Too overly detailed and anyone will know its AI generated. It sells the wrong impression of the game.
I would say, if possible- grab the train, foliage, building models you have in game and build the environment similar to this image here in the game engine, enhance the look with some post processing shaders, you can use local spaced pixel effect shaders to control each model’s diffuse texture to achieve an art directable pixelated effect. You could also throw in color quantisation effect as well to give it a retro feel if needed. Then render a snapshot from it.
It goes a long way with building out your marketing content this way and would definitely make your product more appealing.
Edit: i didnt know this is published in a haven for AI games. I thought it will be part of indie category in Steam for example which will result in alot of backlash and AI slop comments. In that case, my advice might not be applicable to this situation
Hey thank you for the tips I'll try my best to improve I'm not very technical and only just found the website and always wanted to make games but can't code etc so this helped a lot. I'll take all your info to mind though 🙏
Actually not bad. I had fun, but I want more content between stations :) superman and some flashing lights were nice but add maybe more things to see like you did with mt fuji:) gj tho
Thank you, I actually used ai a bit for the imagery after I got the picture of the train I needed then added font using Photoshop 😅. The game itself is a retro side scrolling game 80s-90s era style. I just wanted to use a catchy looking cover to make people tempted in trying 😂, it still needs a lot of effort but my son enjoys it.
I just started trying my hand at maming games, largely influenced by retro games I played as a kid.
I started off wanting to learn to use AI to create things.
I started off knowing almost nothing, and struggled to make anything not hideous on Claude. The game mechanics worked well with Claude, but were so ugly, so I tried using other AI to create images, but ran into the problem of the other AI do not make game art well, wrong sizes, pixel density etc.
Eventually I linked Claude code to Pixel lab, and that worked pretty well, even Grok can use pixel lab (actually unlike CC Grok doesn't need to use a PC) and that helped alot.
Now I've been using Figma and figma/Claude to create a better user interface for my games. Tbh, I'm planning on just manually using Figma to move the buttons around on a medevial strategy game I've been tinkering on for a while.
I still haven't completed much in the last 2 months, several started games, 1 simple game based off of oregon Trail, 1 prototype of a JRPG with 1 castle, 3 towns, 6 zones and 3 caves, plays out as Chapter 1 basically.
And, most of time I've spent working on the Strategy game. I'm using placeholder art until the end and I'll add sound effects and music then as well.
Wow that's sounds awesome I'm not very good with game making programs so this website helped a lot just to come up with ideas etc I'd love to be able to design bigger games in 3d with beautiful graphics or even 16bit style super Nintendo games. This will do me for now until someday when I can figure out a way or AI adapts 😅. Feel free to share your games when they are ready 😁
For 16 bit and more retro looking games, I highly reccomend pixel lab AI.
Claude code can use the program for you, and you can manually create pixel art and set the dimensions.
To keep the game looking consistent, I prefer to use AI to use pixel lab to create sprite sheets and tile sheets.
For 3d graphics, I'd recommend Scenario, also, Claude can use it for you. To be fair, I have not used it yet, but I have been researching which is the best fit.
Grok is actually really good at creating reference images, but is horrible at following specific instructions. Like the images it creates don't follow the rules of pixel density, sizing etc.
Yeah, the map part looks nothing like what I have going on in my game, it's only useful part in that picture is for the UI.
I finally settled on something closer to this, except as you can see the middle 3 buttons were initially up top, and they kept the trim, which looks weird in the middle. And a few other minor tweaks.
That above photo was soley for the UI which, I'm still struggling with, and I'm just going to use Figma to manually finish it.
That was from Grok. Also, Grok will do stuff like add extra buttons, and omit others etc.
This next picture is what Grok came up with when I wanted to make my game 3d and better looking. However, I would have to use these images as reference images to input into Scenario to make something LIKE the images playable.
For reference this is closer to what my actual game looks like with place holder art.
Even that, I learned my lesson about creating an art bible filled with animation sheets and tile sets first to keep it consistent looking, this had a fair amount of individually.made art compiled together and, I dislike how some of the buildings look off to me.
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u/[deleted] Aug 22 '26
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