In 2014, “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth” was released, and was hailed as a revolutionary title for being the first successful case of utilizing 2D animation in a fully 3D game.

… well, not really. It’s been quickly overlooked. But years later, I took some time to look up the idea to see if any other games were using a similar visual concept. Over 7,000 games were released on Steam in 2017 alone, by now there are tens of thousands of indie games across Steam and itch.io to choose from: surely, not all of them are using sub-par 3D models or 2D pixel art?

I’m surprised I haven’t really written a more formal article like this before. It should act as a good resource of existing games (both past commercial and more recent indie titles) that tackle the animation concept. I won’t be including purely 2D games that use 2D animation: while there are several excellent examples (2017’s “Cuphead” and 2018’s “Gris” come to mind), high-quality animation in these genres have existed for over a decade now, with far too many to count. We’re looking at “pseudo-3D” here, from over 30 years of history.

Historical Examples (pre-2013):

I initially assumed “Doom” was the first to attempt pseudo-3D animation in a game, but there’s a whole genre of racing games that relied on 2D pixel art to mimic a 3D effect, including “Out Run,” a classic arcade game that dates to 1986. The game probably looks familiar, overlaying the player’s car in the same location on the screen while updating 2D backgrounds give a sense of speed. In this game, there are no other players, so the parallaxing effect wouldn’t be hard to fake. There’s a great article you can read here if you are interested in how to implement such a background with programming logic. The graphics of “Out Run” are also a bit dated, even for a retro game: I recommend “Power Drift” from 1988 as a much more advanced-looking example, and even many versions of “Mario Kart” rely on similar techniques.

The original “Doom” is a classic, and being an older title, you can even find emulators today that let you play it (or modded versions of it) from within your web-browser for free. In 1993, 3D games were still a new concept (“Super Mario 64” wouldn’t be released until 1996), so “Doom” was especially revolutionary for introducing the genre of the first-person shooter. To accomplish this, 2D images of your gun were overlaid on top of the camera, and 2D images of monsters were placed at different scales throughout the map. It was an ingenious solution for overcoming system limitations, and many knock-off games, some of which with their own popular legacy, would use a similar method. Today, new entries in the “Doom” franchise continue to be made, and the original is remembered fondly for its innovation in gameplay, and for its controversial violence, but less so for its graphics (as soon as it was possible, full 3D models would be used in its sequels). Keep in mind that “Wolfenstein 3D” predates this by over a year, pioneering these techniques (and also released by id Software).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wckz5Iw_kCs

When one mentions “The Elder Scrolls,” most will instantly think of “Skyrim,” “Oblivion,” and maybe “Morrowind.” But those were games 5, 4 and 3 in the series… what were 2 and 1? It turns out the first two games used 2D first-person animation, in a similar manner to “Doom,” while “Morrowind” would be the first to both appear on a game console alongside PC, and the first to use proper 3D models. The reason I mention the first two games (“Arena” and “Daggerfall”) is because, in a fully first-person 3D environment, you could walk around NPC’s and enemies, and see different pixelated perspectives of them. I don’t know if it’s the first to do so (the development team is quoted to be inspired by “Legends of Valour,” a 1992 first-person game that even pre-dates “Doom,” which also appears to utilize different character art for each perspective), but “The Elder Scrolls” has a larger legacy that fans will remember. Bethesda even made “Arena” completely free to download, which you can try even today! Being an RPG, you could actually stop and take in the graphics without the stress of trying to shoot everything. I personally love the visual style, even when pixelated, and would love to see a modern indie-team give it a try again.

Whenever I mention the idea of 2D animation in a 3D environment, people always say “oh, you mean like ‘Paper Mario‘?” Sigh… so limited in your imagination for the potential of 2D art. Mario has expanded into a few genres, one of which is the “Paper” series, where a paper-cutout of Mario runs around, left/right and forward/backward in a 3D environment. The camera doesn’t move, and you only have a single perspective of each character, walking like a static sticker. The original game was released in 2000 in Japan for the N64, but sequels were made for systems as recent as the Wii U and 3DS, better using the art style for unique gameplay mechanics. I don’t think this really counts as an example of “pseudo-3D” with “2D animation” in the way I consider it, but someone is bound to leave a comment here if I don’t at least mention it. And the art style is certainly cute!

People also ask if I mean games like 2012’s “Tearaway.” “2D” doesn’t just mean “paper,” people!

I never played the online Korean MMO “Ragnarok Online,” but I’ve seen gameplay of it in the last decade, and loved the art style. While sequels would use now-standard 3D models, the original used isometric pixel-sprites for the characters, but in a fully 3D environment. You could even rotate the isometric camera along one axis, and the character sprites would update perspectives along with it. The effect is surprisingly smooth, and especially impressive when many characters are on screen. In theory, it wouldn’t be hard to add “jump” logic, and have 3D-esque gameplay, albeit limited from a 2D perspective.

A reader recommended a few entries from the Pokémon series, specifically for the Nintendo DS. The handheld system was able to render 3D polygons better than any Nintendo handheld, but was still a modest device, so many games had to find compromises until the 3DS was released. Pokémon Black and White 2 show one method to how this was done: city buildings and trees were rendered in 3D, but character sprites were still in pixelated 2D (like the old games). To enhance the effect, the camera sometimes moves around for dramatic effect, making the contrast more evident, and to me, more impressive. This is another example where 2D graphics were used to overcome system limitations, moreso than an artistic choice.

The idea of using 2D sprites in a 3D world lost traction around the time the PS2 and Gamecube were released. After all, computers were now powerful enough to render 3D models in real time, so people wanted to see polygons, not pixels! As nice as 3D looks, I eventually grew tired of it, and as nice as 3D cel-shading can look, it was no replacement for 2D animation. But in the early 2010’s (round the time when 2D was at death’s door even for Hollywood feature films), I read a game preview of a JRPG that promised to be the “first playable anime in 3D,” and I thought “finally, someone’s cracked it!” Well, 2012’s PS3 title “Time of Eternity” (or “Toki To Towa” in Japan) sort of cracked it… you played the game in a first-person perspective, but with the same perspective of the lead character always in front of you walking forward, and had a fixed camera for monster battles. To it’s credit, the character animation is in high-definition, and it really does look like an anime. I do wish you could see different perspectives, but from experience, I suspect even the PS3 wouldn’t be able to handle it. Unfortunately, the character designs weren’t particularly impressive (looking like a very generic anime rather than something you would be excited to watch), and flaws in the gameplay and story took away attention from any genuine technological advances: the game was panned critically, failed commercially, and was quickly forgotten.

Since then, mid-tier developers fell away, leaving only AAA and indie developers. Naturally, AAA games wouldn’t dare touch any form of experimental animation, leaving the indie community to come up with ideas.

Modern Examples (2013 – 2019):

I’m tooting my own horn here: I made these! After legitimate research as a University student, I released “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth” in 2014, and released “Unfinished – An Artist’s Lament” in 2015. Both were 3D platformers, using a few different puzzle-elements in gameplay, and featuring an emotional story… you know, like most indie games. But both also featured fully-2D characters, with a unrestricted 3D camera. The technique was inspired by how a game like the original “Doom” might be made today, but includes many more perspectives, both horizontally and vertically (I think 48 total? I’m too lazy to look at my previous blog posts). To date, these are the only games I could find that actually lets you look down at your characters, in addition to horizontally, proof that literally all third-person games could be made like an old-fashioned Disney movie, if one wished. However, this meant a LOT of work (over 1,000 frames of animation were drawn for relatively simple walk and jump cycles), and more RAM than usual was needed to store that many frames of animation in high-definition (minimum of 4 GB for 1-2 characters on screen, a lot given how simple the games appear). The novelty was mostly ignored, and the games received mixed reviews regarding the art style, gameplay, and controls.

Released by developer group KO-OP Mode, “Gardenarium” is a neon-colored adventure game with a beautiful art-style reminiscent of recent shows like “Adventure Time.” Yes, the style has been used to death in animated shows and comics since, but not often in games, and not this well. Having played the game, there isn’t really a story, or much gameplay involved: you just walk around and enjoy the scenery and unusual characters. That probably posed problems with audience reception, despite getting some decent press from gaming sites. Despite first-person gameplay that lets you jump pretty high, characters (and most background objects, also rendered in 2D) only have a single visual perspective that rotates with you, also betraying the effect.

A small indie experience, “Sacramento” is a beautiful water-colored first-person game that I only recently discovered thanks to a recommendation on Twitter. The background elements are 2D, and occasionally you see your own body overlaid on the camera with 2D animation. There isn’t much animation here, the focus being more about the color scheme and trying to mimic a sketchbook of memories. But it’s very pretty, and being released on itch.io instead of Steam (and without a fixed price), it seems to have found an audience of appreciative fans.

There are a few indie games that try to get back to the first-person shooter and racing games of decades past. I had trouble finding first-person shooters (but I KNOW there were a few that used pixel-art for its enemies), but I did find a surprisingly recent example in the racing genre called “Slipstream.” True to its intentions, it looks like a racing game from the 1990’s, complete with the use of 2D sprites for the cars and background environments. It isn’t as advanced as the more complicated games it’s inspired by, but being a modern game with 60fps, high-definition output, better controls and sense of speed, it looks great and seems to have received a great reception: rather than just trying to look good, it’s simply fun to play!

I only found out about this small Danish game when coming across a new review on Gamespot, with an opinion of it being weak as a game, but having merit as art (“indie game” again). It isn’t really a pseudo-3D game, but an experimental story game that crosses multiple genres, including some segments with 3D gameplay, all with an art style of cutout-magazine animation. The visual style alone makes it worth trying, and the true auto-biographical story makes it worth finishing, a great example of a game with cultural significance.

This game project doesn’t have a name yet, let alone a release date. All it has is a animated character named BEAR, complete with a cool finger-snap and run cycle, and some prototype environments. It’s very early in development, but already getting a lot of traction on Twitter. It could become a comedy-filled “Banjo-Kazooie” for a modern generation. So far, you can move the third-person camera anywhere, but only horizontal perspectives for the characters are provided. That’s also a lot more visual perspectives than most indie games bother to make. I don’t know what adventure BEAR will be going on, but whatever dangers occur, I’m sure BEAR will handle it with class.

Another project that doesn’t have a name, but already has a lot of attention of Twitter. The prototype demos of this action game technically aren’t pseudo-3D: they are proper 3D, using voxels for the characters and environment (“voxels” is a term commonly used to describe cubes, or 3D pixels). But what if the voxels are unlit, giving full control of the color to the artist? The result is a game that looks like a 2D pixel-game, but with a free-roaming camera, and with a limited-frame animation style, it mimics 2D art better than the most advanced cel-shading techniques with a simple method.

When I mention “2D animation in 3D,” there are always 2 things people bring up: “you mean like ‘Paper Mario’?” and “have you seen Live2D?” Live2D is a software solution that works with game engines like Unity3D, specializing in its framework to make 2D art appear more dynamic. For years, this applied well to those static character images you normally see in JRPG’s during conversation scenes: with Live2D, you can make their eyes and hair move, and make their faces appear to move as much as 40 degrees in any direction. Their showcase page suggests that hundreds of projects use their technology… strangely, the projects are almost all from Japan, mostly smaller mobile games, even though I’m certain larger games like Nintendo “Fire Emblem” have recently used similar technology.

This is done with “Live2D Cubism,” but doesn’t solve how to portray 2D characters in gameplay, particularly in 3D space. Live2D began promoting “Project Euclid” in 2015 to solve exactly this problem, and released the tool as a separate solution in 2017. It’s strategy isn’t too far off from my (Dust Scratch Games) solution, with one major difference: while I strictly use raster art (high-def pixel art, like JPEG and PNG), all of Live2D’s solutions seem to use vector art (think Adobe Flash), allowing smoother animation and infinite resolutions without extra work for the artist. Strangely, examples using Euclid only use 2D art for the character’s face and hair, not the body. Personally, both of these choices feel distracting, making me think this is a style separate from both 3D cel shading and 2D animation. There’s nothing wrong with being its own thing, but if its goal is to replace 2D animation, then I’m not entirely convinced.

Unfortunately, Euclid was discontinued quickly, with an explanation at the time of this writing stating that they are looking for better ways to incorporate the technology into Cubism. I admittedly didn’t have a chance to try Euclid out yet, so I hope they figure out a solution soon, hopefully with the ability to choose characters that are fully 2D, fully 3D, or a hybrid. Anyway, even if it isn’t a single game or yet a proper solution, I include it here so people won’t bring it up in any comments below.

I haven’t finished a game in a long time, but I’m still trying! Now more of a hobby project than something for a polished release, and with no set release date, this RPG tries to push the technique of 2D-animation-in-3D forward by applying 2D perspective sprites to a 3D skeleton. This is similar to 2D skeletal animation, the cheap-looking puppet animation you see in most preschool cartoons. I think it could offer a lot of opportunities, and potentially could save on work and RAM at the expense of full artist control. The technique also makes it easier to apply depth, making hybrid animations with 3D objects possible, and having better use-cases for VR and AR. This project is a bit lacking in visual style, so only time will tell if the technique will be worthwhile, either here or in future projects.

(UPDATED 2020/08/31: A TON of relevant games were announced in 2020. Is this a growing trend?!?!):

Revealed during the Summer of Gaming 2020 online event by indie developer Fabraz, “Demon Turf” is exactly the type of 2.5D-style of game I want to see more of. It uses a similar technique to “Drew and the Floating Labyrinth,” but seemingly with a camera that has a fixed Y-position, and with much more vibrant visual themes, style, and gameplay. It looks awesome!

Also revealed during Summer of Gaming 2020 online event, it’s been showcased before, but it’s the type of game I would have missed if I wasn’t watching closely. By developer Thinking Stars, it’s set in a cyberpunk “Blade-Runner-esque” world. Watch the trailer closely, and you’ll see all the characters appear to be 2D sprites, beautiful against the neon 3D backgrounds.

Eiyuden Chronicle – Hundred Heroes (2022, Rabbit & Bear Studios)

(WATCH at 2:26) Its successful Kickstarter campaign broke records during the summer of 2020. From a new Japanese studio from developers that worked on the Suikoden JRPG series, teasers on the gameplay are slowly trickling out, suggesting a 3D world full of gorgeous 2D pixel sprites (similar to Square Enix’s 2018 game “Octopath Traveler“), with cinematic turn-based battles. The excitement around the game is clear: gamers want more of this graphical style!

Also look up 2020’s “Taiko No Tatsujin: Rhythmic Adventure Pack” for the Nintendo Switch, an adorable game that uses the same 2.5D style of games like “Don’t Starve.” The “3D” effect is limited there, though, so I haven’t given those games a full entry here.

OK, that’s it! The general message I take away here is: 1) 99% of gamers couldn’t care less about how a game looks, as long as it’s fun. 2) Some exciting work is being done by indie developers, even though it’s entirely experimental at the current stage. Kind of a similar situation to the lack of 2D animated feature films, isn’t it? And this is only a small subgenre of experimental techniques being used to apply unique visuals to games.

Did I miss anything? Are you working on a pseudo-3D game that should be included here? Let me know with a comment, or through email at [email protected] !