20 best designs in video games

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Anything you can possibly imagine can be realised in a video game, thanks to advances in technology. So why dedicate all your time to simply replicating the designs and patterns that we're used to in reality?

Instead, the designers who get it right play to the strengths of the medium, by creating games that are visually striking and artistically inspiring. Here, we pick our 20 favourite designs in games history and grab some leading games designer views on these stunning elements – from chilling character costumes to outrageous environments.

01. The hood – Assassin's Creed

Assassins Creed Hood

The stories of the Assassin's Creed heroes are separated by hundreds of years, but there's one stylish visual hallmark that ties them together: the hood.

Fashion may change over the centuries, but hoods will always be around in some form, which makes Ubisoft's decision to incorporate it into their costume designs a stroke of genius. It never looks out of place or anachronistic, whether you're in the 12th Century Middle East, or the modern day United States.

It also makes sense in the context of the game, as the secretive Assassins use it to conceal their identity. Each character has their own distinct costume – from Altar's simple white robes, to Ezio's elaborate renaissance garb – but the hood is always at the centre of the design, linking them in a subtle, stylish, and visual way. Not only does it look cool, but it makes sense for the characters, and the eras they live in.

Assassin's Creed designer view

David 'Vyle' Levy, concept artist on Assassin's Creed, says: "This was probably one of the most challenging projects I've ever worked on, especially regarding the balance between fantasy and hyperrealism. The difficult balance the team was trying to reach was one of a very 'edgy' mix of an ancient culture, depicted with a very modern, graphic, visual language."

02. Master Chief's armour – Halo

Master Chief's Armour: Halo

Hardcore Halo fans know it as the MJOLNIR Powered Assault Suit. For the rest of us it's that awesome green armour that Master Chief wears – the faceless hero of the Halo series.

Halo's world can best be described as 'hard sci-fi'. It's a rugged, believable universe, with two unique sets of designs: the cold, functional vehicles and armour of the humans, and the bright, colourful, otherworldly ships and weapons of the Covenant – which went on to inspire the outlandish weapons in Neill Blomkamp's modern sci-fi classic, District 9.

The armour's eye-catching green colouring has become synonymous with the series. Its functional design fits in with the hard-edged military aesthetic of the game world, and it hides Master Chief's face. Developers Bungie did this on purpose, because they wanted him to be an anonymous cipher for the player: he isn't a character, he's YOU.

Halo designer view

Joe Staten, cinematics director at Bungie, says: "Early on, the team weren't necessarily considering using visual design to make people want to play in the world they were creating. But Master Chief is really what kicked off the creativity. People reacted really well to him."

03. Hengsha – Deus Ex: Human Revolution

Human Revolution has a bold, distinctive art style

Human Revolution has a bold, distinctive art style. Its 'near future' setting is incredibly evocative, riffing on films like Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner, but at the same time carving its own identity. It's one of a few modern, big budget games that you can recognise instantly from just glancing at a screenshot.

The Chinese island of Hengsha is the best example of its dramatic vision of the future. It's an enormous two-level city that separates the poor in the lower levels, and the wealthy in the gleaming towers on top. It sounds absurd, but it's based it on a real proposed design.

It feels futuristic, but is still grounded in reality. The concept artists, and lead designer Jonathan Jacques-Bellette, weren't just inspired by other games; it was modern industrial design, fashion, and architecture they looked at first. Over 1,400 individual objects were designed to 'clutter' the levels and make them seem lived in, as well as hundreds of brand logos to give the world depth and credibility. Few games are as immersive, and that's why it works.

Deus Ex designer view

Jonathan Jacques-Bellette, art director at Eidos Montral, says: "Our goal with Human Revolution was to give it its own distinctive aesthetic flair. Not only did I want the game to look different and singular from other futuristic games, but I planned to steer away from the '80s concept of science fiction that we've been circularly perpetuating in our industry. I find it fascinating that a lot of the futuristic designs in games are aesthetically outdated. We tried to apply modern design theories to the game's visual design."

04. The Colossi – Shadow of the Colossus

The Colossi's eyes look into your soul

Team Ico, the Japanese studio behind Shadow of the Colossus, is famed for its understated and minimalist design style. Its world is sparse, beautiful, and atmospheric, and laced with mystery, as are the beasts that inhabit it.

They look like they've been ripped from the earth; part organic, part man-made. They have fur and leathery skin, but ancient, crumbling ruins jut from their bodies. It's a bizarre, surreal aesthetic, but perhaps the most inspired aspect of their design are the eyes.

There's a grey morality to the game. You have to kill these monsters to bring someone you love back from the dead; a selfish pursuit, and the colossi never attack you first. It's almost as if you're the bad guy. There's a weird sense of guilt as you kill them, which is partly due to the sad, innocent eyes that stare at you as you do it. Team Ico managed to make these creatures both intimidating and sympathetic, all through their appearance.

Shadow of the Colossus designer views

3D artist, and co-owner of CG production studio MDI-Digital, AJ Jefferies, says: "Each of the game's 12 colossi has a distinct, individual design. I love that their structure is directly tied to the landscape and architecture in which you find them. The broken stone and shaggy scruffs of fur that cover their bodies let you know that these creatures are ancient. It's as if the sparse landscape you've been travelling through has ripped a chunk from itself and decided to go for a walk. They truly feel part of the world they live in."

Gary J Lucken, pixel artist at Army of Trolls, says: "One of my favourite games of all time. I love the design as a whole, but the creatures are amazingly well crafted. They have a sadness about them. It feels a bit like taking down The Iron Giant."

05. Metal Gear RAY – Metal Gear Solid

Metal gear RAY looks more creature than machine

Illustrator Yoji Shinkawa has been the lead concept artist on the Metal Gear Solid series since the very first game. His designs are created in the form of elegant, expressive pencil sketches, then translated to the game by Hideo Kojima's team of digital artists.

Mechanical design is something he excels at, and Metal Gear RAY – an amphibious bipedal tank – is one of his most memorable creations. While robots in Western media are square and clunky, Japan favours more organic designs; the kind seen in classic anime. RAY is a machine, but looks like a sea creature, reflecting its ability to move around underwater.

Adapting in-game models from Shinkawa's graceful hand-drawn sketches gives the Metal Gear series a classy, stylised edge, like the pages of a manga come to life.

Metal Gear Solid designer view

Jonathan Jacques-Bellette, art director at Eidos Montral, says: "When referencing video game aesthetics, the MGS franchise has been my benchmark since it first came out on the Playstation. In my opinion, it's probably the most visually polished series ever made. The degree to which it makes no compromise to any of its visuals – be it a simple prop or a full fledge main character – is something most video game companies don't even understand.

"I remember when Konami mentioned how much time and energy they spent just to figure out which type of flower they would but in the final battle against The Boss in MGS3. So many people in the industry, developers and journalists alike, just couldn't believe it, just couldn't rationalize or justify putting so much importance on a flower showing up during a final boss fight. But see, that's exactly what it's all about! Visuals in video games aren't just about technical prowess. They are – first and foremost – about communicating ideas, meanings, and emotions. You either understand this or you don't."

06. Aperture Science – Portal

Aperture Science Portal

Nothing else, in any medium, looks like Portal. The Aperture Science Enrichment Centre is the star; an abandoned facility made up of sparse, white testing chambers. You're forced to work your way through them one by one, solving mind-bending, and fiendishly clever, multi-dimensional puzzles.

Instructions are relayed by simple graphics of stick figures, and the objects you use to solve the game's genius conundrums – buttons, switches, cubes – are all boldly designed and instantly recognisable. This visual language becomes intrinsic to the gameplay in a supremely clever marriage of mechanics and design. It's a smart game.

Highlighting the sinister nature of the facility, occasionally the gleaming white walls break away, revealing eerie, unseen areas that are gloomy and rusting, and scrawled with creepy graffiti from previous test subjects. In the second game, set hundreds of years in the future, the place becomes overgrown with thick jungle foliage.

Portal designer view

Kim Swift, level designer on Portal, says: "Originally the environments were complex, but that was the wrong idea for Portal. Because we're introducing a new concept, it was best to keep it bare bones. In one section, all you were supposed to do was put a box on a button and open a door. One player literally spent 30 minutes trying to push a shelf onto the button, meanwhile, the box was sitting right there. That's how the clinical environment design came to be."

07. Rapture – BioShock

Rapture BioShock

Rapture is an underwater city hidden in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. It was built in the '50s as a haven for the world's intellectual elite, but after the discovery of a gene-altering sea slug, things went mental, and the place became infested with crazed 'splicers' and fell into disrepair – which is when you stumble upon it at the beginning of the game.

It's a place frozen in time, and you see the remains of the fallen society all around you. The city tells a story through its superb level design. You see cheery neon signs advertising luxury homes, abandoned shops, and bodies of murdered residents, and learn about the doomed city as you move through its leaky halls. It's a type of interactive visual storytelling unique to games, and BioShock's setting is still unmatched. It feels like a real place.

The optimistic advertising of the '50s has become kitsch, and is routinely abused by ironic greetings cards, but Rapture presents it in a completely new light. There's something fascinatingly macabre about seeing the ruins of a once opulent society, completely destroyed by its own greed and rampant consumerism.

BioShock designer view

Ken Levine, creative director at Irrational Games, says: "I don't think BioShock is competing with films, books, and other media aesthetically. A book is a book, a movie a movie, a game's a game. However, our medium has so much untapped aesthetic capacity. But the 'verbs' of our aesthetics are new and we're just figuring them out."

08. Vault Boy – Fallout

Vault Boy

The designers of Fallout also looked at saccharine '50s adverts to inspire their Vault Boy character. The game imagines a world where the 1950s idea of the future actually happened, and rocket cars, ray guns, and robot butlers were commonplace. But then it all goes wrong, and the world is destroyed by nuclear war, enivitably turning America into a sparce wasteland.

Vault Boy is an advertising mascot for a company called Vault-Tec who, in the game, build atomic shelters. His smiling face jars with the misery of the post-nuclear landscape, and he's also integrated into the game's interface. All of your skills and abilities are represented by a grinning Vault Boy, whether he's firing a bazooka, or chopping someone's head off... naturally.

It's an iconic design, influenced by '50s Americana, and classic icons like the Big Boy Restaurants mascot. It's always aesthetically intriguing to see an idyllic setting gone wrong, and both Fallout and BioShock have made that idea their own.

Fallout designer view

Leonard Boyarsky, art director on Fallout, says: "When I told people about my ideas for the look of the game, they looked at me like I was crazy. Why would we make a post-apocalyptic game look like a cheesy B-movie? Much to Interplay's credit however, even though they thought I was insane, no one said we couldn't do it. So we did. I started pitching the '50s vibe so early that there were really never any other competing art styles considered."

09. The Normandy – Mass Effect

The Normandy

The Mass Effect series is heavily inspired by the classic science fiction films of the 1970s. It's a space opera on par with Star Wars, but its visual design is edgy, hard, and realistic. Think 2001: A Space Odyssey, Silent Running, or Alien.

The best example of this is the lead character's flagship, the Normandy. The temptation for a lot of sci-fi designers is to make ships look curvy and overtly futuristic, but the Normandy is functional and low key; just as a military ship would be.

According to the game's mythology, the ship was co-built by humans, and an alien race known as the turians. This is reflected in the design, which has elements of both present day military hardware, and something distinctly not of this world. The interiors were similarly well-designed, and exploring between missions, talking to your crew and learning about the history of the game's rich universe, made the place feel like home.

Mass Effect designer view

Gary J Lucken, pixel artist at Army of Trolls, says: "It's so lovely and slick, and embedded into my memory. It was sad to walk around an empty Normandy in the third game. It was almost like those bits at the end of Big Brother where they play sound clips over an empty house. I could almost hear Mordin's singing, or a fight kicking off after a loyalty mission. It's laid out so well; it's logical, and you remember where things are. The decal design is top notch, and I'm sure it influenced the design of the ship in Prometheus somehow."

10. Squall's gunblade – Final Fantasy VIII

Squall's gunblade

It's a gun, and a blade. It's a gunblade! Square Enix are famed for their ridiculously impractical weapon designs, like Cloud's iconic buster sword, which is twice his size. But it's the gunblade that wins out for us, an engraved sword with a revolver barrel at one end. As hero Squall struck an enemy, it would simultaneously fire a bullet. Obviously.

Square's design ethic, especially in the Final Fantasy series, is being as cool as possible, which results in ludicrous designs like this. That's what defines the series. It's in no way tethered to reality, but still manages to create a compelling universe that you really care about and believe in.

Japanese games are still unmatched when it comes to exaggerated, dramatic visual design, and long-time Square Enix artist Tetsuya Nomura is responsible for the majority of the series' most enduring designs, including this unlikely weapon. Like Metal Gear's Yoji Shinkawa, Nomura's designs are realised as intricate drawings before making it into the game.

Final Fantasy VIII designer view

Yoshinori Kitase, director of Final Fantasy VIII, says: "What I wanted to put in the game was a little reality, and combine it with unreality. By showing it through the eyes of normal people, it makes the game more real. We left Nomura totally in charge of character design. The first illustration for the game was of Squall and his gunblade. We thought about what kind of world this character would exist in, and worked the story out from there."

Next page: 10 more iconic video game designs

11. Project-K – Rez

Project-K: Rez

Rez is set inside a computer being invaded by a virus. This digital world is presented as a series of abstract environments that represent the 'data' of the computer you're in. The minimalist, almost psychedelic, visuals are designed to work in conjuction with the soundtrack, which player's create themselves by interacting with the game.

As the music plays, the world pulses in time with the beat. The enemies you battle make different musical sounds when destroyed, and are visual representations of each instrument. It's a visual type of music creation, and lead designer Tetsuya Mizuguchi wanted players to experience a kind of synesthesia as they played.

Rez designer view

Tetsuya Mizuguchi, Rez creator, says: "I think the goal of the Rez experience is that everything is moving and activating with music, like a MIDI controller. It's like a synthesizer. Not only sounds, but in the visuals it crafts, and the vibrations."

12. The classes – Team Fortress 2

The classes

The first Team Fortress game had no real visual style, but Valve had the inspired idea to make its sequel look visually distinct from other shooters. The result is a cast of characters who look like they've been taken straight out of a Pixar movie.

But it's not just their appearance that makes them superb examples of design: it's their shape. The game is incredibly fast-paced, and the battlefield is often a blur. Because each class serves a specific function – be it healing, repairing, or providing support – and teamplay is important, you have to be able to recognise the players around you.

So by giving each class a unique shape and outline, Valve were able to give players visual cues to make them aware of their surroundings; even in the thick of a frenzied battle. Normally proportioned soldiers wouldn't work, so the exaggerated cartoon art style is a perfect blend of form and function – and looks really cool to boot.

Team Fortress 2 designer view

Charlie Brown, software developer at Valve, says: "It was the gameplay that dictated the style. Team Fortress has a variety of weapons that aren't even realistic, the physics forces are really high, so that humor content gets ratcheted up, and so we decided instead of fighting that with something realistic to do something a lot more stylised and fun and inviting."

13. The dolls – Stacking

The dolls

Double Fine artist Lee Petty dreamed up the bizarre world of Stacking. Its imagery is based on silent films of the '20s as well as the Victorian and depression eras of history, but the world is inhabited, strangely, by living Russian dolls. You have to solve puzzles in the game by 'stacking' different dolls on top of one another.

The dolls were chosen because people would see them and instantly understand how the game works. This would give the game appeal to casual and hardcore gamers alike, something Double Fine excel at. It was also convenient from a gameplay perspetive, as the dolls could serve multiple functions, as both characters, and the player's inventory.

Petty came upon the idea when he saw his daughter playing with a set of Matryoshka dolls. The game was released via digital distribution; a platform that's less risky for publishers, meaning they're able to let developers make more conceptually and artistically interesting games. Stacking would never have been the same or even made if it were a boxed off-the-shelf title.

Stacking designer view

Lee Petty, project lead on Stacking, says: "When I set out to design Stacking, I knew that I wanted to make a contemporary version of the classic adventure game. I was looking for a way to distill the adventure game experience down to a more approachable, compact experience without losing the charm and character driven story telling of the classic adventure games. 

"At the same time, I saw my daughter playing with a set of matryoshkas, and I realized that they would be a perfect way to create a new game mechanic, condense the experience, and add a unique personality to the game. The matryoshaka dolls became the verbs, the inventory, and the characters that the player interacts with to solve puzzles."

14. The Land of the Dead – Grim Fandango

The land of the dead

The design team behind LucasArts' legendary adventure, Grim Fandango, brought together two art styles – film noir, and Aztec culture – and fused them together. This might sound like it would be jarring, but it worked superbly well.

Based on the imagery of the Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday where people pay tribute to deceased friends and relatives, the game is set in the afterlife. Here, people are either fast-tracked to heaven, or have to spend years in the Land of the Dead (a kind of purgatory), working to pay their way to eternal happiness.

So while it's a fantastical world, it's also grounded in reality, full of depressed office workers going about their daily routine, trying to pay off their life debt. The story is a classic noir mystery, with seedy detectives, sleazy jazz music, and dames in distress, but the Latin American influence gives it an idiosyncratic feel.

Grim Fandango designer view

3D artist and co-owner of CG production studio MDI-Digital, AJ Jefferies, says: "This world shouldn't work. Somehow the designers have managed to take the disparate aesthetics of ancient Aztec architecture and 1920s art deco and blend them into a cohesive, functioning universe. Why it works so well, and why I adore the game, is that it's a fusion of the surreal and the mundane. While there are elements of the fantastic, they are handled in such a way that it never pulls you too far out of the universe."

15. Nippon – Okami

Nippon: Okami

Inspired by traditional Japanese watercolour and wood carving art, Nippon is one of the most beautiful video game worlds we've ever inhabited. This 'sumi-e' style made the game look like an ink wash painting come to life, and painting is actually incorporated into the gameplay: you damage enemies by 'drawing' the attacks with a magic brush, which is a nice touch.

The idea of the game was to restore nature to the world. When you first visit an environment, the world is covered in a dark soup of ink. But as the hero, Amaterasu, runs through the world, colour is restored. It's as if she's painting the environment; again, tying the visuals into the gameplay. The result is an imaginative, visually striking game.

Sadly, despite rave reviews, Okami's visuals were too alienating for the mainstream gaming audience, and its sales failure resulted in the developers, Clover, being shut down. This is an all too common occurence in the games industry, which makes developers less inclined to give their projects unusual visual styles. We see more and more dull, brown military shooters, while games like Okami become an endangered species.

Okami designer view

Atsushi Inaba, producer on Okami, says: "Once we fixed ourselves on a graphical style and got down to the brushwork, we thought 'Wouldn't it be great if we could somehow get the player involved and participate in this artwork instead of just watching it?' That's how the idea of the Celestial Brush was born."

16. The Combine – Half-Life 2

The Combine themselves all look different

The Combine is a ruthless alien race that has come to Earth to bleed it of its natural resources. In Half-Life 2's levels, you see their machines literally 'eating' the unnamed Eastern European city it's set in. Black, angular, metallic structures stick out of buildings, grinding and whirring as they devour the environment around them.

This clash of spartan, functional Eastern Bloc architecture and abstract alien machinery makes the dystopian setting feel oppressive and uneasy. The Combine themselves all look different, as, according to the story, they're enslaved members of a variety of different alien species. Their designs are just as menacing as their monstrous technology.

Alien invaders are almost always based on Hollywood films, which makes them feel familiar, and not very interesting. Half-Life 2 art director Viktor Antonov instead dreamed up something totally unique, and it makes them feel genuinely intimidating.

Half-Life 2 designer view

Viktor Antonov, art director on Half-Life 2, says: "I started as a conceptual designer and just doing drawings, but the designs I received were not quite what I wanted. So I went to the team and literally sat behind the model makers and engineers and explained to them what I wanted from the art and design, and my ideas were finally realised in the final product. City 17 has many symbolic elements. The feeling is of an occupied city – in this case, The Combine. It also has allusions to communism, globalisation, and a hint of fascism."

17. Link's shield – The Legend of Zelda

The green tunic, cap and shield have become modern pop culture icons

In each Zelda game, the Link you play as is a different character. But like in the Assassin's Creed series, it's the costume that connects them. The green tunic, cap, and shield have become not just video game icons, but modern pop culture ones too.

The design is always slightly different, but there are a few constants: the bold blue colouring, the triangular yellow 'Triforce', a story element that is threaded through each game, and the stylised silhouette of a bird is also apparant.

Link's outfit is arguably as recognisable as Sonic the Hedgehog, or Super Mario, and just as culturally significant in the world of video games. Even though the character has developed, and the textures have become more realistic, the shield is always recognisable, and has been largely the same since the first game was released in the late 1980s, much to gamers' delight.

The Legend of Zelda designer view

Shigeru Miyamoto, creator of The Legend of Zelda, says: "Studio Ghibli's My Neighbor Totoro impressed me with what they did with the style. That's something I like to look at, to see something within an existing media that is creative and different. That's what we try to do with the design of our games, to take something people have seen and try to do something new with it. It's when you're really able to do something revolutionary within a media that's existed for some time that I think you're able to startle people."

18. The ships – WipEout

The ships of WipEout

Developed by Psygnosis, in collaboration with The Designers Republic, WipEout was aimed at the trendy, club-going youth of the mid '90s. It had a cutting edge art style, that still stands up today, and a 'banging' soundtrack by acts including The Chemical Brothers. The visuals perfectly captured the cultural zeitgeist of that era.

Inspired by Nintendo racers like F-Zero and Mario Kart, the team wanted to make a fast-paced racing game with a distinct visual style. The result were the anti-grav ships that are still featured in the series today. As a testament to the quality of their design, they've barely changed since 1995, and still look notably futuristic.

After the success of WipEout, The Designers Republic enjoyed over 10 years of success, working with respected electronica record label Warp, and various other companies. They sadly closed their doors in 2009. More developers are hiring external artists to design certain elements of their games, be it visuals, or music. It's a smart way of bringing an original feel to a project that isn't used nearly enough.

WipEout designer view

Ian Anderson, founder of The Designers Republic, says: "With WipEout we were already given a target market, so we were playing the consumerist game. But the fun part was that we had a choice of deliberately going for them, or deliberately trying to alienate them."

19. The city – Mirror's Edge

The city of Mirror's Edge

Dystopian cities are usually bleak, rain-soaked places, but Mirror's Edge is the exact opposite. The city, which is never named, is a gleaming urban paradise. Clean, bright, and safe. Or at least, that's what its brainwashed citizens think.

The game sees you playing as Faith, a courier and free-runner who's rebelling against the city's tyrannical rulers. The stark primary colours and hard lines of the city actually figure into the gameplay. As you dash across the rooftops, certain parts of the scenery are coloured and stand out from the cold whiteness of the city, letting you know you're able to use them to climb on. It's all about finding the perfect 'line' through the city's architecture.

While the textures are detailed and the city looks realistic, the vivid contrast of colours makes it feel more like a comic book. The designers at DICE took a common setting – a modern cityscape – and made it feel completely original through strong visual design.

Mirror's Edge designer view

Manuel Llines, producer on Mirror's Edge, says: "The art and gameplay came together a lot. We needed an environment that was easy to read, we needed a story that was believable. I think believability is the key word with this game. The city is contemporary: we had inspirations like Dubai and New York and Tokyo – all sorts of places. And yes it's a futuristic society but it's not Orwell, it's not 1984. It's a city where people are happy." 

20. Sackboy – LittleBigPlanet

Sackboy is a canvas for the player's imagination.

LBP is a game built around creativity. Using an imaginative and complex toolkit, you can make anything from games and movies, to interactive art exhibits. To reflect this idea of freedom and creation, developers Media Molecule created a mascot that was, essentially, a blank slate. Sackboy is a canvas for the player's imagination.

When you start the game he's completely featureless; a smiling ball of burlap material with a chunky zipper running down his middle. But then you can go in stick things on him, dress him up, change his material, and generally make your mark. It's a good example of character design directly complementing gameplay.

LittleBigPlanet designer view

Kareem Ettouney, designer at Media Molecule, says: "We came up with a crazy concept. Maybe the place where you go to create stuff in the game is actually in yourself. Let's put this zip on Sackboy, and when he opens the zip, folds in on himself and goes and creates inside himself. Because creativity and ideas are all inside you!"

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