Some people in the comments liked the way our game looks, so I thought it will be cool to break down some aspects on our graphical setup that should be fairly easy to implement even in a jam games.
Our entry: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/ld-58-1
This is how our game looks like:
There are two main techniques that we use:
2D lights/masks
This is the scene without any lighting, only sprites:
Thanks to our artists, it already looks nice, but we can make it better.
Look at the flowers and butterflies: they are not affected by sun at all. Our artist hand painted the field with the lighting directly on background. We asked him to draw one special mask, where white color = the pixel is "lit" by sun, and black = "shadow":
Then we overlayed this mask on our butterflies and flowers. Unity specifically has 2D sprite-shaped lights, so we added one global ambient light (to make shadows anything but black) and one sprite light with bright yellow color. The result looks like so:
Color grading / LUTs
Then, we added one simple postprocessing effect that essentially works like so: it takes an image, a special palette (LookUp Textures, or LUTs), and changes color of an image to that palette. Almost like photoshoping!
Our another artist took screenshot of the game, and did a quick color adjustments for different times of day. Then, those adjustments were applied to "default palette" to create a modified ones.
Then the game every frame takes those LUTs and, based on time of day, calculates current and next time of day, and blends their LUTs together smoothly.
And with this effect we can drastically change the mood of the scene easily!
Last words...
That is all the major effects we used. There are also some animations and butterfly effects. You should check out our sick holographic effect!!! (maybe I'll explain how it works later)
Overall, those little things can greatly improve looks and feel of the game. Don't underestimate contribution of game polishing, and, if you have time, ask yourself "How can I make my game more believable? More complete and fleshed out?" Maybe, it would be better to make the most out of your not-so-big game rather than trying to squeeze a lot of things in 48h/72h development?
