Okay, this is another “I have a point to make so that actual naming of the game won’t be hard” posts. Here are five “classic” top-down RPGs.
Can anyone look at the terrain tiles of these games and tell me what I noticed about them?
Retro-styled games for the modern era.
You are noticing what I call the “Ultima Look”
Heavy use of black for contrast, with hilights of the intended color. Done right, you will look at a tile and swear its green, even though only a bit of it is.
Got it in one! The predominance of black was originally a necessity of tiles usually only allowing two colors, but the Ultima games continued with their heavy use of black even when sixteen or more colors became available. Other game series abandoned this look as soon as they could; check out this screenshot of Questron II.
And even though the ground tiles in Ultima VII don’t feature black, the game features a black outline around everything, serving a similar purpose.
Interesting. I was going to go with “Oh God my eyes, they are bleeding!”.