Cel Damage - Development

Development

Because of its focus on cartoons, Cel Damage was created to look like a cartoon. The Cel Damage graphics engine uses a rendering technique called cel-shading to produce this cartoon-like appearance. Furthermore, the physics engine in Cel Damage is unique. Rather than aiming to simulate realistic real-world physics, it emulates complex cartoon physics; the physics engine calculates the relevant parts of physical interaction as they would in reality, and then distorts the physical laws to produce a cartoon-like interaction. This can be seen, for example, when a car turns and the entire shape of the car deforms and flexes into the turning direction. Cars and game objects can realistically be sliced into pieces, flattened, frozen, shattered, shredded, impaled, lit on fire (and subsequently burn to a crisp and fall into ashes), and more. Editor of Game Developer Magazine Chris Hecker, described Cel Damage's cartoon-style graphics as "state-of-the-art for computer-game physics".

Cel Damage was released as Cel Damage: Overdrive, a Europe-only title for the PlayStation 2. Play It released the game on December 12, 2002