Sunday 4 March 2012

Sumioni Demon Arts, mobile non-photorealistic game based on sumi-e style

Sumioni Demon Arts is a new platform game based on traditional Asian ink painting (sumi-e) which is soon to be released for the Playstation Vita by XSEED. Not only is the game using sumi-e styled visuals (which look very impressive in the video below), something which is quite rare as most non-photorealistic real-time games tend to go for "safer" choices such as cel-shading, but the action itself is inspired by painting in this distinctive style (in fact Sumioni actually translates to ink demon). Painting paths and using brush strokes for special moves are commonplace in the game, making it a very different and cool experience, especially compared to your average platformer.

It is great to see Sumioni Demon Arts trying something different with a non-photorealistic style which is often ignored by real-time applications (and, as a result of this, games too). Hopefully this will inspire more developers to explore sumi-e stylization for their games, or indeed other less-used NPR styles.

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