This weird bird game's art style takes me back to the '90s

In these days of Unreal Engine 5 and 3D photorealism, it can be refreshing to see indie game art that looks like it came from a bygone era in a parallel universe. The strange bird game Being Food has a retro-inspired art style that looks not quite like anything else – perhaps because its developer is also a tattoo artist.

Instead of seeking realism, the developer is using exaggerated stylised 3D models, psychedelic abstract elements and a whole bunch of assets extruded from photos of real-world objects. The art style is bright, bold and zany, blending the comfort of nostalgic '90s cartoon influences with the chaos of graffiti and collaging to create a wacky weirdcore world.

Being Food is a third-person puzzle-platformer where you have to survive a day as a bird called Oolahla. The game's unusual free and loose art style has it being compared to Petscop, '90s Nickelodeon cartoons and “Toejam and Earl on acid”. The soundtrack by Spilly Cave reminds some of playing retro games like Mario 64.

The game's indie developer it is a tattoo artist called Alex AKA Hot_____Dog_. He cites musician and cartoon artist Beajumpup as an influence on the world design.

Alex drew many of the characters in a sketchbook and has built 3D models to look like 2D sprites. He's also creating assets from photos of random objects and architecture that grab his attention by extruding them in Blender to add them to the game world.

He's inviting followers to send him photos of more objects to add to the game, which could make the collage environment even more strange and unexpected.

Contributing to the grungy '90s look is a heavily modified version of a PlayStation 1-era retro graphics shader for Unity created by Codrin Mihail, to which the developer has added his own features and recreated parts in .hlsl (also see our guide to game development software).

Hot_____Dog_ has been posting videos on Instagram showing some of his progress.

You can wishlist Being Food on Steam.