Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2's lead artist reveals how they made pixel art feel authentically retro
(Image credit: Games Workshop / Devolver Digital / Auroch Digital) Copy link Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter "Nothing says polished retro graphics like nice crisp pixels being blasted across the…
Annons
Annons
(Image credit: Games Workshop / Devolver Digital / Auroch Digital) Copy link Email Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter "Nothing says polished retro graphics like nice crisp pixels being blasted across the screen at an accelerated pace." That's how Mark Chambers, Lead Artist at Auroch Digital, sums up the appeal of Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2, and it's hard to argue once you see the game in motion.This sequel picks up directly where the original Boltgun left off. This time you can play as Ultramarine Sternguard Veteran Malum Caedo or the swifter, flame-wielding Sister of Battle Nyra Veyrath, fighting through a branching campaign that stretches from the towering heights of a hive city to the dense mangrove swamps of a jungle world. Expect new weapons, new locations and new foes, including the bloodthirsty Bloodletters and their daemonic Juggernauts.For artists, the real draw is how it all looks. Boltgun 2 is a 'boomer shooter', but its sprites are far from hand-placed relics of the 1990s. Characters begin life as 3D models, are captured from eight camera directions, and are then converted into sprite sheets packed with normal, ambient occlusion and emission data, before being projected onto billboarded planes in the game world.It's a clever balancing act: crisp, chunky pixels on the surface, modern rendering underneath, and the sprawling detail of the Warhammer 40,000 universe squeezed into silhouettes that read instantly at speed. I spoke to Chambers about how the team pulled it off, and where retro game art limitations end and modern polish begins.Warhammer 40,000: Boltgun 2 is out now for PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S (with a Nintendo Switch 2 version still to come). (Image credit: Games Workshop / Devolver Digital / Auroch Digital)Creative Bloq: How do you make pixel art feel authentically retro without being constrained by the technology of the past?Mark Chambers: Pixel art at its best does a lot with very little, which was certainly the case in the times of boomer shooters. Working within those confines resulted in a unique art style, and we captured that look by using crisp, uniformly spaced pixels, showing an authentic, unfiltered version of our sprites but with the added bonus of a bit of modern sharpening and polish.
