Developer: PopCap Games
Genre: Tower Defence
Platforms: PC, XBLA and iOS.
Age Rating: E
Plants Vs Zombies is a tower defence game by PopCap Games where the player takes on the persona of a homeowner under the attack of an army of zombies and has to utilise a variety of plants in order to repel them.
Firstly its worth noting that, as far as I can tell, the art assets for this game were created using a mixture of both vector and cel shaded art. The environments and menu screens all seem the be cel-shaded, with characters designed using vectors in a cel shaded like style. The developers aimed for the art style to be a balance of “gritty” and “sickeningly cute.” They aimed to target more experienced players by including strong strategic elements and more casual gamers by keeping the rest of the game relatively simple with few tutorials. (Thomson, M. 2010)
Perhaps the art style has been used to reflect this – The friendly cel shaded art style mixed with the tongue-in-cheek goulish subject matter?
Developer: The Behemoth
Genre: Platformer
Platform: XBLA
Age Rating: 12 +
BattleBlock Theatre is a platformer game by The Behemoth developed for Xbox Live Arcade. After the S.S. Friendship becomes shipwrecked, the entire crew, including the player, is taken captive by technologically advanced, highly intelligent cats and forced in to deadly theatre performances where the player must fight for survivor.
The game is highly story based, with humour being a main selling point. It is also a challenging game with a high diffiuclty level however it is worth noting that the bright colours and friendly, simple shapes alongside cut-scenes told in a puppet theater like fashion may be very appealing to children. Furthermore, the game also includes a highly acclaimed co-op mode and several other modes of play such as the "Capture The Flag" based "Capture The Horse" and competitive trial run modes so there's "something for everyone." (Carter, C. 2013)
Another game with a cartoony cel shade art style designed with a wide target audience in mind.
Developer: Reverge Labs/Lab Zero Games
Platforms: PS3, Xbox 360, PC
Genre: Fighting
Age Rating: 13+
Skullgirls is a 2D fighting game by Reverge Labs and co-published by Konami and Autumn Games. It is set in a fictional world featuring 8 playable female characters fighting to obtain the "Skull Heart" which according to the game's lore has the ability to grant any woman's wish.
Whether you're in to the whole anime style or not, it's a beautiful game with some of the best game animation I've ever seen. According to the fantastic video below on how the artists tackled animating the characters for this game, "each character animation is hand drawn and between 1200 to 1500 frames." A crazy amount of time and effort was put in to this game animation and undoubtedly the same effect would not have been achieved if they'd used another art style such as pixel or vector art.
Although it's quite pixel art-like as the first game was released in 1994 by Capcom, the 2D fighting game Darkstalkers also helps illustrate this point as there is an evident cel shading style used in the character art and the animation portays brilliant use of Disney's acclaimed 12 principles. (Lee, R. 2010)
To conclude, cel shading is often used in games designed to attract a varied audience which is likely due to the appealing child friendly cartoon style. It is also appears to be a style preferred by games that require complex animation as this style is less time consuming than a more painterly style, yet still allows for fluid animation.
References:(Will tidy these up later)
Plants Vs Zombies
Thomson, M. 2010) http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2010/03/george-fan-how-insaniquarium-2-became-plants-vs-zombies/
images http://www.gameinformer.com/games/plants_vs_zombies/b/xbox360/archive/2010/09/28/review.aspx
http://kotaku.com/5780155/the-art-food-and-drinks-of-plants-vs-zombies/
BattleBlock Theatre
Images from wikipedia and battleblocktheatre.com
(Carter, C. 2013) http://www.destructoid.com/review-battleblock-theater-250556.phtml
Skullgirls
Images from gameinformer
Darkstalkers
Richmond Lee http://art-eater.com/2010/07/test-1-darkstalkers/
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