[WIP][C+C]Need help with stairs

[Candy Man Criminal]

so.. im working on a board game that im basing on RPG dungeon crawling blah blah blah
i've decided the art style is gunna be sprites, mostly because thats the only thing i can do
im working on a concept for the tiles for the game, but i just cant get the stairs how i want them
were this just for pure concept i wouldnt care much, but i'll be making a prototype using this art in the (hopefully) near future
so i'd like it to look halfway decent
(also the floor was modified off some tiles i found online and will not be kept)

TL:DR
my stairs suck, help

[MysteryMeat]

Down stairs are fine I'd say. For the up stairs, maybe a more solid base so it's clearer where they start? Also, try adding a middle shade to the second stair down so there's more of a clear gradient.

[eishiya]

Agreed that the downward stairs are fine, noisy pixelling aside.

For the upward stairs, I think it would help to not make the  border go as far as the very top of the stairs, so that the steps break out of the "box". That should make them look more like they pop outward, towards the viewer (=go up).
I'd also make them lighter on top rather than darker, so that they match the downward stairs - if the lower levels are darker, and the other end of the upward stairs is represented by downward stairs that are darker towards the bottom, then it makes sense for the upper part of the upward stairs to be lighter rather than darker.

[MysteryMeat]

Ooh, eishiya makes a good point. Yeah, make the upper steps brighter!

[Candy Man Criminal]

currently they're noisey because im slapping them together with gimp instead of actually spriting them
i'll do that once i know where i want to go with them
i tried taking the border down a bit, but because of the floor tiles it ended up looking... almost the same

i also tried making the up stairs brighter, tho i went overboard, it came out alright, but still didnt feel like it was going up
so i added some crap shading around it. other than being crap it look pretty good, i think


and like i said, once i feel the concept is far enough along im going to be fixing the maaaaany glaring issues with these

[eishiya]

I think that definitely helps! I agree you went a bit too bright.

Another thing you could do for both stairs is add a bit of perspective, so the downward steps get smaller the further down they go, and the upward steps get bigger. This is common even in games that don't otherwise use perspective.

[Candy Man Criminal]

so yeah, that worked really well
thanks

[MysteryMeat]

The up stairs feel weird now with such a soft border, puts me in mind of some of the unpleasant roundness in the golden sun games, and clashes a bit with the lines in the rest of the tileset.

Also, for variety's sake, consider a couple tile variants to break up monotony. Shattered tiles or patches of missing floor, etc

[Candy Man Criminal]

messed with the stairs a bit to try and... harden them
also cracks

also some more tile variants for both light and dark tiles
some of which can be seen on the bottom left

[MysteryMeat]

Try and increase the contrast on the dirt, it's still giving that dizzying checkerboard effect.

As for the stairs, I think the shadow around the edges isn't quite doing it. Perhaps try lowering the whole kit so the widest part of the shadow terminates around the second-to-last step, to imply some perspective/height?