well squishing the mesh will double the polycount, but as you don't texture you colour it - really doesn't require as much processing power as you'd think. But still when used in large ammounts will slug everything.
texture projection is oftenly used for decal placements, its effective a simple technique - you take a second UV Map of the world models, from the position of the texture, you then place the texture in proportion on all surfaces.
Finally you then do a transform blend which checks the UV of the first map, checks them of the second and then adverages them together and blends based on Vertex position
a technique used quite ofently for quicker positional shadows using projection, is to take where the light is comming from - do a quick buffer render of the model as white on a black background then on the floor the projection is an inverse Nth alpha'd image from the buffer
get sharp shadows as stencil, but without as much of the cost. But they still do take up a good ammount of processor power (^_^)
Tsu'va Oni Ni Jyuuko Fiori Sei Tau!
One block follows the suit ... the whole suit of blocks is the path ... what have you found?
