Indie devs discuss why low-poly works so well for horror: "I actually think those limitations encourage weird, unique compromises"

Mara Forest walks in front of the Crow Country ticket booth in a piece of key art that retains the game's rounded low-poly visual style, but smashes together other elements of the theme park - such as a crow statue, gore puddles, dead trees, and explosive barrels - together in a way that isn't true of the actual space in-game, but conveys what to expect therein.

With PlayStation's 30th anniversary, now's a good time to take stock of the seismic technological leaps forward each successive console generation has made. It could be easy to look back at the once-revolutionary 3D graphics on the original PlayStation and write them off as dated now that smooth 4K and ray-traced visuals are the norm.

However, there are indie developers who have been embracing this early low-poly style in their games, which have begun surfacing into the mainstream consciousness – titles such as this year's Crow Country, as well as Fear The Spotlight, coming later this month [it's out now! - ed from the future]. That said, this affection for low-poly visuals is nothing new. It can be traced back to Back In 1995, which was released almost a decade ago (although not ported to PS4 and Vita until 2019).