I'm just wondering, has anyone experimented with tile sizes? One thing that bothers me about 16x16 tiles is that you can't put a line straight down the middle. You also can't divide it evenly into threes or draw diagonal lines from all corners without making an awkward 4 by 4 shape. Being able to divide in half is also extremely helpful and a double line doesn't matter as much with larger tile sizes, probably not at all with 64x64+. I made a diagram showing things, even though it probably doesn't really mean much.

I drew the separations for the ones I found interesting plus the standard 16x16 and 32x32: 27x27, 24x24, 15x15, 12x12, and 9x9. They may not completely make sense, but I think it helps illustrate the ways you can separate them. I could say in theory that 24x24 is probably better than 16x16, but I haven't tested it, so I was wondering if anyone else has any insight.

There are blue snails irl, though, Spoiler,
although the blue in this one looks edited to me. I'm going to assume by photo Dennis meant the blue color and possibly more filtering of the image.

I think one of the reasons the black background isn't working is because your tiles are too bright. Also, the color next to the black is one of the brightest colors in your palette. It would be better To have a dark color to fade to. In these examples, you may see how they fade to black, although they're probably too dark for your game:
Spoiler
Here's my edit:

If not blender, have you at least tried the demos of Maya or 3dsMax? If you're a student, I'm pretty sure you can both for free.
While I'm sure this program might work for this project, as you seemed to emphasize still objects/landscapes, there will probably come a time where you need to move onto another program. I guess you could probably build models in this program and then animate them in blender (In my own tinkering in the past, I found animation easier than modeling, although I didn't delve that deep). Also, one major feature that seems to be missing in Wings in the ability to add textures to models, but again, I guess you could do that in Blender, but by that point, you might as well learn Blender. The tutorials that really helped me learn the basics were these (http://wayofthepixel.net/pixelation/index.php?topic=10226.0), but they seem like they may be outdated and I'm sure others can offer better ones. (in case you're wondering, I'm no modeling master, haven't touched Blender in a couple years, but I have done the research before and at least learned the basics of Blender)

Perhaps to get around ignoring members who need low level critique we can make a set of locked threads that cover basic mistakes and teach proper solutions such as :PILLOWSHADING: :BANDING: :ANTIALIASING: :CLUSTERS: :HUESHIFTING: etc.

Along with this, I feel like we should have more threads/focus on basic art principles. I feel like a lot of beginner's downfalls are caused by things like lighting or wrong proportions. I don't want the forum to transform into one based on hand-drawing, but I think threads/links with information on how to draw people, color theory, or other principles of art could help beginners so much and is what I've tried to focus on recently. I think the daily sketch is a great step forward in this and I intend to start posting stuff if I get a chance to sketch something decent.