SNES/PSX City Tiles

[Sunjammer]

I'm pretty new at pixel art so it may not have been the wisest idea to jump straight into tiles of this style, but whatever! I'm having trouble putting together a city tileset, a kind of 80s or 90s setting with a melancholy atmosphere. Unfortunately there aren't many modern settings in top-down pixel games so there's not much of this subject matter I've found to study out there.

While I can complete individual tile pieces that I think look kind of okay, putting together a city is proving difficult. There's something unsatisfying and dull about my tiles that I can't quite put my finger on. Maybe the colors? I've been following an 'increasing value = decreasing saturation' rule, but I've heard people saying to use the opposite principle as well. I've noticed selecting colors for different objects meant to appear alongside each other is hard for me. Any thoughts on what I could be doing to improve would be appreciated!

[Mathias]

Looks really good so far.

Before jumping to any conclusions though, you need to compose a mockup. That'll really tell the story.

I suggest variations of tiles with different dirt, trash, junk, damage for a more rundown look. Many tiles are rather pristine.

[Millefeuille]

I think a mockup would provide a lot more clarity. I am trying to imagine how these pieces will all come together, so let me give it a shot...

The saturation is not really a problem, but maybe you will want to consider looking at your full value scale of all the colors. If it's not large enough, it could result in some of the tiles feeling more muddy than you'd like. Before really micromanaging your colors here, maybe you would like to try moving sliders around on hue, saturation, and possibly even brightness. This will quickly give you a range of different angles to look at your work in a fresh new way.

Other than that, maybe the only thing I could add is that you could try and build something with what you have now. If the base tiles don't feel good, then adding additional props likely won't improve upon the situation!!