Although hardware has got more and more powerful (see our picks of the best laptops for game development), optimisation is still a vital concern in game development. We've seen various cheap game design tricks used to get around costly or complicated situations, from reflections to water simulations.
Sometimes the classic hacks are still the most ingenious and impressive. An indie developer has shown how they're tackling the issue of helicopter rotors in their upcoming mecha tactical RPG game, and people are impressed by the simple efficiency of the optical illusion.
Old school gamedev trick to give the illusion of motion blur on helicopter bladesfrom r/IndieDev
Toge Productions describes Kriegsfront Tactics as a procedural turn-based tactical RPG set during a conflict in Southeast Asia in an alternate 1970s. Players take the role of a commander leading a squad of mechas.
In a post on Reddit (above), the developer notes the challenge involved in making helicopter blades look like they're spinning fast. Increasing the speed won't look realistic without additional effects. Instead, working in Unity (see our guide to game development software), the developer applied a effective and economical alternative.
They simply duplicated the textures and added radial blur. Then it was just a matter of swapping the textures and combining with the speed slider (if you're wondering why the helicopters look so big, it's because they have to carry six 5-metre-tall mechs in their cargo hold!).
These tricks are part of what makes game development so creative and interesting: it's not just the art but also the technical ingenuity involved in finding solutions to cost and technological challenges.
It's been pointed out that major games, including Halo (below), have done similar things for tyres, swapping in blurred textures for movement and sometimes adding a mesh shell with a blurred mud texture (also check out these other optical illusions in game design).
You can wishlist Kriegsfront Tactics on Steam.
Fave visual trick in Halo 1: swapping out the warthog tire texture for a blurry one when they're spinning fast. Fake motion blurrrr
— @joewintergreen.com (@joewintergreen.com.bsky.social) 2026-08-03T23:40:32.564Z
