Video Games for Architects
by Ksenia Eic, NWTAA, OAA (Architect)
For those who do not consider themselves “gamers”, video games may seem like a lower level medium whose only purpose is to distract from more worthwhile endeavours. As someone who has grown up with video games - starting with the Nintendo back when I was three or four years old - I always felt that this medium is full of artistic and design merit/potential and has helped shape me into the person, and dare I say the designer, I am today.
Not all games are created equal and to say that ALL video games are beautiful works of art would be a lie. That said, there are so many different kinds of games, many of which the term” game” seems reductive and a misrepresentation of what it truly is. There are also several games that have true design or artistic merit and that not only reflect design aspects that architects would appreciate but even offer insights into design that architects could learn from or a platform to test out design ideas.
With that said, I have assembled a list of “Video Games for Architects,” broken down into the following categories:
Aesthetics/Art Style
Player Engagement with Design
Spatial Experience/Unique Use of Space
Using Space to Evoke Emotion
Integration of Architectural Design
1. Aesthetics/Art Style
Just as the strength of some movies are the beautiful visuals and cinematic quality, some games focus on the artistic style and “feel” of the game rather than the mechanics. Here are some examples:
Kentucky Route Zero by Cardboard Computer
This is quite possibly the most beautiful and ethereal game I have ever played. The visuals of this Interactive Story are stunning, with axonometric views of towns and elevations of buildings that switch into a section as you enter it, giving it a decidedly architectural feel. The main map has a beautiful, black and white line drawing aesthetic that is a study in simplicity. This is a great game for gamers and non-gamers alike as the mechanics are simple and it is an episodic game, meaning you play it in small sections of a couple of hours each.
Monument Valley by Ustwo
This game also has a very beautiful aesthetic that looks like a high-end Illustrator-Vector drawing. The most intriguing thing about this puzzle game is that it is effectively 2D but the levels look like Escher paintings with a 3D quality to them… so not only is it beautiful but it makes you think about the geometry and form of the levels as well. This can even be played on a tablet/iPad so is also extremely accessible.
Dwarf Fortress by Bay 12 Games
This roguelike simulation game has a high barrier to entry for people not used to simulation games, but what makes it so intriguing is how everything is procedurally generated - from the terrain to city growth to the rise and fall of civilizations - and all the while these items and changes are shown through symbols in an almost “The Matrix” style. While the aim is to build and maintain a Dwarf Fortress, most of the fun is just from watching things unfold and taking in the beautiful aesthetics resulting from this utilitarian/practical approach.
2. Player Engagement with Design
The real way to get someone to engage with architecture is to take part in design/creation. Be it a simulator or a sandbox game, games that engage players in design allow them to get their creative juices flowing.
Block’Hood by Plethora Project
Finally a city/neighbourhood building simulator game designed by an architect! Block’Hood’ has a simple plug and play type approach to design which means the player is freer to experiment with the design. The architect/designer Jose Sanchez explained: “We face global issues and we need new tools to address a new kind of scale: a planetary scale. By using games, we can engage a global audience in the problems that architecture is facing.” A man after my own heart.
Plethora Project is also working on a community-building game called “Common’hood” set for March 2022 so look out for that!
Townscaper by Oskar Stålberg
Another unique take on a city builder, Townscaper focuses on simplicity and the sense of play in creation over accuracy and optimization. The “tool palette” is just a simple list of colours with construction mostly distilled down to simple addition or subtraction (click on the water to add more land, click on the top of a building to add more height, delete from a building to create an archway). The simplicity of gameplay allows this to be a great game for kids and adults alike.
Minecraft by Mojang
Minecraft is a phenomenon for a reason and is perhaps the most successful game at allowing players to unleash creativity through building. Minecraft is a true “sandbox” game, allowing players to play the game in the way that they choose. When in creative mode, players can focus solely on building and creating, using simple blocks to construct buildings/their creations (much in the same way Lego works). This is a great game for adults and children alike and you can even set up a server and play WITH your kids or friends.
Tetris by Alexey Pajitnov
The one game to rule them all… This is widely recognized as one of the greatest games ever made due to its simple and pure concept, infinite permutations and being endlessly engaging… oh and that music is so catchy! While this game doesn’t engage the player in design in the same sense that the other games in this category do, the player is constantly making design decisions and building/creating. I don’t know about you but I definitely feel like I’m playing Tetris when I’m working out layouts from a functional program :)
3. Spatial Experience/Unique Use of Space
What’s architecture without space? Video games by definition create virtual environments, and, when done well, create a unique sense of space in those environments. Some of the examples below are of games which play with space to create challenging and thought-provoking puzzles while others utilize designed spaces to impact the gameplay and experience of the player.
Portal by Valve
Besides Tetris and Snake, this is perhaps the greatest puzzle game ever created, and what’s unique about it is that it uses your understanding of space (and physics) to progress through the levels. It is an incredibly simple but ingenious concept: you have a gun that can create an “in” portal and an “out” portal. Using only this you must determine how to make your way through increasingly challenging 3D levels and ultimately escape. It is also wickedly funny, with the “bad guy” being an AI that has gone insane, taken over a research facility and has resorted to executing deadly tests on the human staff (including you!)
Lands End by Ustwo
It is a rare gem indeed to find a game that seems to understand how space affects a player and to design around that understanding. This VR puzzle game uses simple geometry, forms and movement to focus on player experience rather than mechanics.
Dark Souls by FromSoftware Inc.
This is one of my favourite games. Not only are the buildings and spaces themselves beautiful - with lots of baroque and gothic style architecture incorporated - but the spatial design of the levels carefully considers how areas connect to each other (and how you navigate around the map), the impact on the gameplay (affects how you fight or how you move around the space) AND your experience playing the game. This game is infamously hard so it’s not for the faint of heart… but is well worth the effort for those who appreciate incredible gameplay and/or high-calibre level design or, in other words, incredible master-planning and spatial design.
Legend of Zelda - Ocarina of Time by Nintendo
The Legend of Zelda series is known for its complex spatial puzzles via its Dungeon/Temple designs. The most infamous, though, is the water temple from Ocarina of Time. The concept of this dungeon is ingenious and simple, where there is a central tower in a cylindrical void space which then fills and/or empties with water to allow you to access different parts of the level… though to work your way through it is a real challenge. Playing this game, and other Zelda games are well worth it just to see how the level designers executed such intricate spatial puzzles while creating a truly engaging and unforgettable experience.
Subnautica by Unknown Worlds Entertainment
What better way to explore 3D space than in an aquatic environment? You have crash-landed on a water-covered alien planet and must find the materials to build a spacecraft to ultimately escape. You work your way from exploring shallow coastlines to the deep ocean as your equipment gets increasingly sophisticated. The natural landscape is engaging and beautiful on its own but the game designers also incorporate alien architecture as well as more complex caverns which put the level of spatial experience off the charts. Oh, and you can go wild building your underwater station, from just the basics of what you need to an insane underwater mini-city :)
Manifold Garden by William Chyr Studio
This mesmerizing, gravity-defying 3D puzzle game looks like MC Escher meets Le Corbusier’s City of Tomorrow on acid. If that’s not enough to get you interested then this isn’t the game for you.
4. Using Space to Evoke Emotion
I once attended a presentation by Will Alsop and he said that he always tried to create spaces where “people could fall in love.” As architects, we rarely get to work on projects that truly focus on evoking emotion and so I personally find it fascinating to study how this is done in video games to better understand how the built environment can affect those in it. Some great examples of these kinds of games are:
Inside by Playdead
While this can be technically described as a sidescroller puzzle game, it is better described as interactive art. The designers used lighting, composition, foreground and background, scale and even camera angles/zoom/placement together in combination with the gameplay to create a series of impactful moments and an overall eerie feeling to the game.
Journey by Thatgamecompany
This game just exudes a sense of peace and tranquillity to it. You start the game with no information and move around a large desert with the apparent goal of reaching a mountain with a pillar of light in the distance. Through the game, you journey through the landscape and buildings while interacting with another random player online. It’s an incredibly beautiful game that skillfully uses different types of spaces and environments (jumping between vast open plains to semi-enclosures made of columns and arches to dark interior spaces) to engage the player.
Resident Evil 4 by Capcom
The horror genre has numerous great examples of using space to evoke emotion but I particularly like this game because it offers a wide variety of experiences and is probably best described as a third-person “action/horror.” There are several different kinds of areas and spaces in the game, from small towns to placid lakes to castle ballrooms to dark tunnels, and the level designers skillfully laid things out to create unique and varied emotions, gameplay and player experiences.
5 - Integration of Architectural Design
Given how large of a role building and spatial design in general play in video games, it is surprising how few architects are involved in the design of video games, at least to my knowledge. There are a few notable exceptions (including Block’Hood from the second category of games on this list), as well as some games that take a lot of inspiration from real-world architecture.
The Witness by Thekla
The Witness is a 3D puzzle game that has some really interesting puzzles that incorporate the entire landscape and play with perspective. The game designer brought in Landscape Architects - Fletcher Studio - to design the island itself (even coming up with the geological and anthropological history of the island) and an Architectural firm - FOURM design studio - to design the buildings. The team even went so far as to ensure all the materials used for the buildings were sourced “locally” - so metal used on one building was from a shipwreck, for example.
Assassin’s Creed by Ubisoft
This Canadian powerhouse of a franchise is architecturally interesting in that each game takes place in a different historic context with incredibly accurately modelled buildings; there are even architectural consultants who confirm the historic accuracy of the buildings the team models (even to the fine details). If you ever wanted to explore ancient Rome as it was… look no further than Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood! The buildings also have complete interactibility, with players able to climb any surface that has enough reveals, steps, etc. for the character to grab on to.
Mass Effect 2 and 3 by Bioware
Another Canadian-created series, Mass Effect is an epic sci-fi role-playing game. In both Mass Effect 2 and 3, you get to go to many of the homeworlds of the various alien races in the game, each of which had different architectural inspirations (including Calatrava for the Asari and Frank Lloyd Wright for the Krogen homeworld). As an added bonus, the development team is based out of Vancouver, so the opening scene of Mass Effect 3 happens in future Vancouver!
Final Thoughts
Architecture school always stressed the importance of having a wealth of knowledge in different fields of study to give an architect a holistic understanding of the world they are designing and building in. While most designers can appreciate that there are lessons to be learned from cinematography, photography, visual arts, and other fields of art, video game design is still, generally, at best overlooked and at worst seen as a plague on the planet, infecting the minds of unsuspecting children. I believe this artistic medium has a lot to offer both players and those of us in the design community, including architects in particular.
With that, whether you consider yourself a gamer or not, are more interested in aesthetics or mechanics, or don’t own any “consoles” other than an iPad, there are games on this list that would be a good fit for you... And, who knows, maybe it can even give you some interesting design ideas or offer interesting insights. Happy gaming :)
About the Writer
