Game of the Year 2024 – Best Visual Design

thesixthaxis.com:

In a lot of ways it’s easier than ever to make an incredible looking game, thanks in no small part to the broad accessibility of Unreal Engine 5 to developers across the whole industry, and the technical baseline that the PS5 and Xbox Series X|S console provide.

But visual design isn’t just about how many pixels you can throw around the screen, how many polygons you can zoom in on or how realistic everything can look. There’s absolutely a place for that – especially when you can apply it in new and unusual ways – but it’s also so important to have an individualistic streak and a real artistry to make a game stand out from the hyper realistic crowds.

Metaphor Refantazio is the story of a boy who wants to build a fairytale world, but that means something rather different when he lives in a world of high fantasy. When his world already features a tribal caste system, where certain races have bat and dog physiologies, demon horns and angel wings, and institutional racism sees the more human-like tribes rising to the top, his dreams look much more mundane to our eye.

It all stems from a book that describes our modern world. Effectively, our version of a fairytale world has characters who dream of ours.

All of this takes a stunning visual design, with the book pages painting themselves in monochromatic watercolour as the story unfolds. This contrasts beautifully with the colourful and highly saturated overworld. And that’s before considering the anime sections or the ridiculous pedigree at this studio, with accolades from Persona to Neon Genesis Evangelion.

The mix of styles and stylisation come together beautifully in Metaphor, which has an incredible story of coming together and overthrowing a corrupt and racist regime that runs alongside it. If you’re looking for the prettiest game of the year, you won’t find one better than Metaphor.

– Nic B

You know what ants look like in the real world? Empire of the Ants looks like that, but like, really close up. It’s pretty great…