I meant you should move the boxes around, not that you should remove them (the boxes are helpful to show where items can be).

I think it would be worth putting the work in to make a character visible in the equipment area. Even with labels, it doesn't read very well, and it would be a nightmare to fit text in if you ever decided to localise this game. Perhaps rather than a solid silhouette, a line drawing or even something more fully rendered could work? I think that could look nice if the inventory slots have a transparent background until they're filled. Perhaps rearranging that part of the screen could still help. For example, why are the rings below the legs rather than near the hands, why is the belt below the legs and now between the chest and legs? If you're going to go for a physical arrangement like this, I see no reason to keep the more accessory-like slots separate from the main slots.
Don't be afraid to arrange the equip slots in something other than a perfect grid, too!

The heavily patterned look you've got going on is interesting! Quite unusual, but still quite readable. I'd be interested to see what environments would look like in this style.
Unfortunately, although it fits the style, the menu text at the top is difficult to read because of all those little flourishes. If you want flourishes, I think bolder letters would be necessary to keep them from overwhelming the basic shapes of the letters.

This isn't pixel art, it's just got a reduced palette, probably to reduce file size rather than for any specific artistic effect. The dithering looks like diffusion dithering, the default you get in most graphics editors.

From the uneven softness of some of the lines, it looks like this was first drawn larger, then scaled down. This is definitely automatic anti-aliasing with no manual polish. Effects like this and the cropping of sprites are easiest to do in raster, and I'm guessing this was done that way.

Treat your title screen as an opportunity to fill in the details that the game has to simplify away for the sake of simplicity and readability. What do you want to tell the player?

Think about the composition as well. With a larger canvas, you're not as limited as you were with the older version. Having a huge character like that comes across as the character has or will conquer this world, that the world is meant to feel insignificant compared to their (=the player's) skill. If, instead, you want to communicate the world being vast and something to explore, then it's good to have a much smaller character, perhaps even as small as the original sprite.

Edit: Minor nitpick about the gif you posted: It looks good, but the style of the lights is inconsistent. The light halo around the character has soft edges, but the environmental lights have hard edges. IMO the hard edges suit the art style better, I think the character would look better with similarly hard-edged lighting.

I like where you're going with the animations, but the animation happening on a different pixel grid to the "pixels" in the art looks strange, and makes the various tangents in the art more obvious.

On a similar note, mixing different pixel sizes like you are with the art and text doesn't look great IMHO.
Will the actual gameplay have the same resolution as this title screen? If not, I recommend making the two match. Then, chances are you'll have plenty of space for text and smooth animations without mixing scales.

That said, mixing scales is a taste thing, so if you really like the look of it, keep doing it.


I like the rocks you chose. Consider making some of the lines between them implied/broken, they don't all need to be solid. That might help the surface feel more cohesive while still looking rocky.