more important than the others.

Awesome Theory

No let’s get to the interesting part (which i often missed during school): Games! Wohoo! Let’s compare screenshots of two similar games:

Source: The Binding of Isaac (Screenshot source)

In The Binding of Isaac the “not so important” elements (wall, poop, stones, ground) are
not as strong defined as the enemies and Isaac itself. The outlines are
less intense and let the viewer focus on the more important stuff.

Source: Sushi Castle (Screenshot source)

In Sushi Castle everything has the same black outline color (but there’s is variation in the thickness which is also a good way to separate things from each other).

I don’t say anthing about that one game looks better than the other (!), but in my personal opinion The Binding of Isaac works better from a compositional standpoint.

It’s of course always a question of taste and style! Personally i prefer
the basics of painting theory. If you want to know more about
the basics of design you should checkout the great videos of ctrl+paint!

Its just that sometimes people forget about the fundamental rules when it comes to
the highly complex workflow of making a game. It’s sometimes good to take a
step back and ask yourself, if the rendered frame buffer is “just” a
technical milestone or also a beautiful picture.

I would love to hear your opinion about this article (or all the others)!