My next game could well be a 2D tile based game. This is mainly, because I want to use my 2D grid based crowd simulation code. So here I will collect some inspiring art work I found with Google. Note: none of the images are mine, they are all copyrighted by their respective authors. I'm just scrap-booking here to see what art work is out there.
An interesting variant of tiles on a 2D grid, is the use of a height-map, so that there are still NxM tiles on a grid, but each tile has a height. The advantage of doing this over free 3D, is that the navigation on a heightmap is still a 2D affair.
![image0](http://img13.deviantart.net/20cb/i/2013/004/c/6/isometric_tile_test_by_katatafisch-d5qdolx.png)
![image1](http://www.listoid.com/image/100/list_2_100_20101124_065440_492.png)
![image2](http://media.obsidian.net/eternity/media/updates/0039/tileset-wip-1440.jpg)
![image3](http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WoGz4ctA25g/T5CVYy4MlpI/AAAAAAAABbo/VL3iXMHBnBg/s1600/display_3+2.jpg)
![image4](http://www.tacticsogre.com/scabellum2.gif)
![image5](https://d3ui957tjb5bqd.cloudfront.net/images/screenshots/products/6/68/68126/isometric-city-map-o.png?1390865203)
![image6](http://orig13.deviantart.net/8d2b/f/2007/110/8/0/isometric_terrain_by_sweet_kungfuman.jpg)
![image7](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CDHS0xOWAAAcAEJ.png)
![image8](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B9k3XgfCMAACgAk.png)
![image9](http://38.media.tumblr.com/7fcfa4114988618e817f1d065a6a1a90/tumblr_nqddn6nbFk1rov8qno1_540.gif)