Forced Perspective in Video Game

Last year, I have developed a small video game for my company to raise awareness about renewable energy. I named it Synergia. Unfortunatly, because of process issues, I cannot publish it and it is only avaible on the company's intranet. Anyway. This game takes the form of a small city builder. User starts with a board of 4*4 tiles and must power plants to generate enough energy for the city:

The gameplay loop is not very interesting. However, I had to deal with some unexpected challenge regarding the camera and its field of view.

Where to put the Camera ?

I wanted the game to have its own toonish style, but I also wanted to create a small universe, with its own personality. I was inspired by Hearthstone, where the board contains small scenes at each corners, that give a lot of personnality to the game:

I also wanted to have large perspective and an horizon. I wanted the vanishing point to be visible. Something like this:

But, with this configuration, the playing area occupy barely 30% of the screen, and it become confusing as soon as player start building things:

So I tried to changed Camera view angle to make the game more playable:

But doing so, I completly lose the horizon effect I want to produce.

So, how to have both ?

Forced perspective

That's where I though about an article about Zelda A Link Between World, and how Nintendo tricked the Top Down view. As Hiromasa Shikata said during an Iwata Ask interview:

If you looked straight down from the top, all you could see was Link's hat. So it looked like some mysterious green object moving around!

And so, to have better result, they "bend" all the object to the back, as in picture below:

Yes. Perpective don't have to be realistic to be aesthetic.

Animal Crossing also use a Forced Perspective effect, as the whole world seems on the surface of a cylinder, which makes an impresion of depth.

In the Comics "La 2,333^e Dimension" from Marc-Antoine Mathieu, the univers has lost a vanishing point, creating uncanny perspective:

Synergia's Forced Perspective

Here is how the scene initially looked like in Blender:

Let's try to use the Animal Crossing's cylindrical world effect :

And the result in-game:

Cool, I have my Horizon back. But I find it still lack of depth. Let's improve it by "squishing" object on the back:

Much better. Lets add the final touch to the bridge:

As a reminder, here is the scene with true perspective:

Conclusion

Forced Perspective has been use since centuries, especially in architecture. When used correctly, it can alter the perception of a scene and make objects appear larger or further away than they actually are.