2024 Golden Lance Award for Best Art Direction

Graphics are great. Everyone loves 4K, ray tracing, dynamic shadows, and every other technical buzzword. All those graphics don’t mean anything if they aren’t also paired with art direction. It is art direction that takes pretty pictures and makes them into a cohesive vision. Graphics without art direction is notes on instruments with no harmony. This year featured developer at the height of their craft showing off aesthetics that have been honed and polished over years and decades of experience. We are proud to present the winner of Lords of Gaming’s 2024 Golden Lance Award for Best Art Direction.

Winner – Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess

This is one of Lord Cognito’s surprise games of 2024. Besides the addictive gameplay loop, a big part of the game’s draw is its beautiful art direction. The developers created a new genre, calling it a Kagura-style game. It’s based on a story about a goddess who wants to purify the land. When the villagers perform their ritualistic dance for the goddess to purify the lands it is a site to behold. Even the fighting of Soh, the protector of the goddess, is a work of art in itself. 

Every aspect of the villagers’ design is impeccable, from freeing them from their cocoon prisons to their clothes, nothing is short of visual excellence. Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess just screams it’s a piece of art from almost every facet. 

The developers noted that they created dioramas as the basis of the actual stages found within the game. Enemy design is also top-notch and is clearly influenced by Japanese horror and mythology adding to the game’s breathtaking art style. You can tell that Kunitsu-Gami‘s art design is phenomenal because it tells a story without any vocal work at all. That in of itself is a rarity.

Kunitisu-Gami is truly a special game that doesn’t get enough credit. Games like Kunitsu don’t usually exist; developers usually avoid creating these types of games. Phil Spencer did say that it was funding from Microsoft that helped ship Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess in the first place, and Xbox deserves its roses for that fact. The marrying of a beautiful visual aesthetic with command strategy gameplay truly creates a unique experience that shouldn’t be missed.