Learn how solo developer Billy Basso is achieving background effects, fluid effects, super-low latency, and more.In his recap of Summer Games Fest, Danny O’Dwyer (Noclip) put it best when he called Animal Well “the game that’s hardest to explain why I liked it.” Defining what exactly sets it apart can be elusive, especially when your brain tells you that it looks like it could have come from the Commodore 64 era.What lies ahead will be a relatively brief and high-level tour—each of the features shown could have a blog post of its own—but nevertheless I think a peek under the hood will prove interesting.Normal Maps When a light moves across the background scenery, it illuminates it differently based on what direction the light is coming from.SDFs can be expensive to render (“expensive” in the sense of using precious limited processing power), but in this case, the PS5’s GPU makes short work of it."