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[eobet]

I think so...


Futuridium


Sky Rogue


Citybound


Skipping Stones


Zombygon


Let's go Camping


Sustain


The Sun Also Rises


Monument Valley


Dungeon Dive

More borderline/advanced examples, but still:


Godus


Oberon's Court


Into this Wylde Abyss


Perish


Enemy Starfighter

Or perhaps it's just me seeing things because I started doing my own flat shaded game...

[Cobralad]

Yep. Too bad you showed only good ones.

[Jad]

Thank god it is, it's the best way to create good silhouettes and palettes in 3D space, focus on silhouettes and abstractions and lure the eye away from 'polygon edge detection within color clusters' mode.

You can be sure that if I make a 3D game this is exactly what I'll do. Unlit 3D. Maybe not low-poly, though.

I see this as a maturation of the medium - recognizing that not every picture has to strive towards some kind of photorealistic / stylized realist lighting. The realistic lighting is already in AAA games - this just provides wonderful variety

[Schrompf]

I like that flat-shaded look. But I think you're right with that: it's a new wave coming, and in a few years I might look at these art styles with the same disrespesct I currently have for that huge-pixel-retro-colourful style.

[s-spooky g-g-ghosts]

To me this medium has a lot of room for artistic values (by artistic I mean really well composed sceneries which affect your emotions), but in my opinion the current games that use such technique look unappealing and I'd say they use it as an excuse to produce half-assed models.

[Leon Fook]

the only question worth asking here is: why not? If AAA get all photorealistic, indie should get, you know, indie.

To be honest if this art style done right, it looks damn good.

[Snow]

I still love the early shadow-less low poly 3d done in early 90's DOS games. I apparently suck at googling though as I haven't found a good enough example image.

I remember I looked at a book once about video game art where someone had hacked one of the 90's jet fighter sims, so that they could just freely fly around (w/o UI), and take pictures of the low poly pixelated landscape. Out of all the artwork in the book, those images were my favorite. I also suck at remembering names of books I should remember the names of.

But yea, as Leon was saying, if this style is done right, it can look very damn good.

[Zaphos]

Monument Valley is not really flat-shaded low poly, I'd say.  It uses smooth curves where it wants to.  It also looks like there might be a little bit of AO on some of the corners of the world, and the characters are unlit rather than flat-shaded.

Anyway, sure flat-shaded low-poly is a popular style now, but I wouldn't say it has replaced pixel art.  It's just another popular method.

[baconman]

Makes sense. Us 80s twerps bounced on lots of NES~SNES jizzbombers over the past ten years, why would 90s PlayStation-era newcomers not design ala N64/PSX stuff as well? I smell indie FPS and collectathon 3D platformers coming soon.

That said, low-poly and simple coloring is my fave to play with. But I'd suggest skipping the "Tekken 2 ridiculously overpoly" thing and going straight from this to Tekken 3's "simple/streamlined illusion" thing by controlling the perspective angle and crafting clever artistic illusion with the lower-but-not-lowest poly stuff; whenever things naturally progress that direction.

Apart from that, LEGOcraft blockmen never get old.

[Jad]

Ghost trick uses flat shaded unlit models. It's also one of the best looking games in recent memory. It's not the method's fault if it looks bad!

[RidiculousJohn]

It is like indi art is evolving. Its kind of a cute thought if you think of it.

[eobet]

Makes sense. Us 80s twerps bounced on lots of NES~SNES jizzbombers over the past ten years, why would 90s PlayStation-era newcomers not design ala N64/PSX stuff as well?

That is a very interesting observation!

Also, with Unity, Unreal and other middleware being more common (and cheap), the barrier of entry into the 3D world has been lowered significantly in recent years. And Blender is almost usable these days.

[terri]

Also, with Unity, Unreal and other middleware being more common (and cheap), the barrier of entry into the 3D world has been lowered significantly in recent years. And Blender is almost usable these days.

Exactly. I like working in 3D, and realistic high poly models just isn't an option.

[medieval]

Blender is almost usable these days.

 

[Delko]

Sky Rogue did it before it was cool

[gamerzap]

It's the best way to do low budget 3D and still having it look good.

[Zaphos]

I thought this was a nice study on a clean, relatively low-poly style:  http://the-witness.net/news/2013/09/on-the-rocks/  They do benefit from having global illumination rather than flat shading; hopefully we'll see more of that as engines make it more easily available.

I think we'll also see more indies going for higher-poly worlds, but with minimal texturing, and few-to-no animated characters; stuff like http://www.noctuelles.net/For-Each-Our-Roads-of-Winter-Tentative-Title-FPX

[Snow]

I think we'll also see more indies going for higher-poly worlds, but with minimal texturing, and few-to-no animated characters; stuff like http://www.noctuelles.net/For-Each-Our-Roads-of-Winter-Tentative-Title-FPX

Beautiful images, but the thing is, it still takes a lot of work (not a bad thing, just means longer to finish). There's also this: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=37903.0 Ktch is doing something amazing here. I've never been in any 3d world that has felt so close to something real as Py. If you look at the screenshots of forests, it truly feels like you're actually in one. I do hope that Ktch starts a movement with this style of 3d as well. I see so much potential in this style.

[Zaphos]

Yeah, agreed.  And wow, ktch's stuff looks stunning!

[Flex]

I think a lot of people can think this is "disconsidering" low poly.

Personnaly, I think there's a lot of reasons to use it like :
- You can make tons of assets in a small amount of time
- It can be ridiculously optimized (no light, low poly, extra light textures)
- like the pixel art for 2D, it's  super prototyping-friendly
- Abstraction means sometime avoiding detail related obstacles

There's a hype because of cool gifs and cool games that came out with a fancy "indie seal" on 'em. A few years ago, if you wanted to make your first game and say you're an indie, you'd have first thought about pixel art. So yeah, I think for the next 2 to 3 years, a lot of so-called indie games will be low-poly-flat-shaded.

The thing is that as it is a mean, and not an end, there's tons of ways of doing it. The more lowpoly games there will be, the harder it will be to create something different. I admire the way Kentucky Route Zero is always hesitating between 2D and 3D for example.

There's a lot of reasons to choose it, the thing is I don't know how to express 'em and not be called a "hype-victim" except by beeing awesome at it and have a unique style.
I personnaly chose this for my last works because it fits exactly to my 2D style. It's a continuation.

*insert self-prom here*