Make visuals communicate play state rather than merely decorate it. Put the full plan in <PROJECT_DIR>/VISUAL_DESIGN.md when a project is known; keep any existing README/design visual-audio section to a short summary, updated only when direction changes. If tags are absent, derive and label 2–3 concept-derived tags from the concept's material, geometry, motion, or atmosphere.
Core rules:
- Establish one protagonist, one primary danger, and one primary reward before detail.
- Assign every palette color a gameplay role.
- Feedback must be legible without UI text: motion, shape, impact, timing, contrast, and sound hooks should carry meaning.
- Keep the center readable; push noisy texture and secondary motion to the periphery unless the mechanic demands otherwise.
- Transform familiar template symbols through the game's own visual logic.
Workflow:
- Extract mood, material, geometry, and motion from the concept or constraints.
- Synthesize one visual phrase for the whole game.
- Map mechanics to visual state changes and feedback effects.
- Choose a 3-5 color palette with explicit gameplay roles.
- Validate protagonist, danger, and reward in one still frame without HUD text.
- Only when implementation and probing are in scope, expose stable palette roles and HUD anchors as runtime-readable data shared by drawing and semantic probes. Do not require fixed coordinates for responsive/scene-graph layouts or turn visual-direction-only work into code changes.
When pixel-art generation will follow, include an asset handoff: what remains procedural, what becomes assets, palette constraints, and readability acceptance criteria.
Read references/visual-design-guide.md for pattern tables, checklists, and the anti-generic visual addendum template.