What defines what a kids game looks like?

Should it be all cute and cuddly? Should it be educational or something hardcore that would help kids develop some survival instincts? Should it be all fun and games?

OF COURSE NOT! 

The answer is simple: It can look like anything. 

Look at games like Kirby and Sly Cooper. Those games get DARK and yet we don’t pay too much mind to it as kids since it’s all about the cute pink puffball and the funny one-liner spouting raccoon.

Making an artistic product with mass appeal is an extremely difficult task.

You have to make it distinct, memorable, appealing, and for the sake of kid’s games especially, make it easy to draw.

SO! How do you make sure that the art in kid’s games is compelling enough to exist as a happy memory as they grow up?

Well! Don’t worry ‘cause here are the 5 things that you need to remember when making art in kid’s games!

1. What’s popular?

Like I mentioned before you need to know what’s popular. There are literally millions of games out there that employ an outdated art style. 

You need to do your research. The things that are popular on the Google play store and the Apple app store and why are they so popular? What differentiates them from the other apps? What sort of art style are they using? All those things. 

Now when it comes to creating art for kids game things do tend to get a bit tricky. In a sense that most art that we are used to doing is for characters, enemies, aliens, guns and stuff but you need to be very careful when you make kids art. 

Since you can’t make something that is a lot more mature with intimidating characters and duller colors instead you have to come up with something that is really cute and compelling, something that the kids can get attached to. 

Back in the day, it was Angry Birds and Talking Tom, now it’s more like Brawl Stars and pretty much anything by SuperCell. Usually, kids gravitate towards already established properties like Batman and LEGO. 

You take all that and figure out how you can innovate those things in a way that the kids are always playing them and then you can create something that is amazing!

Like we did with Cartoon Network’s Steven Universe. We did all the art-work for their game and have been provided with amazing feedback and since kids absolutely LOOOVE! Steven Universe, the game was a success. Kids were instantly hooked to it!

2. Attention-Grabbing Art Style

The first thing that you need to focus on is the Art Style. You need to know what sort of art style is popular and what sort of colors would be able to attract the right audience. Remember the old cartoons? Like Mickey Mouse, Sonic, Tom and Jerry, Mario, Thunder Cats, and Dragon Ball Z? 

Were these names able to trigger some sense of nostalgia? Did you suddenly remember how they looked like and what colors their characters had? You did!? GREAT! Now I have your attention and that’s exactly my point. 

We remember these characters because their designs and art style were unique. So when our artists are making art for kid’s games they make sure that their designs are unique and the colors that they choose are according to their targeted audience.

However, we definitely tend to get funkier the younger the target audience is, with unique shapes and proportions with interesting contrasting colors to grab their attention. 

3. Exciting User Experience

Now, this is where all the magic happens. When making art for the user experience you need to make sure that you come up with something that is both compelling and simple. 

In a sense that you should use bold colors for your user experience because it is extremely important so that kids know what’s going on at all times. 

You need to give kids a lot to do in your game, and there needs to be a visual representation of the progress that they make, it needs to be clear and concise. 

Even in the simplest of games where a kid just has to tap on the screen or mash a button, they want some kind of progression like a house getting bigger or a number going up. 

For kids, it’s more about what they interact with the game and how they’ll be able to interact with it so it’s convenient for them. The user experience for kids needs to be easy to understand.

A lot of the games we work on have the appeal in them already, it’s definitely hard to find an appealing art style that kids will surely like but it’s harder to make it mesh with the user experience.

The same technique is an excellent way to design an educational game for kids since it’ll incentivize their learning experience. And they’ll learn and have fun at the same time, which is a fairly difficult task to achieve.

4. Hilarious Animations!

Imagine something heavy falling on someone! Now, most of you will imagine what would actually happen while some of you would imagine that person get squashed under the weight and after a minute of silence…. Something like this!