How do you achieve this "pixel art but not quite" texture style

Artistic Support Materials and Textures
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1

I’m trying to figure out how to create textures like the one in the image below, but I’m really stuck on how the style is achieved.

At first glance, it looks like pixel art, it’s low-res, blocky, and stylized, but when you look closer, it’s much more geometric and clean than typical pixel art. The shapes are super precise (like the window frames and panel lines), there’s some subtle grime and lighting, and everything feels a bit more polished than what you’d expect from pure hand-drawn pixel art.

I’m confused on a few fronts:

Is this actually made pixel-by-pixel, or is it a higher-res texture that’s been reduced to look pixelated?

If I wanted to make this kind of thing in Photoshop, how would I do it in a geometric, precise way (rather than just freehand pixel pushing)? Shapes? Vector tools? Grids?

And lastly, what would this style even be called? It feels like a hybrid between pixel art and clean 2D sprite work for 3D environments.

Here’s the reference image I’m talking about:

image
image1023×530 117 KB

Any advice, examples, or workflow breakdowns would be super appreciated. I’d love to recreate this look for a low-res 3D game scene. Thanks!

2

This doesn’t strike me as pixel art. For the siding, just make a rectangular selection, fill it with color, add a shadow, and duplicate it until you have a whole wall. The window on the right is a copied and pasted version of the one on the left (made using a similar technique: rectangular selections filled with color, or alternatively made using the shape tool set to solid color), just slightly edited for variety. Those other elements were also made once and then copied and pasted around. If you know the basics of Photoshop or Krita, that should be enough to recreate this look. There really isn’t any special technique to achieve it. It’s very simple. All you need to do is know how to make one element, then copy and paste it to assemble the final texture. That dirt looks like a simple textured brush used with low opacity