ABSTRACT
The key to creating satisfying aesthetics is the creation of a collection of guides and rules that enable people to maintain a coherent look and feel across an entire project. This requires the development of a language that people can use to communicate the themes, sense of place, and story of their game to the player. Establishing good aesthetic rules involves making allowances for, as well as even embracing, the creative differences that are inevitable when working with a team. In this respect, it can be useful to imagine their procedural generation engine as a member of their team that works alongside their other artists and designers, taking into consideration its own strengths and weaknesses. In the end, the tile-based approach authors took to procedural generation in Sunless Sea was successful. For Failbetter Games's expansion to Sunless Sea, Zubmariner, they used a solution that attempts to accomplish a similar effect, but through procedural logic rather than manual placement.
