We recently spoke with SFB Games' creative director Adam Vian on about the evolution of the Detective Grimoire games up to the new release The Mermaid Mask. Here, artist Catherine Unger shares some insights into the making of a point-and-click environment for the new game. If you're inspired, see our guides to the best laptops for game development and the best drawing tablets.
This room belongs to a doctor who experiments on dreams. The goal was to create a space that felt like a blend of 18th century doctor’s infirmary, a cabinet of curiosities, and a Frankenstein-inspired laboratory. The pink dream-like palette evolved because I introduced a surreal stained glass dome above the whole room that symbolised a giant dreamcatcher.
Before an environment painting for a point-and-click game can be finalised, a significant amount of design work needs to align. The challenge is balancing the artwork with the practical needs of gameplay, ensuring everything interactive is readable and positioned to support environmental storytelling without making them too obvious. Achieving that balance requires a great deal of planning and iterating.
Sketching ideas
Using researched mood boards and images, I sketch out a lot of very rough compositions. I prefer working on paper first, because it keeps me loose and takes away an element of pressure for it to look perfect at the start. Sometimes my most messiest thumbnails are where the final ideas come from.
Block out the scene
I begin the final background by blocking out the room with the Pen tool to build strong angular shapes. This base layer also gives me a solid starting point for balancing colours across the entire image.
I often zoom out or squint to check how the artwork reads overall, ensuring that the composition feels balanced and the key elements stand out clearly.
Adding a final polish
Once happy with the foundation, I begin the long process of finalising the artwork, often using clipping masks on the original shapes. As this is for a point-and click game, not a standard illustration where complexity is focused, the scene needs to feel rich, detailed and filled with elements players will want to examine.
Pro game art tips
Add definition
I create offset outlines by duplicating shape layers, adding a stroke, setting the Fill to 0, and slightly shifting them. It’s an easy cheat that helps add definition throughout the piece while also helping it feel closer to a more traditional hand drawn piece of art.
Textured layers
Nearly every surface of this image has a rich brushy texture that I incorporate using subtle low-opacity layers. Even smooth gradients are broken up with a textured brush. Flat colour is used sparingly to introduce contrasting visual breaks which guide the viewer’s eye to key areas of the composition.
Leading lines
I used several methods to pull the eye towards the image’s focal point. The shelving creates leading lines, while elsewhere light and shadow help to establish visual priority. Finally, the rug and sprawling wire help to bridge the gap between the foreground and background, but also guides the viewer to the point of interest.
Unsettling ambience
I wanted this room to feel unsettling, so juxtaposed the fruity colour palette with classic sinister imagery (skulls, chains and so on). I framed the scene with dark foreground shelves. This is a visual trick to make the viewer feel as though they’re intruding and have stumbled across something they shouldn’t have.
Make it easy to process
Balancing richness and readability in a detail-heavy environment was challenging. A homogeneous palette helped flatten everything, but I added subtle colour accents to prevent it from feeling too monochromatic.
Object repetition helped reinforce scale at different depths, while also reducing visual clutter and making the scene easier to process.
Detective Grimoire's latest murder mystery, The Mermaid Mask, is out now on PC, PlayStation 5, Switch 2 and 1.
This article originally appeared in ImagineFX. Subscribe to ImagineFX to never miss an issue. Print and digital subscriptions are available.
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