Black-Ceilings

Black ceilings effect, oldschool like in perfect dark and half-life

Valve once said nobody will look up. Since they've said that, I have always looked up.

Black ceilings are clever abstractions of reality, seen in many games in the early days. Less is more sometimes, and black ceilings and even black pits are a very compelling and efficient way to convey mystery.

Blackness and diametrically whiteness are interesting ideas to say there is more without showing more. A transpositioning of foreshadowing from literally works.

Unreachable player zone, player cannot touch these things or it breaks the effect.

Low Key Lighting helps establish black voids, however in high key it the effect is more challenging for the contrast is much higher.

In standard ranges of lighting, clever uses of fff fff fff and 000 000 000 can create the illusion of a high dynamic range.