[WIP] Dragons game : Need help with color pallete and background

[marduken]

Hi guys,

I'm working on a game that is a top-down shooter-like game (with some gems-picking in the middle)

I wanted to keep a low-sat pallete, but now i'm strugling with the background colors, and I feel something is missing, in all the environment.
The clouds at the sides are two layers, that will convey a sense of speed, though a parallax effect

Any thoughts and suggestions?

Really appreciate any help,!



PS: you can see why I want to do a low sat work, when you see my first pixel-art experience (www.towerslash.com), where I used a totally saturated pallete.

[Decroded]

some nice stuff overall.

immediate impression is that the sprites could use some more saturation and more consistent contrast (some contrast better than others).

mainly what is lacking in background is maybe some more depth where we see through some patches of clouds to a deeper layer.
also some of the background clouds have a noisy texture which reminds me more of sand.
a bit too much noise on those mountains too.

the foreground clouds seem too straight and are rendered more like shiny rubber than cloud.

might be a nice touch to drop some shadows from the sprites to the canopy below to add to the depth.
i guess shadows would be a bit smaller than the sprites casting them.

[marduken]

About the foreground clouds i'm having some difficulties about their shape, mainly because of the camera angle.
I cant find many references for clouds drawn from above, do you know any good examples?

Thanks anyway for your input and valuable advice, really apreciate it!