[WIP]Game concept

[KoKos]

Hi guys, seems like it's my first topic in there , pretty great forums i would say.

I'd like your thoughts about this little piece of pixels and how i could improve it, it's a first concept for a postapocalyptic platformer/metroid-like i'm planning to make.

[.TakaM]

looks to have a nice atmosphere

only thing I don't like is it looks like one of those games where you aim the gun with your mouse.. really don't like those games
I greatly prefer them without using the mouse, if it means only shooting left/right like megaman, or more complex controls like super metroid, both are good ways to go

[Obsidian]

Personally I much prefer the mouse aiming games, but whatever floats your boat I guess.

I also think the atmosphere is quite nice. Also, I like the great level of contrast between ground and sky; very good to have in a game. Two crits: the enemy is very difficult to read, I'm not even sure what it is. Also, the HUD should be bigger in my opinion, and try to be more creative with it as it looks boring at the moment.

Overall, very nice work, looks like it would be a fun game to play.

[Arne]

The bright sky BG kills the value contrast in your foreground I think. It's a long value separation between the BG and FG, then your FG has these subtle value steps which becomes lost really. An intermediate BG plane might help. Maybe fogging some of the terrain stuff back a bit could make it clearer what kind of terrain parts are traversable.

(I'm a mouse-aim guy too.)

[saimo]

Cool atmosphere and style
I concur that the sharp contrast makes it too difficult to appreciate the foreground.
It's a nice good start, overall!

saimo

[Helm]

color edit on the foreground.

[Arne]

To note:

Sharpness and contrast brings attention. The abyss leading out of the pic has softer edges to suggest diminishing importance.

The clouds are in the background, and the background is not something the eye should confuse with the foreground. Some blur and/or lowered contrast might be in order at some of the cloud edges, maybe more than I did. At least at the lower levels where "Where can I stand?" confusion might arise. There are no clouds that low though.

The tree has been fogged back a bit. Note that the fog is more intense where the tree meets the ground (well, a bit, and the contrast is lower). A common trick in art is to blur and fog intersecting parts to avoid intersection confusion. This whole blur-contrast thing can be taken further than I did in my Paintover.

The ground has two hues making it more interesting, rock and dirt.

There's now an overall theme with the swirls.

Flowers can make the environment feel more alive. Maybe there's little bee sprites buzzing around them, bringing the environment to life further?


Yes, I didn't pixelate, but the same rules apply to all art, imo. Execution is just... a technicality.

[LoTekK]

Hot, prom. Probably woulda recognised that as your paintover even without a username ^^
I like the overall warming of the pallete, though maybe more temperature contrast could be nice.

Also, adding a vote for mouse-aim (when done right, it's fantastic)

[Arne]

Yeah, I think you could probably play the Cool foreground card on the side of the cliffs. In this case, Gray would appear cool because of color relativity, it wouldn't be necessary to go all the way to blue.

[KoKos]

Wow, thanks for the replies, and especially you arne, you just killed me in terms of constructive criticism haha  , really kickass paintover

So I've made some little changes following you guys opinions :



And Obsidian, the ennemy is this http://kokosovar.free.fr/radioactivetoast_empiresoldier.jpg    But now that you say it. I agree, the readability of the bad guys is quite hard, maybe because the weapon is almost the same color as the armor ?