Games Made Using Stop Motion

Summary

• Games with claymation style visuals require meticulous work but offer unique, visually striking experiences.
• Reimagining traditional genres with claymation visuals, like in Hylics, can create surreal and engaging gameplay.
• Despite gameplay flaws, games like ClayFighter or Harold Halibut excel in aesthetics, showcasing the beauty and artistry of claymation.

The beauty of games is the diversity inherent in their creation. You have to start from scratch, and that means you need an idea of what your game is going to look like. It doesn’t need to have hyperrealistic characters. It can be anything in the world. Like, say, a bunch of clay. And who doesn’t love claymation?

Claymation can be difficult to achieve due to the absurd amount of work required to actually animate it, and that’s not even getting started on designing the models in the first place. These games went the extra mile to give themselves an incredibly unique look, with some stellar gameplay on top to wrap it all together.

8

Terra Wars

From Mistwalker, the studio founded by Final Fantasy co-creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, Terra Wars is a spin-off from the main Terra Battle series. Terra Wars ditched the grid-based battling system of the main games in favour of a real-time system, though still placed a heavy emphasis on tactics. It also employed a dramatically different art style.

Using the same base aesthetic of the previous titles, Terra Wars had every character placed in scanned dioramas, and modelled and animated using claymation. Even if the game itself is not stellar in all regards, the visuals alone punch well above their weight.

You might have first heard of Terra Wars through its dramatically different-looking collaboration with Final Fantasy 15.

7

Kirby And The Rainbow Curse

If there’s one thing you can give the Kirby games, it’s that they’re willing to change art style on a whim to make them as visually appealing as possible. Kirby is just a pink blob after all, he’s pretty easy to adapt. Kirby and the Rainbow Curse, and its predecessor, Canvas Curse, adapt a clay style, animated in all its low frame-rate glory.

The funny thing is that the game isn’t actually claymation at all. The models are designed to look like clay figures, and the frame rate is kept low to emulate the idea of claymation, but they’re all fully animated. To that end, its incredibly impressive how well the aesthetic was achieved cosndering it’s not actually the real deal.

6

Hylics

Hylics as a game is quite difficult to describe, not least because the game itself uses randomly-generated text in just about every part of it. You have to navigate this world by merit of its design, rather than what it tells you. Unconventional design by all means, but one that draws in to the game’s incredible, surreal visuals.

The characters are all made from clay, giving them unreal proportions and bizarre forms of movement. Yet also, the game is played like a traditional JRPG. Where the oddities of the world meet the familiar, it gives such an uncomfortable feeling. It is this idiosyncrasies, pushed heavily by the gorgeous claymation, that makes the game such a wonderful experience.

5

ClayFighter

Fighting games have been all the rage from the moment they stepped onto the scene. From the stylish combos of Street Fighter to the gory fatalities of Mortal Kombat, there’s some amazing diversity there. And then ClayFighter appeared to satirise those games, but came into a series all of its own by its dedication to claymation.

Is ClayFighter a strictly good game? No, not really. While it parodies other fighting games, it failed to actually nail the gameplay mechanics that make them shine. That said, the visuals are what saved the series, and it did actually use full claymation to make the game, posing each move before scanning it into the game.

4

Judero

Judero is a game that by its very foundations defies categorisation. That is the intent, mind you, so let’s get the definitives out of the way. Judero has you in the role of a Scottish warrior as he defends the borders of his home from monsters and the encroaching English. No single gameplay element is what makes the game shine, it’s everything visual.

To describe Judero as just claymation would be selling it short. It is a glorious collage of artistic mediums. Humanoid characters are stop-motion animated action figures, the world is built on dioramas, the enemies are designed and animated with claymation, and the art style shifts and changes at a moments notice. It is ambrosia for the senses.

3

The Neverhood

The Neverhood is a game that feels distinctly in the vein of LucasArts, though was developed by purpose-built The Neverhood Inc., and published by the then-fledgling Dreamworks Interactive. Very much a game of the time, The Neverhood was a point-and-click adventure that prioritised using the environment than any items you collected along the way.

And while the game’s puzzles were seen overall as a bit too simple, there was no denying the beauty of the game. Designed and animated entirely with clay figures, it was even filmed with consumer grade cameras. It is an incredibly impressive feat that eventually resulted in a sequel, Skullmonkeys.

2

The Swapper

Early on in the PS4’s lifecycle, Sony had a big hand in attracting indies to the platform, and The Swapper was one such game. Developed by just two university students, the game received rave reviews for just about every facet of the game, from its story to its gameplay mechanics. And the glue that tied it all together were its visuals.

Just about every aspect of the game is handcrafted, from the levels to the characters. Modeled with immaculately-detailed clay figures and diorama sets, The Swapper has an eerie feel enhanced all the more by its incredible style. It’s hard to achieve a vibe like it does without actual physical pieces.

1

Harold Halibut

Harold Halibut is just gorgeous. It’s the first thing that comes to mind when you see it. It’s rare to see a claymation game on such a large scale in the modern sense because it is such a meticulous, time-consuming practice. And yet, Harold Halibut has achieved such an amazing vision.

In terms of raw gameplay, it is a relatively laid-back experience, focused more on letting you experience the narrative bolstered by its visuals rather than in-depth mechanics. But games are an art form that can be expressed in so many ways, and Harold Halibut is confident enjoy to let its visuals (as well as some stellar voice-acting) do all the heavy lifting.