Book Review: Sea of Stars: The Concept Art of Bryce Kho

February 6th 2025

Sea of Stars was released in 2023 by Sabotage Studio to much praise from both players and critics. It feels both nostalgic and new, with a strong story that keeps players engaged and presented with beautiful pixel art. These visuals are a highlight of the game, so when the artbook, Sea of Stars: The Concept Art of Bryce Kho, was announced by 3dtotal Publishing, it quickly got added to my artbook wishlist.

Sea of Stars: The Concept Art of Bryce Kho book review

The book was released in 2024 and showcases the art, not just behind the game itself, but also of the concept artist on Sea of Stars, Bryce Kho. The book announcement was my introduction to Bryce and seeing his art online made the book only more enticing. So, I’ll go over the different aspects of this book to see if it delivered like myself and fans hoped!

You will find previews below and my YouTube flip though at the bottom of the page.

Build Quality

This was released as a hardcover with over 250 pages and has the same dimensions as most video game artbooks, such as those released by publishers Dark Horse and Titan Books. This is all a good sign, especially due to the pricing that I will touch on later in the review. The paper and print quality are very good and it has solid binding too. It ticks all the boxes of an artbook for me and I have no concerns that it will have any issues long into the future, so it's off to a great start.

The cover itself is worth highlighting, it’s wonderfully designed with art from Bryce and incudes reflective gold elements on the image and for the text. It won my Best Book Cover of 2024 in my award list last year.

Content

As I mentioned before, I was looking forward to this book after seeing the work of Bryce, but I wont review that here. I’m a fan of his style, both digital and with watercolour and love his use of colours. This book is pact with his stunning art and that alone is enough to draw people in, but this review is for the book, so I’ll speak here about what the book contains.

Sea of Stars: The Concept Art of Bryce Kho is broken down into the following; characters, environments, enemies, epilogue and covers. In each one you get to see the different stages of the designs, including sketches and unused concepts. This is not an illustration book, it’s a great look at how an early idea is updated until it makes it to the screen, giving fans a lot to dive into.

Characters and enemies make up a large portion of the book, but this is to be expected as the game has a lot of them, though the book overall still feels balanced as the environments get a nice showcase too. Another highlight is the cover section at the back. While it’s not unusual to see art like this, they don’t always include the sketches of different ideas for a game case or magazine, so it’s another extra feature that makes it stand out.

There are also pages with character expressions and animation designs, something not always seen in artbooks and a welcome addition. The variety of what’s included paints a full picture of the type of art that was needed to help make the game, rather than just a collection of hand selected images.

Another nice little touch are the sprites at the bottom of each page that correspond to the art on the page, so you can see how each one looked in the game.

The great content doesn’t stop at the art either, the text used is also well thought out. Rather than descriptions of the art, the approach instead was to include the texts and emails between Bryce Kho and the game director, Thierry Boulanger. These allow readers to see how and why design choices and changes were made in a much more organic way. They often start with a pitch for an idea from Thierry, followed by the response talking about the art on the page, with some exchanges that take you through the changes made.

It’s a unique take to let fans know what the thought process was at the time, from the perspective of both director and artist. There are also some comments on occasion from ‘Present-day Bryce’, insights given for the creation of the book that reflect back.

Credits

Nice and simple for this book, as there is only one artist, you can find the credit on the front cover!

Use of Space

The high praise continues here, each page is very readable, there’s no wasted space and page layouts change throughout to keep it interesting. The backgrounds add simple use of colours that don’t distract, but prevent a sterile or bland look. The images also vary in size. When this is done right, there isn’t much to say and Sea of Stars: The Concept Art of Bryce Kho did exactly that.

Value

The pricing of the book was interesting. 3dtotal sell it on their website for £30, which is cheaper than most artbooks. Others typically come in at around £40-£45 ($50-$60) at full retail price. This was surprising given this is a good sized book (24x31cm) with over 250 pages. Even more so when it turns out 3dtotal give away 50% of their profit to charity too, so buying from them becomes more enticing. You can also find this on sites like Amazon, that also offer the book at a great price.

When it comes to value then, another positive for this release. For any artbook this size, it would be considered a great deal, but with the quality and thought behind it, it makes it hard for fans to not add this to their basket.

Verdict

As you can probably guess, this is an excellent book to have in your collection. I would recommend this to fans of the game, Bryce or concept art in general. It was a highlight of book releases in 2024, but also a new favourite of mine too.

3dtotal, Bryce and Sabotage have created a book with made with care, just like the game it is based on, and you feel this when going through it. While there is no perfect book, this belongs in a small group of other great releases that should be used as examples of how to make an artbook!

For those interested, you can order Sea of Stars: The Concept Art of Bryce Kho here;

Buy Here (UK)

Buy Here (US)

Below is my video preview from YouTube, you can find more artbooks on the channel too;