The art of asymmetry

Hey guys.

A little late with the blog, I'm sorry for that, but better late than never.

This week in Nyx, I have overhauled some old level designs. As I am constantly trying to improve the way I build and set things up, I thought this was necessary. Here are a few examples because I haven't shared anything visible for a while. Consider this a little sneak peek.

Old

New

Old

New

These are just a few examples — I've done a lot more behind the scenes that you haven’t seen yet.There are also a bunch of new characters, like Vilda, Perle, and Plunsy.

Now that I’ve shown you what I’ve worked on this past week, I want to talk a bit about something that’s been on my mind: symmetry vs. asymmetry.

Creating a mountain or forest that doesn't look man-made is surprisingly difficult.

As humans, we’re naturally drawn to symmetry — and that often creeps into the things we build.

While I was designing one of the new maps, I kept thinking:“Hmm… this looks too clean.”

Straight walls. Perfectly centered holes.

If there were three blocks of water on the left, there were three on the right too.

But that's not how the real world works — and it didn’t feel right.

I realized I needed more asymmetry to make the world feel natural.

But once I tried to build that in, I found out just how tricky it is — especially with larger areas like world maps, forests, mountains, or even towns.

I think I’ve developed a decent method for handling it now, and honestly… it’s going really well.

There’s still room for improvement — but there always is.I strive for perfection. Nothing less. Question of the week: What game have you finished multiple times and still can't stop playing?