I think a tiara would really help sell the whole princess angle. Also a more intricate dress, maybe add another gold trim at the bottom of the dress. Or for example, the torso piece could be a sort of tied/corset orange, the dress a baby blue. More jewelry too like Probo said too. Depending on the era and what kind of princess you're going for, you frills.

Here's a small update. The sun is bottom left casting shadows kind of diagonally to the right. I'm thinking I'm getting close to the point where I should start focusing on cutting and detailing tiles. Maybe coloring too? The stuff left of the cave is suppose to be brown bramble but had to make it white for now.

I feel like I can create a populate a large level with everything in this one snapshot/scene too. If need be.

Thanks for the advice on how to tackle the tile sheet.  I guess you mean something like this?



Here's my edits.





The first image is the size or "viewport" of the player's camera (the player would be centered though). This is what the player would be seeing on the screen. The second image is the entire "level". I'm mostly concentrating on the left side of the level right now.

I like the idea of the world being made of large square or rectangular tiles like Zelda. I also like the idea of "world" scrolling to the next part of the "world" when the player reaches the edge of the level. I created a large level test because it helps me imagine the big picture since I'm using small tiles and a small player character.

You're kinda right when you say I created squares and tried to think of things to put in it. I'm using a 256x256 tile sheet with 16x16 tiles. I was trying to pack everything I could into the sheet. My imagined game is like a mix of Elder Scrolls meets Shadow of the Colossus and Zelda. So in this case, I created tiles suited for a large fantasy swamp/marsh environment with ruined walls, a small house, statues, props, tiling textures, trees, rocks, etc.

Anyway, I'll continue working on this and post more refined updates soon. Should I be doing this in color?

Hello all. I know it's still been a while but I'm still working on this project! Thanks for the comments decroded. So I actually worked on a small mock up like you suggested but I couldn't get very far. Working in monochromatic palette really helped but I felt I still needed to collect more art style reference! I also think I will create some sketches and concept art for a more alien world/landscapes/marshes. I think I might work with a magenta, brown and gold color palette. Any thoughts? So after collecting a bunch of reference, I now have some questions. I've added some pics to help me make my questions clear.

I've also added an art style mood guide at the bottom. It's a combination of the art styles I wish my pixel art to look like. Like I've mentioned before, I want something stylized and simplified. Maybe a mix of texture-y Gameboy-ish RPGs with more colors, small player characters, large enemies, large environment sprites/props like trees, tall structures, ruins, caves, etc. I want to create an alien and surreal marsh world and I actually want to put it in Construct 2 for fun. I've come up with a bit of a story to the world to inspire the alien world. Here's the gist the the world: the protagonist is incredibly ancient automaton with a prophecy to fulfill that travels an old surrealistic, alien world with strange and intelligent flora and fauna. I'm playing with the idea of the planet being entirely a depressing marsh or swamp planet with appropriate flora and fauna.

One big question. Maybe it's dumb now when I think about it. Let's say I want this hypothetical RPG game to 2 or 3 different levels of zoom like a Diablo or PS2/XBOX Baldur's Gate. Can pixels and game engines handle that without looking weird, distorted, blurry or whatever? I want my game to have a high birds eye view like this. Awesome art from Pixel Joint.



So, of course, newer games with retro pixel art styles are pushing cooler effects compared to older pixel art games. By this I mean lighting, more tiles/textures, larger tiles/textures, more animations, unique styles, more particles, shaders, etc. I have a question on how to replicate some of this stuff. Specifically, for example, lets say I wanted to create small little patches or fields of glowing mushrooms amongst the swamp grass and dirt. A more broad question is what kind of tricks, smoke and mirrors, etc are games like Hyper Light Drifter Take a look at some of this images of Hyper Light Drifter, and Radio of the Universe. Take a real close look at Hyper Lighter Drifter.

Hyper Light Drifter



Radio the Universe


I can imagine the light rays in Radio the Universe being pretty simple. But How does Hyper Light Drifter create such artistry and non repetitive tiling to their scenes, tiles, objects, etc? Is it a lighting alpha shader that overlays a dithering texture over things? Do developers and artists add a vignette or some sort of camera layer to add additional dithering and texturing to a scene? Are they using very large tiles? Are there just more unique tiles? Take a look at these images from  Moon Hunters.

Moon Hunters



Are they using larger tile maps to minimize repetitious? I see lots of large swooping brush strokes. Are those stone floors sprites or overlays on top of the tiling textures? I know some engines have lighting and shadows. Dungeon of the Endless Ocean seems to have real time shadows and that looks really slick!

Dungeon of the Endless


Here's the art style mood guide I've been talking about. I want to create a cool style like these games. To the left, there's magenta, gold, and brown. Some of the colors I'm planning on working with eventually. I will start with gray tones I think.



Haha, so I think I'm finally done with this post. Thank you for reading. I'm going to take another crack at this project and post some new updates soon. So tldr. Still working on this project and making some changes. Curious in advanced techniques and effects like lighting, real-time lighting, overlays, bloom, shaders, camera layers/vignettes, and more vfx with modern pixel art games. Would like thoughts in my idea, color palette and art style mood guide. Can overhead 2d rpgs have a camera that zooms in and out? Will post work soon!

Hey Limes, I like your color schemes! And your pixeling! I don't like the gray bars at the top though and I don't like the 1 pixel thick black text. I would change the gray bars to another lighter shade of red. I think overall the composition is missing some of the bold "opmh" that old school Soviet propaganda had. Whats on the bottom right? Is that a sort of behind the shoulder view of a robot brain creature. Are those shoulder pads? It's not clear to me.

Joe brings up a good point. Do you have any sketches to share? It's really helpful sometimes to sketch out an idea repeatedly.