[C&C] tactical adventure game art, 12x12 pixels, 9 colors

[Glak]

I wanted to be able to produce art for my game quickly, so I figured that the fewer pixels and colors I have, the faster it should go.

The game play will be very similar to Alien Star Menace, but with an open world, quest items, and NPCs.

First off, the heroes.  Original and upgraded form on the same line.  The gray guy is a shark man.



here's a mockup



and here is a swamp mockup



a house



and here are my colors



Thanks for any advice or edits!

[Glak]

Here are some monsters:

[Zia]

I feel like it might be worth experimenting with a brighter colour palette. I feel like games with very small sprites and tiles like this tend to do better when they're brighter - you can overcome the blandness of lack of detail with more interesting colours. It might also be worthwhile to try ditching the outline. You're already hard-pressed for space in each sprite, and the outline is taking up a LOT of what space you do have.

[Glak]

Thanks for the advice.  I just spent some time trying to brighten the colors.

Going color by color, I tried increasing the value of the colors.  I could only get the dark gray to still look good.  I also saturated it a bit more.  Some things (such as the water) looked better, while other things (such as the werewolves) looked worse.

Then I tried modifying all of the colors at once.  Lightening them all a little bit seemed to improve things, too much of course and contrast started to suffer and hues were shifting.  Here they are lighter:



Also, just to be clear, these are not going to be shown at this size.  I am working on them at 800% which seems about right.

I think that I need the outline to provide contrast.  I could increase the tile size to get more detail, but then I wouldn't be able to make things as fast.  I have too many half-made games lying around.  I want to finish this one.

[Skaz]

May I suggest getting rid of the outlines? With sprites so small, you have as much inside than outline. You'll get more free pixels for details.

[SteamCaptain]

Can I ask why you chose 12x12 instead of the more common 16x16?
Making it too small can also make your work harder, trying to make sure the player understand each sprite.

If you want to keet the 12x12 and make each character more recognizable, i would suggest working on there silhouettes.

Giving each character a different pose, helps figuring out who is who.

Getting rid off the outlines is also a good way to make the most out use of your small sprites. Like some of the old NES games did.

[Fizzick]

Quality edit SteamCaptain!

[Glak]

Wow, that's great work SteamCaptain.  You've inspired me to take pose into account for the next iteration.  So (as of just now) my current plan is to use my current sprites while I finish programming the game, then I'll make bigger sprites with distinctive poses.