nothing about it really strikes me as mechanical.

contrast

Re-did pretty much every tile now after sketching some actual concepts for what I'm doing with this. The skull blocks with the open mouths are traps.

On top of those recognizable elements, techwexx, there's obvious bricks and support columns everywhere. But when creating tiles these things are the most cliché ideas one can muster. Surely more interesting concepts are waiting out there somewhere.

perhaps when i start working on tiles for the deeper-in areas I'll try something a bit more creative.

all the tiles are 16x16 but the character is 16x24. if that's what you meant by resolution, i guess i could figure out a way to squish the character's sprite down?

EDIT:since i've made some changes to them, here is an updated tileset and mockup.


the darker brick tiles at the edges of the image might not look that amazing but i think they're more effective at drawing the eye towards the parts of the screen that you can actually interact with than the previous solid-dark spaces.