Hello everyone!

I'm creating pixel art graphics for Submuncher, an underwater action-puzzle game. Actually I'm taking a break from working on it for the time being, but I've ran into some problems and I thought some advice and general comments would be very helpful once I get back on it. No fun going back to the project to be stuck on some tedious parts.

While I'm happy with the overall pixels placed, I've got two main, more general art, concerns:


This is one of the boss creatures I was working on, and while I'm satisfied with the side view, the top/up-down view blows, I'm having trouble with the form and it looks bad despite me already doing few passes on this. The game is completely grid based, so the sprite itself should take as much of the 48x48 space as possible - that somewhat contributes to the problem, since I don't know how to make it work for the top view without making the sprite look like flattened roadkill or something

Second problem would be the colors of the tileset and the general color scheme. I'm really keen on making this feel underwater, so I'm straying towards a blue-ish tinted, a bit muted color scheme. I'm super happy about how some tiles look, but some seem somewhat dull and lifeless. I don't want to limit the whole game to blueish/cold hues but I don't have any good conscious idea for a good mix. While it's hard to see in the preview, I think it works a lot better when limiting the color choice during the level creation (Green rock + green vines for example). Here are the tiles:


The overall theme for the tiles is supposed to be underwater environments plus some derelict ocean-floor labs and research/military bases. Each set will have extra tiles that can be placed on top to break up the pattern a little.

And here's a level and a menu shot for some more different stuff and context:

(Ignore the artifacts, there's a wave distortion effect in-game)



Comments and help much appreciated!