On behalf of the team at The Game Kitchen, we’re thrilled to share that Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound is ready to go and will launch next week on July 31! To celebrate, we’d like to look back on the project’s creative journey and share a glimpse into how the game’s art style was developed, refined, and ultimately brought to life.
When Dotemu approached us to create a new entry in Team Ninja’s iconic 2D Ninja Gaiden series, pixel art felt like the natural choice. It allowed us to honor the look of the original trilogy while drawing on The Game Kitchen’s own experience with the medium. Yet pixel art is incredibly versatile, capable of conveying very different aesthetics: from the dark baroque atmosphere of Blasphemous to the minimalist style of The Last Door. We knew Ragebound required a distinct visual identity, different from anything we’d done before.
The last installment of the original 8-bit Ninja Gaiden series was released in 1991, featuring character designs and cover art that shared the same aesthetic as the anime OVA launched that year. As our mission was to bring the series back to its roots, we asked ourselves: What if Ninja Gaiden had continued into the mid-90’s as a 2D series? This idea became the foundation to define Ragebound’s visual style: vibrant, high-quality pixel art inspired by the 16- and 32-bit era, combined with the bold, dynamic designs typical of 90’s seinen anime.
To share how we brought this vision to life, two members of our team, Jesús Campos and María Lozano, discuss their creative process below.
Jesús “Nerkin” Campos, is a senior pixel artist at The Game Kitchen, acclaimed for his environmental art on the Blasphemous series. As the Art Director for Ninja Gaiden: Ragebound (and avid retro game lover), he took inspiration from classic 16- and 32-bit games to create vibrant, fluid pixel art full of energy and action. While honoring the legacy of the original Ninja Gaiden titles, Jesús also wanted to elevate the visuals to modern standards, blending traditional graphics with current quality and techniques. Pushing pixel art to new heights has become one of The Game Kitchen’s trademarks, he states.
Discussing the creative process, Jesús shares that one of the biggest challenges was dealing with limited colors and detail due to the low resolution, while still managing to convey the mood of each moment in the adventure and the atmosphere of every zone. He explains that to overcome this, the team put great care into selecting precise color palettes, designing texture tiling and layering decorative elements and parallax effects to bring depth and vibrancy to the environments.
Jesús also states that the most critical aspect of art applied to level design was ensuring clarity and readability. Given that the game was an action-platformer, it was essential for characters and enemies to stand out distinctly from the background so players could immediately identify and engage with them. He n