Grapple Gull
Real capture, First Post
- MATCHESChunky blocks
- MATCHESPainted color
- MATCHESSoft contact shadows
- MATCHESOne warm light
- OWN TAKEWood UI: the piers are wood, the HUD is cream cards
FeatureThe Toy Fort series
A line of games, one recipe.
Four of my games look alike on purpose. Like a toy line, every game follows the same recipe. Here is where the look came from, how we measure it, and how we keep each game on it.
Toy Fort
01
The look in one sentence
A hand-painted wooden toy diorama on a walnut-framed game board, lit by one warm lamp, where every piece is a chunky turned or cut block with soft darkening where it meets the board.
From the Toy Fort recipe, section 1.
That is the whole idea. Chunky shapes. Real paint colors. One lamp. Wood everywhere you touch. If a game follows that sentence, it belongs in the line.
02
Where it came from
- 2026-11-05
One of three looks tried in a style study for another project.
Claude built the looks as working scenes. This one was the wooden toy fort. It is original work, with no art, models or code copied from any game or toy. - 2026-11-05, that night
Pulled into a recipe.
The look was written down as a reusable recipe plus a small code kit, so it could work for any kind of game. It is not tied to castles. - 2026-11-06
Toy Fort Game Night starts.
The family game box on the TV is the first game to use it. - 2026-11-07
Grapple Gull, Lighthouse Leaper and Kite Knights start.
Each one opens its own art study that day and builds on the same look.
I make these with an AI crew, and the recipe was written with Claude. Dates are from the project files.
03
How it is measured
Five ingredients
These five are the checks we use on every game.
- Chunky rounded blocksNever sharp, never thin.
- Hand-painted colorA slightly different hue on every piece. Flat paint, no photo textures.
- Soft contact darkeningPieces get darker where they meet the floor, with soft shadows under everything.
- One warm lampPlus a cool sky fill. One shadow, no post effects.
- Wood everywhereWalnut frame, wooden table, nailed plaques, painted signs.
Palette by role
- Paint
- Wood
- Felt ground
- Water
- UI
Colors are named by role, not by team. The ground is the quietest thing on screen. The toys are the loudest.
Shape rules
- Everything is a turned or cut block: a box, cylinder, cone, ball or lathe turn.
- Rounded edges on anything you can see up close. No part thinner than about a tenth of a tile.
- Characters are bigger than real, so you can read them.
- Faces are painted dots. Two eyes, two cheeks, no mouths.
- Camera stays a long lens. Never wide-angle.
One lamp
A warm key light, a cool sky fill, and a single shadow. No bloom, no fog, no film grain, no color grading. If it needs a filter to look good, it is not Toy Fort.
04
How it stays on track
One written recipe
Every game reads the same file. It has the numbers: colors, bevels, camera, light, and how the wooden menu plaques are built.
A shared kit and a LOOK file
Toy Fort Game Night runs on the shared kit, toyfort-kit.js. Grapple Gull, Lighthouse Leaper and Kite Knights are built in Godot, so they use the recipe's numbers and each keeps its own LOOK file that says what its look is.
The Never list
These break the look. If a build has any of them, fix it before showing it.
- No shiny plastic, chrome or metal.
- No photo textures or noise filters on pieces.
- No post effects. No bloom, fog or vignette.
- No thin or spiky shapes.
- No wide-angle camera.
- No more than one shadow-casting light.
- No famous game characters or icons.
- No cold grey UI. If it is not wood, paint or cream, it does not belong.
The new-game checklist
Twelve steps before a game can join the line. A few of them:
- Pick a camera and a board size.
- Pick four to six paint colors, and give each a shape too.
- Every piece is a block, cylinder, cone, ball or turn.
- One light rig, nothing extra.
- Look at real screenshots at three sizes.
- Run the Never list.
05
Where each game sits on the recipe
Same crop, four real screenshots, each held up against the five ingredients.
Lighthouse Leaper
Real capture, Last Lantern
- MATCHESChunky blocks
- MATCHESPainted color
- OWN TAKEContact shadows: the tower wall is flat
- OWN TAKEOne lamp: a night storm runs cooler
- OWN TAKEWood UI: the timer plaque is wood, the rest of the HUD is not
Kite Knights
Real capture, Versus pond
- OWN TAKEChunky blocks: the ledges are chunky, the kites are folded paper
- OWN TAKEPainted color, on a paper-grain sky
- OWN TAKESoft shadows under kites and ledges, on a flat scene
- OWN TAKEWarm light, no filters, but the flat scene hides the lamp
- MATCHESWood everywhere: walnut frame, nailed plaques
The paper one. Same table, frame and lamp, but the kites are folded paper on purpose. That is how its look file describes it.
Toy Fort Game Night
Real capture, Fog Harbor board
- MATCHESChunky blocks
- MATCHESPainted color
- MATCHESSoft contact shadows
- MATCHESOne warm light
- MATCHESWood everywhere
Not every game leans on every ingredient the same way. Lighthouse Leaper climbs at night, so its fill runs cooler. Grapple Gull keeps its HUD in cream cards. Kite Knights is the paper variant of the line, on purpose. We keep checking, and a match is not something we get for free.
06
The other lines
Not every game belongs in this line, and that is fine. Post Below and Sled Hill are Game Boy Color games, so they look like that. They are their own line. There is a third line in the workshop with its own recipe too. The Toy Fort block only goes on games that follow this one.
Toy FortWood, paint, one lamp.
Game Boy Color gamesPost Below, Sled Hill. Different on purpose.
07
The four games
Toy FortGrapple Gull
Fire your rope into a beam, swing over the docks and deliver the mail on momentum alone.
Grapple Gull swings on the rope at First Post
Toy FortLighthouse Leaper
Cling to the tower, kick off walls and bounce on gull nests to reach the lamp.
Climbing Last Lantern
Toy FortKite Knights
Ride a kite-bird, climb above the other rider, and win the bump.
Two riders duel in the sky over the pond
Toy FortToy Fort Game Night
Six family games in one toy box. Made for a family of four on the living room TV.
The Fog Harbor board
Toy FortGame title herebox art comes later
The tag, on a box and on a page
A small painted toy block, not a logo. Every Toy Fort game gets the same block in its own paint, and its own peg lit: one peg for each game in the line. It sits on the corner of a game's box and next to its title on the game page. The example shows Kite Knights. Box art comes later.
Game titleToy Fort
Wood, paint, one lamp. Same recipe as the rest of the line.