World
Amended D-277, D-336, D-337 Every environment — the Tower's floors, the
town, any landscape — is seen as a diorama in three planes, each rendered
differently, as GAMEPLAY_VISUAL_MASTER_001 shows:
- Plane 1, the foreground: dark, blurred architecture (in town, blurred buildings) occluding the frame.
- Plane 2, where the figures stand: the ground and near architecture (in town, the buildings along the walk) as pixelated decor — blocky, few colours per material, chunky bevelled masonry, thick timber, fat rounded tiles — calm behind the units.
- Plane 3, the background: highly detailed architecture, the Tower continuing far beyond the combat plane into atmospheric haze.
The whole reads as a miniature: bevelled, swollen blocks with a bright upper edge and deep soft shadow in the joints; many small props; a tilt-shift depth of field that keeps the figures' band sharp. The light is strong and ambient, filled rather than crushed into darkness, so Unity's lights, fog and shadows can be composed over it, with glowing points of light and bloom and a cool distant haze. A fight's mood is chosen per fight, warm or cold and dim; the town keeps one fixed time of day, late afternoon. Do not reduce environmental richness to match gameplay sprites. Fights are side-on (§3); the town is seen from a high three-quarter view.
Gameplay entities
Fighters, Porters and combat creatures use high-detail illustrative pixel art — not conventional retro pixel art. It combines deliberate pixel clusters; strong dark contours; illustrated internal shading; grounded but slightly stylised anatomy; readable faces; large coherent costume masses; controlled material detail; strong equipment silhouettes.
Characters should look like small hand-drawn characters translated into detailed pixel art. They should NOT look like 16×16 sprites, 32×32 retro sprites, chibi characters, chunky block art, smooth miniature paintings, or high-resolution illustrations with a pixel filter.
Identity art
Recruit portraits, detailed character views and character design masters use hand-drawn illustration. This is where the complete identity of a person is communicated: face, age, hairstyle, body, cultural clothing, equipment construction, personality, subtle material information.
The gameplay sprite is an abstraction of this design:
HAND-DRAWN CHARACTER MASTER → SELECT GAMEPLAY INFORMATION → HIGH-DETAIL ILLUSTRATIVE PIXEL SPRITE → GAMEPLAY ANIMATION
The sprite does NOT need to reproduce every detail of the illustration.
Phenomena
Runtime phenomena use smooth Unity rendering: fire, smoke, sparks, lightning, poison clouds, mist, particles, projectile trails, impact effects, dynamic light, projected/contact shadows. Runtime VFX are NOT required to be pixel art. The contrast is intentional.