


Because of this ability to intimately show off characters, it’s popular in fighting games and metroidvanias. Compared with top-down games, it shows off characters and scenery much better. Side view games are also very cheap to draw for. The cars look great the human characters less so. Grand Theft Auto 1 and 2 used a top-down perspective for its human characters and cars. This is why games like top-down vertically scrolling shooters use airplanes or spaceships instead of human characters. On the other hand, cars and other vehicles look perfectly fine in this perspective. Buildings only show their roofs, which are rarely shown in real life, plus it’s hard to show important parts like doors. Characters can’t show off their face, only the tops of their heads.

The downside is that it’s not a very flattering perspective. A lot of simple or retro game genres use this economical perspective - arcade games, top-down action games, puzzle games and so on.

You only need to create one set of sprites, and even if you need characters to face different directions, you can let your rendering software rotate the sprites. Games with a perfectly vertical perspective are the cheapest to create sprites for. Summary PerspectiveĪction, arcade, puzzle, vertical scrollersīeat-em-up, fighting, infinite runner, metroidvania, platformer, run-and-gun, side-scrollingīusiness simulation, turn based strategy, turn based tactics Here’s a rundown of different 2D game perspectives and how many different sprites you need to budget for. A major downside is that drawing each sprite is a significant amount of work, and it can grow exponentially depending on the game perspective!Ĭhoosing the right game perspective has a big impact on your game’s art budget. I love 2D sprite-based games they are easy to read and a great way to showcase beautiful art and character designs.
