Mystery Through Visual Detail: How Video Game Art Impacts Emotion

Narratives and stories, regardless of the form of media with which they are conveyed, are found at the core of the most influential cultural works. Narrative and emotion go handin-hand, and a powerful experience is created when the two are in harmony. Video games are potent storytelling tools in that they utilize many forms of media, like visual, sound, text, and interaction-based art to transmit messages through narrative. While many factors contribute to the conveying of emotions to the audience of a work, the properties of the visual sense, and the art that makes it up, must cohere to the other properties of a work of art like a video game. As a game developer creating a work with a narrative reliant on the successful conveying of the emotion of mystery to its audience, visual coherence to these emotional expectations is critical. Art style itself is important for properly expressing emotions, and in regard to the emotion of mystery, factors like repetition, dark corners, and eerie shapes may hold the key to creating a game world which strongly expresses the emotion of mystery. This MRP attempts to analyse various methods in which the visual art of a video game can augment the game's overall sense of mystery.