Awesome. Thanks again for the feedback. Sorry for the late response, but I've been scrambling around the past few days but I'm back to Hot Mess (HM) again. So I have a few questions and/or concerns. I think to get my point across, I'll have to show you guys how the game is actually playing. You can check that out here -->https://vine.co/v/bPmbiO906I7. Hopefully this can help wrap your brain around the game as a whole.

As you can see, you are in perpetual motion. First off, I feel that the color changes that Sekiseki made helped a lot with preception of items in the game. I also like the idea of hallway rugs the visually lead the player. I do, however, feel like the subtle details in some elements in your mock-up, Seiseki, would be lost completely since you can't stop to appreciate them. Also, I feel like the level of detail and realism of the characters and perspective of the big robot go against the contrasting, wacky, simplistic pallets of the style that I am currently going for. Unfortunately, getting diagonal shadows like that to work would be more than a technical chore for us. I also feel like the shadows insist on this ever present perspective that strays away a bit too much from the abstractness that I'd like.

Thinking ahead, the art, as of now, is very blocky and a bit stylized so I feel like the animations will need to be a bit exaggerated and in minimal frames, especially for the robots, to keep with the current tone. Imagine like the Donkey Kong 2 frame anims for stomping and such. I feel that treatments such as these will make for a cohesive experience.

I've been playing with color schemes and toning down the tiles like you all had suggested and this is what I have so far in Tiled. Keep in mind that some of the art is just filler for now to show some variety. The less developed pieces are rather noticeable.

Keep the critique coming guys and I'll keep taking it! Thanks!

Awesome feedback! I believe that I'll play with the level of detail and contrast in the floors a bit and see how that looks. When playing the game, we noticed that it was really helpful to be able to remember rooms by their patterns and/or color, since levels tend to be large. By having such vibrant floor tiles, it helped players remember where they were in the environment. We haven't played too much with additional colors in this art style but maybe it's time too.

Instead of the ambient occlusion, why not try actual shadows which would add both depth and shape?

I'll totally try that out. The main reason for not doing that is that I am using (http://www.mapeditor.org/) for our editor. It allows you to rotate sprites, that way we wouldn't have to make every possible rotation into a sprite sheet. However, that would create inconsistent shadows if the shadows were in the sprites themselves. So, the solution is have everything face the same direction with no rotation, or have 4 directional sprites for every element. Here's a look at the first mock-up when I played with shadowing. They aren't very apparent but you could kinda sense the presence of a directional light:

You need a way to differentiate foreground and background objects

I see what you mean. I need to find a happy medium so that the rooms, hallways and negative spaces all stand out on their own while not competing with the walls and individual elements. I think that pushing the brightness back a bit on the tiles and playing with the color a bit would help. I really wanna go wacky with the colors but I like the overall "cool" feel that this mockup has to it.

@Seiseki I can totally post an un-textured file to draw on top of. Unfortunately, it will have to be tomorrow morning.

Thanks again! All of your feedback is much appreciated!