Choosing a style

[Nick Rudzicz]

Howdy y'all,

So I think I've written (read: complained, or despaired?) about this before, though usually via ephemeral means such as Twitter or unpaid Slack.

I've got a backburner project I've been working on that focuses on finding and collecting these procedurally-generated plants... that's pretty much all there is to the game. I have mechanics and the ghostly backbone of a story/world in mind, but for the life of me I cannot seem to move forward in terms of visual aesthetic.

I've got a Pinterest full of ideas, but it's sort of all over the map -- I like each item individually, but I can't seem to find enough commonalities/patterns to build a global theme, or to start work on individual algorithms.

Do you folks have any favoured approaches to building an aesthetic? Or do they seem to come to mind fully-formed? I know these sorts of things often come through experimentation, but I'm having a heck of a time knowing where to start, when the possibility space is so huge (these plants could look like anything at this point).

-n