I've been working on a game called Phosphor Command, a monochrome green real-time tactics game with a base builder behind it. It's made solo in Godot.
The entire game is drawn in code.
There are no sprites, textures, or asset packs. The terrain, units, vision cones, effects, CRT overlay, and the entire UI are all generated and drawn by the game itself.
The result is a sort of living tactical computer screen.
Everything uses the same visual language: green phosphor, black backgrounds, simple shapes, lines, symbols, and text. Even the terrain and buildings are built from the same basic visual system as the UI.
I wanted the battlefield to feel like something you're looking at through a military command terminal rather than a traditional RTS camera.
The visual style also works particularly well with the way the game plays.
You can see the vision of individual units as they move across the terrain. Contacts appear and fade from the screen. Last-known enemy positions remain as ghosted markers. Smoke, dust, and storms obscure the battlefield. Friendly and enemy forces are represented using the same simple visual language, so you can concentrate on what is happening tactically.
The base uses the same approach.
Buildings, walls, towers, and troops are all rendered in the same style, so as your forward operating base grows, the screen becomes increasingly busy with the things you've built.
There are currently 22 different environments, but these aren't 22 sets of traditional art assets. They're generated from different terrain and environment rules, which lets the same visual system produce forests, cities, mountains, airbases, and other environments.
One of the nice things about keeping everything generated this way is that the whole game stays extremely small. The current build is under a gigabyte, and the minimum specification is an Intel HD 4000.
The style originally came from a practical decision: I'm making the game solo, and I didn't want art production to become something that hindered development.
But I've ended up really liking the art style I have adapted to.
It's become an important part of what Phosphor Command feels like, and in my recent showcases, a lot of people have had positive impressions of this styling.
I've attached a collection of footage showing the different environments, tactical gameplay, UI, and the forward operating base.
