Here's another edition of Helm Critiques For No Reason, then.
First of all I want to apologize on behalf of the organizers for the whole tilespace rule mixup. If these were for a game engine, the way they could be approached would be multiple. A whole sprite of any size with alpha could overlay and have priority over just tiles, and the tiles could be cut in boxes or in st0ven-like four-way tiles, generally, there's many ways to do an ISO piece for a game.
However these aren't for ONE game or ONE engine, so we failed to produce I believe, a set of rules that made sense fast enough and clear enough. In retrospect I now realize what we should have done is just dispense with tile limitation at all and let everyone reuse what they want or even draw the whole thing without any repeated tiles, and just have a DIMENSION CAP at about 250x200 or something. Anyway, live and learn, next time it will be done clearer.
Snake's piece is very strong, wonderful color and detail work, makes me want to be there, so naturally it wins my heart. There's those abrupt cuts at the sides of the cliffs, but I suppose it's due to tile shortage. Anyway, not much to crit here.
I like 9_6's piece, though it's simple compared to his competition. The lack of elevation and the pretty ordered placement of elements doesn't say alien world as much as it says zoo, what with the little bench and all. Still, it has its atmosphere and works pretty well for what it is. It just lost because the opposition was too strong, not because it was bad itself.
Solididea's piece is a ambitious design, but I believe pixel-art-wise it could be handled much better. I don't see the point of the dithering in the water and in the sides of the cliffs, it just makes it all seem a bit too grainy for its own good. There's a sense of solemnity in this one, and I enjoy it enough. Just needed more pixel work and perhaps a bigger mockup.
Lawrence looks like he ran out of time, basically. What's there is nicely pixelled, the attention to the colors is good, and the shapes and forms work. But it lacks the more work needed no not look a bit boring. I have no pixel art critique here.
Mirre's small mockup has the nicest palette alteration in the set in my opinion. It's a bit small and level, but what's there is very good. It looks like her creature from round 1 could live in this little mockup. If this was more extensive and with different planes and such it would be my favourite from the round. It is however enough to defeat GNdestroyer's piece
Which is good and I like the elements, but the pixelling is a bit messy. It also suffers from the monochromaticism a bit, plus, broken outlines irritate this greek, I dunno if anybody else minds them but they make me want to hug kittens just a tad too hard for their health.
B.O.B's entry is strange. On one hand, I think it fails as a seamless mockup world, as every element is disparate and there's not much to connect them or it all stand as a whole. On the other hand, I am pretty certain I've never seen nor will I ever see any piece of ISO that looks like this again in my life. Everything is totally hard-edged and in-my-face, it's an interesting aesthetic attempt, even if the creator isn't very happy with it. It might fail in terms of 'conventional' ISO, but it's distinctive and seems like a nice place to explore. I'd play that game.
Feron's piece, it's a shame. This is probably the most well-done pixel art piece in this round. The elements that are there have been pixelled carefully and precisely. They're very well done. It's just not enough of them. It's a boring mockup not because Feron is a boring pixeller, but because he didn't pixel enough shit to make it interesting.
Snader's piece is very good! Daring elevation attempts and a pretty belivable gameworld at the end. I'm impressed by how a bunch of tiles in the end translate to a palce you want to walk (or climb in this case) around and such. I think the 'mist' wasn't a good idea, but otherwise, it's a good piece. Saturation and contrast issues are happening but they could be easily solved.
Bad form, dropping out of the competition, though. You took the place of someone else that could have went the whole way. Other people have had real life to deal with while working on their entries like Mirre and Snake, but they didn't drop out.
I won't even talk about people who had two weeks to submit something and gave us invisible entries. Shame.
Buloght's piece is the suprise of the round for me. It's probably my favourite after Snake's, and a very likable mockup generally. So much detail, perhaps a bit too much detail everywhere, interesting vegetation, water and plane elevation. Even a little waterfall. Splendid, really. A great entry. Congratulations, Buloght.
Blick attempts something here that almost nobody else did: he goes for 'alien world' if it were in Mother/Earthbound. Cute, extremely clean cutout world that doesn't try to hide the iso-ness and seem realistic, but revels in the 'oh, videogames, heh!' feeling. It's a very good entry, and a lovable attempt at something daring and different. Congrats. However, more work could have gone into it, and the bottom line is that if you took the spaceship out of there, this isn't really much more alien a world than the park down the street from where I live
Sherman's iso monument is not bad, and it could be a good base for something more to build around it but alas, not much else is there. Likewise my comment be sparse.
Filax disappoints me with not putting in a full entry too, as what he has there has nice colors and seems promising. Oh well.
