Fantasy Symbolism Influencing Visual Design in Digital Games 🎮

Image source: https://pixabay.com/photos/robot-machine-technology-mecha-ai-2301646/

Step into any fantasy video game and you’re instantly surrounded by a silent language of symbols, before you’ve heard a scrap of dialogue or read a quest prompt. Designers rely on this mostly visual shorthand to steer our emotions and choices from the first moment. A golden shimmer in the distance means you found a safe spot; blood-red, splashed across the screen, promises trouble. Certain shapes, too, whisper ancient meanings: think labyrinthine corridors, dragon heads, or those recurring, rune-carved stones. 

Decoding these cues doesn’t require a lore deep-dive. Centuries of storytelling have conditioned us. Recent surveys actually put a number to this: over 80% of today’s best-selling fantasy games lean heavily on symbolic palettes and iconography (SDLCCorp, 2023). It’s not just pretty art; this is what lets game worlds speak for themselves and draw players deeper.

2025 Belonged to Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 - Mike's Musings ✨ @expedition33

There is a terrific "How it started/How it's going" meme going around contrasting Sandfall Interactive head Guillaume Broche's initial, charming, kickstarter appeal on reddit with an image of him accepting every award known to man at last weeks Game Awards.

I’m not sure anyone involved with Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 expected to walk away from the ceremony with their arms full of trophies, but here we are. Game of the Year, best Debut, Art Direction nods, critical darling status cemented, and a room full of developers looking faintly annoyed that a relatively small French studio just strolled in and stole their lunch money.

As noted in our own glowing review, Clair Obscur is the first game from Sandfall Interactive, a studio that, until very recently, was mostly known for not existing. Founded by former Ubisoft developers, the team hovered somewhere in the “AA but dangerously competent” space, reportedly numbering in the few dozens rather than the hundreds.

No vast satellite studios. No eighteen-hour mocap shoots for incidental NPCs. No decade long development hell. Just a relatively small team, a very clear vision, and the audacity to build a turn based RPG in 2025 and assume people might still care.

They were right.

Critical reception was, frankly, obscene.

Warhammer 40K Rogue Trader – Switch 2 Character Creation 🔫 @OwlcatGames #IndieGame #GameDev

Rich steps into the grim darkness of the far future with Warhammer 40000 Rogue Trader on Nintendo Switch 2! ⚔️ In this video, we dive deep into the character creation system, exploring classes, backgrounds, and customization options to build the perfect Rogue Trader for your journey across the galaxy.