I think the main problem with the artstyle is just the lack of theming and any character, it's generic modern fantasy-ish world, it just doesn't have anything to say for it itself, games like undertale and celeste have strong settings (entire underworld civilization spanning multiple biomes with unique qualities and a cast of monster characters with personalities and relationships/ a mountain peak turned into a metaphorical self examination and overcoming), because of these story settings and themes art has a foundation to build on, direction to follow, art has a more clearer purpose - to emplify emotions together with the gameplay, the art direction should follow this emotional guidline (ultrakill with it's ps1 graphics uses bright colours and theming of hell to make players feel more agressive, as the gameplay is the best when players fight fast and head on, the original story setting of a spaceship operator gome crazy that Hakita wrote just didn't correlate with the gameplay). Wacky characters don't equal to a chraming game, undertale and deltarune work because of the writing behind those characters and their interactions, allowing even simple enemies to have character of their own. Your game is in a need of a drastic design change, try laying down core ideas/emotions/gameplay feel and etc. your game, in theory, will evoke, and change your art, and general design, where it fails to do so.
Art choices aren't made without purpose, you added stylized ui like in Persona, but Persona has a whole aesthetic, bold and bright colours contrasting with pure black, it extends to ui being very graphical and moving, almost no elements in that game are static, even the day countdown screen has movement. Not only are those choices made to more resemble manga, they are also allowing the central theme of the franchize (jumping between realities) to shine, all art direction choices are made to make the contrast between two parallel realities more apparent. It wasn't simply made to look cool or flashy, it builds on the whole aesthetic of the game, and also allows turn based combat to be more dynamic and fun to look at.
This is absolutely at the heart and soul of countless masterpieces. It's something that tons of artists and developers need to hear, but isn't said enough. Perfectly put.
This is an incredibly valuable comment for any game developer (or artist in general). I'd like to also add Hollow Knight as another example. Hollow Knight's art style could be described as "bleak and cartoonish" which is interesting of it's own but that would also miss the way the theme of insects wraps itself into every detail of the world, between the chitin-like walls and distant plains, to the iron fences showing the outline of scarabs. It's a great study-piece for how to wrap setting and art-style together into a cohesive and immersive experience.
The thing I find wrong with the character pixel art, is the sharp, black outline. It looks very jarring to me, and doesn’t really fit with the environment (same goes to all the enemies). The shading is also quite weird on the characters, where the shaded parts just look too short and the color seems to flat, and there I’d encourage using a very nice technique called hue shifting. (You change the hue of the color very slightly to make it look slightly lighter or darker according to your needs. Edit: for some reason I can’t explain, the outline just feels off on the characters (I recommend playing around with it, such as making it wider), the weapons look fine to me Another thing I’ll point out that the UI should be changed to fit in with the rest of the pixel art, as it seems like it’s out of a different game, and that kinda ruins the immersive experience.
Something i also noticed at least to me is that it is all a bit to green, the grass is a very bright green and the trees are almost the exact same color
in terms of art direction, I think the best choice would be to start working on a consistent color pallete for all assets to use, and try to make the pixel size consistent between assets. Games like earthbound, legend of zelda: links awakening and early pokemon games also have way more cartoonized proportions for the characters, and are way less detailed
@@kekcrocgod6731 How does it not make sense? Most games do this. Look at Pokemon, Celeste, Persona. They have specific color palettes. Maybe not the same for every scene/biome etc, but within a single area it has a single, unified, restricted color palette. If you google Celeste you can see that even the color palette for the player character changes depending on the area in order to be unified with that stage. Each stage has it's own color palette that all elements in it, including the player adhere to. So it's not a unified color palette throughout all stages/areas like older Pokemon games, but it is always a unified color palette in each area taken by itself.
@@RosemaryWilliams49fruitsusing a single palette for biomes and shit is CRINGE I’m sorry lmao It’s so boring and uninteresting, you need to have color diversity in your shit or else it’ll all blend together. The examples you brought up literally do not do this. I think celeste in particular is a great example of this as it’s really solid pixel art imo; each area has a diverse color palette with lots of different colors in both the terrain, enemies, bg, and Madeline herself. Going monopalette is just a terrible idea lol Believe me I have had WAYYY too much firsthand and secondhand experience with ppl trying to go monopallete for areas in their projects and it’s never a good idea lol
@@kekcrocgod6731 a single palette doesn't mean things blend together, and there can be a wide range of types of colors. It just means having a set list of specific colors you choose to use, and those colors usually stay within the same category, such as only cool colors, or only warm tone colors. That doesn't mean excluding hues, you can still have reds blues, and greens in either a cool or warm color palette, it just means choosing all the blues, greens and reds within the cool side or warm side to keep them harmonious. As I said, all games have set color palettes. Celeste has a wide range of colors it uses per stage, but it is still a single palette for each of those stages that it sticks to which is why everything looks so beautiful together.
These are all personal preferences but looking at the pixel art this is my take... I think that there are inconsistencies with the shadows: - It looks like the rocks don't have shadows. - The trees have standard drop shadows but the player and tools have the long shadows. - Some of the enemies don't have any shadows either. I'm sure there is more but lighting is one of those things where consistency is important. Drop shadows are really good for grounding your objects in the world when doing top down art like this. It's why so many 2D games use them, but that isn't the only option of corse, just make sure they are consistent. There is a lot of green on screen at any given time, and all the assets have very similar greens. If you look at many classic pixel art games, they will usually have only a few colors, but that are more 'spread out' across the color spectrum, if that makes sense. Also inconsistency with the saturation of the colors. The tree trunks are very saturated compared to the cliffs. The moss on the stones doesn't match the trees, and so on. In a 3D game this would come down to lighting and post processing, but since this is a pixel art game, you have to implement these things manually. If you aren't well versed in color theory I would highly recommend using a color palette. That can really help with cohesion. Not necessary but it is very useful. As for the environment layout: I think there is a bit too much blank space in the playable area. Again, empty space is fine for arenas like this, but I think its a bit too empty. Having a path moving through the area, or longer grasses close to the cliff, or shrubs can really help. As for the forrest surrounding it, the trees should have a different color from the grass around them, and as a general rule of thumb, play areas are usually lighter than out of bounds areas, so I would darken that grass and those trees, and use the lighter grass for the playable area. I think adding much more density to the forrest could be beneficial. One note about perspective, with many of the enemies and characters and environment art, it's almost entirely a front on perspective, but the crab boss is almost completely top down, could be worth adjusting. Most of your issues can be fixed with the paint bucket and some minor tweaks in my opinion. Just remember to keep your artwork consistent!
The black outlines are fine. You said celeste was an inspiration for you and that game has black outlines. Black outlines are really great from tracking the player in complex environments. I think that the outlines just stick out because the environment is very basic. I think the lesson I would take away from celeste is the amount of variety and color variation that each level has.
Another suggestion is to lock the camera on the arena when you enter. This can really help as you won't have to design the whole forrest in the surrounding area.
Love pixel art. Main character could be a little cuter (chibi) or cooler (maybe hyper light drifter or Celeste like) but right now the characters kinda just look like students exploring a park. Grass also needs texture and there should be shadows of characters and from walls on the ground Just some thoughts :)
A lot of other people have made some very good points on the artstyle, so I'll throw my hat into the right with my biggest issue: Not only is the background a bit oversaturated, which kind of hurts my eyes during the flashy combat, but the ground and walls have zero blending, the texture of the sand or grass just ends at the wall, with a sharp cut-off line. This can be fine for side-by-side areas, where the cliff's ledge is very clearly defined by its own border, but looking at the sand or grass against the bottom of a wall it looks unnatural. Adding some blending tiles, like grass creeping up in front of the rocks, or rocks from the cliff periodically poking through the sand at its base would make it look much less jarring!
I haven't watched the video yet, but i noticed some comments and thought id share my thoughts. To put it plain... If you want this game tk succeed, the art needs to change. Focus on a consistent limited colour palette for your art. Stick to a specific style (not sure why some of the world is pixel art, and the UI isnt). Stick to a specific pixel size and style of pixel art (for example, dont mix outlined and non outlined pixel art). Infact just generally go on youtube and learn about pixel art. The entirety of what a game consists of is what you see and what you hear. I think improving your art is the number one most important thing to make your game better. Best of luck!
I think when it comes to the pixel art, imo the worst offender is the ground. It's just plain green, with no detail whatsover (that I can see anyway), wich clashes with the rest of the more detailed pixel art. Also the character art seems good to me on a technical level (I especially like the run animation), but the character designs are very bland.
Part of that is just youtube compression not taking it well. But I agree that the ground needs work. If you look at something like Stardew's grass, it has things that break up the monotony. Things like pebbles, taller grass, grass sprouting in dirt, flowers, mushrooms, etc. All of which are non-interactable and have no collision, they have no purpose other than to break up the visuals for players. This project currently has two kinds of grass mainly just to show depth and nothing to break up the pattern..
One thing I have seen other game(s) do, is to put black fog of war type deal around the borders of the map to help keep focus on the center where all the battle is happening. They dont remove the borders, but add the black fog/blocks to help accentuate the borders. Not sure I am describing this well enough sorry. Like: Hades, The Binding of Isaac (new games), Enter the Gungeon, etc.
For your plan state, you should look into Megaman Battle network, or a game called 'one step from eden'. The idea is that you fight normally but while fighting a meter is charging (just a timer) and once that timer is full, you can press L or R to open a plan menu. From that menu you can select a few one-time-use abilities to deal huge damage. But once those are out, you have to resort to doing poor damage again until the meter fills up. It leads to tense moments where you are watching the meter with a close eye, just waiting for that last frame so you can press R and get a few more cards. I think your system doesn't blend perfectly with that EXACT idea, but you could work something out where the plan stage feels like a blessing, while also making it something that the player does when they are ready. The other issue I noticed with the plan state would be that it seems like it just takes a bit too long to go in and out of it. You might want to speed it up and make it so the characters dont go far from where they were standing when planning started, as the transition feels jarring and takes you out of the flow state.
I am not an artist, however I can definitely say the art in the game is not great. I know people have already pointed out some stuff about the main character, but I want to throw in some general stuff. The game as a whole feels extremely saturated, as in everything has bright vibrant colors. Generally in game design you make the important information vibrant and the less important stuff like the background less. This provides a contrast, lets people easily read the game at a glance, and subconsciously focuses the attention of players on the action. From what I can see of the game, the background is just as vibrant as some of the enemies and players, if not more so, making it hard to focus. On top of this, I would saw that most of the drawn stuff isn't too bad, but but grass ground you walk on is literally just a solid green color. It looks terrible, hell even the grass on walls on the side of the map have at least some kind of texture to them. Just a quick aside 2:56, the bow that the main character has, is it facing backwards? The string appears to pull towards the enemy? something to look into is the pixel art tearing as well, very often int he game you can see vertical lines on the wall sprites where the tiles meet. It isn't too had a fix but it does exist and should be fixed. Other than that, the weapon distance from the player is incredibly inconsistent at 5:35 you can see a weapon so close to the player that it literally overlaps with them, but at a different time at 2:56, the bow is very far from the player and never even comes close to overlapping them. One final note, the game's artstyle is quite inconsistent. Sure the main gameplay is all pixel art, but the UI is all vector art. It is weird seeing angled stuff like you might see in persona juxtaposed against a pixel grid just feels really bad to see. anyway, I don't mean to piss on the game, but that's what I think about the art. A lot of the individual sprites are good IMO, like I quite like the trees and rocks around the edges of the map, but there is too many issues elsewhere for it to be appreciated.
I like the pixel art but I think the shadows need to be rendered differently (darker, closer, and tilted?) and maybe add some grass patches, flowers, etc. I think something like Mother and Pokemon would be good to reference for stylizing your game. Also I think the characters might need to be scaled and/or tilted since they look slightly out of place compared to the background layers. If you watch Shesez’s out of bounds videos, theres some great info on how the Zelda Links Awakening assets were designed unconventionally to make the topdown view more appealing. But these are just minor suggestions and I really like the way the design and gameplay is headed!
I’m no pixel art expert, but I do have some experience in it and here are the first things I noticed The primary shade of green used for the trees and grass is ugly. I wish I could better suggest how to change it but I’d try experimenting with changing that shade of green, maybe to something darker; mint green just doesn’t work for grass and trees. Also, give the characters and other things selout maybe (also the 3 characters you play as in general have uninteresting designs imo) Also the like crab boss generally has an uninteresting design (and the shading makes the crab itself look flat), it’s just a cartoon crab with some rocks on top of it. I’d give the crab a redesign; maybe make the rocks look more like a shell akin to hermit crabs? And definitely make the crab less stock-art-y. You can make a stylized crab without it being a circle. Also reduce the screen shake from your character’s bow, it’s wayyyy too much I can’t watch gameplay for more than a couple seconds without feeling nauseous
fuck the haters, your character art looks insanely good ESPECIALLY that running animation from all angles WOW You'll polish the environment one day and I understand that, what you have right now looks insanely fun! Also, great vlog!
In terms of the pixel art I feel like maybe adding some decor to the floor like grass and stuff like that would be good because rn the battle area looks kinda empty and also probably make the base tone of the ground of the battle areas a bit lighter because right now it looks a bit jarring and it clashes with the lighter green of the walls surrounding it to much
The pixel art isn't awful, but it does read as kind of amateurish (coming from another pixel art amateur). If I encountered the game in store, the art in its present state might put me off from buying it. I think you could elevate it massively by softening your outlines just a hare. Eg. for a blue object like their shorts, instead of a black outline, use a very dark blue outline. It makes the edges a little softer and less jarring, but still feels like a border for the sprite. Agreed with some other comments that shading of some objects (player characters included) looks kind of funky and could use some work. The characters are actually animated beautifully though, so really I'd just focus on outlining/coloring/shading largely
finally you addressed it , I've Talking about the pixel art for a while now , the pixel art is not eye candy , I think you will need a Professional Pixel artist for advice , and believe me after you re do the Pixel Art you will see by your self how the people will interact with it.
I really like the plan state being after a wave of enemies instead of the middle! I wonder though if it'd be neat if, when a plan state is going to trigger, instead of it suddenly happening, it'll give you a notification somewhere saying "plan state ready" and you can press a button to activate it when you feel ready to? While that could open up a bit of cheese in places, I feel like it'd be neat to give the players some choice in the matter?
What the sugg file was talking about regarding "crowd of enemies"... They were talking about orthogonal enemy design. Like in DOOM, or Serious Sam. Every single enemy does something different, to try and make the player move in a certain way, or perhaps to make the player focus on shooting a more high-priority targets. Some enemies charge quickly at the player, others use hitscan weapons that force the player to take cover or take damage. Some enemies shoot at where you're standing, so you can't stand still. Some enemies shoot at where your velocity is going to take you, forcing you to mix up your movement. And what makes DOOM and Serious Sam so brilliant is how it mixes crowds of enemies to create complexity. Fighting an Arch-Vile becomes so much more interesting and complex when they're deliberately hidden behind a swarm of tough Pinkies, and supported by simple Imps from platforms above. If you want your enemy encounters to shine just as brightly, take inspiration from other enemies. I bet that Enter the Gungeon would be right up your alley.
the pixel art looks good, the only problem with it is the characters, i dont think them (specifically their backs) have enough detail for example in one of them their hair is a solid color, it really stands out because you are always looking at it
in terms of character design, all of the playable characters seem very boring. even disregarding things like shilloutes, nothing on the character stands out. even giving each character one identifying feature (like a hat, or scarf, or something that represents the character) would go a long way to make the characters memorable also the enemies are good, but the creativity of them don't match with the completely generic background and characters. when i see 'slot machine snail' i don't think 'super mario forest level'
The animations and art for the game are very high quality so far! Having a consistent amount of detail, and perhaps more defined shadows all around, will really improve the art. It looks like a lot of effort was put into this project! Best of luck, and awesome video! 👍
I just got thinking about something what person in comment mentioned, that your environment should use light and dark colors to tell what is going on, which part of environment you can interact with, where are you etc. It got me thinking that it's not really problem with pixel art or even colors but shading and lighting. What you need is probably a good shared that will darken parts of the world that are just a background noise and give some light sources to active area or projectiles.
Cool website. I like how everything is going with the game. I personally think the UI you created for your game to look very good but, at the end of the day, it's your decision on how you make your game.
Nice devlog. I think the main problem with the pixel art is the amount of detail and coherent style. I could definitely see a change between the tileset and floor art as a big improvement. Besides that the changes are pretty good.
Thanks for the feedback, I think I'm going to put my focus (once I get to redoing the art) on the environment mostly, while I will probably come back and improve the character designs later, I think that my main focus should be making a more interesting and unique environment, and also fixing the UI
The character art is what really stood out to me.. not in exactly a good way. I'm no pixel art expert, nor do I have exactly what you're looking for in terms of feedback, but I've just found characters in games like deltarune, omori, and similar to have a lot better and memorable looking designs.
Hey! My points about the pixel art (and the art in general): - Not sure if you're doing this already but a limited color palette is a must, the smaller the better. A smaller palette forces your game visuals to work together and look like they belong to the same world. - Your sprites are too saturated. The screen is constantly full of screaming saturated colors which fight with each other, focus on making certain elements pop out (like bullets, enemies, player projectiles and characters) while keeping rest a bit blander. This of course affects the general vibe of the game, if you are going for very saturated cartoony stuff, then go for it. - The style of the art is not consistent. Most stuff in the world have outlines, while the tileset doesn't. they should have a similar style to fit with each other. Also at 3:22 some debris in the ground only partly has outlines, which is not a great choice in my opinion. Also, if you decide to stick with outlines, then maybe try to tune it towards a dark grey, a 100% black is quite heavy. - Shadows! You need shadows, and a lot of them. Basically everything that would cast a shadow in the real world should also cast a shadow in a pixel art game. You might want to create a shadow sprite for each sprite, like you seem to have with a character and the weapon. And also choose a direction of light and stick with it, consistency is key! For example, with the player and weapon shadows the light seems to be coming from the bottom right corner, while the tree shadows seem to be cast by a light that is straight over the tree. - Shading. For static sprites and sprites that don't flip on X-axis, you might want to pick the same direction of light as with the direction that casts shadows, and shade the sprites accordingly. You could do this with flipping sprites too, if it looks great half the time it's better than if it didn't work at all. Of course you could do mirror shaded versions of each flipping sprite as well. - Ground. This is similar to skyboxes in 3D games: changing the default skybox to something more interesting makes a huge difference while being relatively easy, since sometimes it fills like 50% of your screen. The same goes here: you might want to add some texture and random props to the moveable area of each room. It could be just a simple tileset with a default tile and some variations of that. Add some grass, bushes, mushrooms, stones etc. to make it look more like a forest. - Lights and bloom: This is for some extra juice while also being a stylistic choice. You might want to consider adding 2D lights and/or bloom in small amounts to things that might emit light (like enemy projectiles, player projectiles, torches, maybe to the eyes of the cool looking crab boss) to make them pop more! That gives depth to the overall look of the game and brings out important things gameplay-wise. I wish you great success in the development of your game! I've been following your progress for a while now, and the videos are always entertaining. Not trying to promote myself here, but we are also making a pixel art game. If you're interested to check that out, we have a trailer of it at our channel. Ps. I think the hand-drawn art you mentioned at 4:13 looks pretty good, not sure if you want to give that up :)
A good start for improving the art is some shaders like glow and some 2d lighting (something simple like a circle of light). I also recommend some texture for the ground tiles with differences preferably not just a repeating texture, make sure to use colors that complement the enemy's of the area and have some contrast. last thing is the game should feel breathing more alive that could be achieved if for example the trees reacted to wind, good idle animations for players and enemy's, baked shadows based on a source of light or a time of day, it cant just be the middle of the day all the time if your trying to sell a story of some sort.
i think a big problem with the art is that it just feels empty, then highly detailed it ends up giving the illusion that its mixing different scales the 'area' you fight the little crabs in is just... green. theres nothing there and the detailed player sticks out just a bit too much add some grass! some flowers! add more details in the tree areas to make that area less plain too
I feel for the art, having some kind of art for the ground, over a single green color, could help, also I was about to say to add shadows... until I looked a little more and realized there were indeed shadows 😅I feel they are a bit light and kind of disconnected from the art fsr, maybe because they cast upward instead of downward. That's one of the big challenge of topdown, having the feeling that the characters are actually touching the ground and not floating over it. Cool video !
For the art: -I like pixel art not the problem. -The perspective is messed up between differents assets, Character dont have the same perspective than the environment, etc... your character and most of monsters are in side view but the environment and is in 3/4 top down. -Consistent size of pixel for all assets. -Consistent color pallete for all assets. But at this point of the creation of the gamplay loop, you should really just use placeholders from internet, to get a unified/consistent visual to show on youtube, dont lose too much time on making art right now. Your didn't finish to create the base gameplay, you're not shure about how to make the plan state. Use quick prototyping techniques and add juice and when the game is in a good state for gameplay start learning art theory and go for it. About juice, the camera shake is to present to feel rewarding or impactfull.
for me the biggest problem with the art is the color palette, there isn't much room for improvement when it comes to the designs themselves, since you're not an artist, but I'd pick a palette from Lospec, and stick to that, everything is really bright and sticks out so much. Also, adding details to the grass outside the playable area while making the playable area a solid color is not a good idea, as you'll drag the attention away from the action, lastly, when it comes to shadows, don't just make the color darker, change the hue too, so the trees should look more yellowish on the illuminated areas, and blueish on the shadows (picking a good palette will solve that for you) there are some 24/32 color palettes that aren't too restrictive and will work fine, I tried using a 6 color one and ended up adding colors up to 28, but i'll probably reach 32 soon.
I on contrary will say that I love pixel art, specially character move/run animation. It's very well done. I will agree with very empty and uninteresting space (you are creating only square/rectangle shapes and whole palette is using like 7 sprites? 3 trees, 2 stumps, light grass, front walls. Rest from what I see is just a color. It's not that single color terrain is bad, it's alright if you make whole environment interesting enough. Then also remember to design your terrain around your character so player never loses sight of their character or enemy. You usually achieve it by contract though black outline also serves this purpose. Persona inspired UI has to go. Or be modified to be stylized but less into your face. Maybe persona-like pixel art UI would fit if you want to go in that direction? Someone mentioned that your characters look plain and I also kinda agree. Nothing memorable about them, nothing what would scream their personality. It doesn't have to be a lot. For example yellow haired guy can be huge sports fan and wear a shirt with number on it. Or he might wear rugby helmet and/or pauldrons. He might be the only one with sport shoes, shorts or knee protectors. Also since he is active, he would be more buff, taller maybe as it helps with various sports etc.
One thing that could maybe be improved art wise is the perspective of the sprites. It doesn't seem super consistent, the ground tiles seem like they are at a 45 degrees angle but most other assets (characters, enemies etc) look more like there at a 20-25 degrees angle. The crab boss also has a weird perspective I think, especially compared to the other sprites. The swinging animation that plays on the sprite when running also is too strong imo and makes the movement a bit jaggy. Finally the UI would probably be way more pleasing if it was in a style that is closer to the rest of the game. But honestly I think you're in the right direction the design of the characters and monsters is great ! They just need some reworking to make them more consistent perspective wise, color wise etc
I think someone already mentioned this, but for the plan state, you could look into the Megaman Battle Network series for inspiration, because it has a very similar gameplay flow to the one you are trying to achieve
About the pixel art I think the thing that really brings it back is it being just too big and it makes it look overall empty not only the environment but also the characters and enemies you can't even tell it's pixel art from afar
It could be the people who don't like the pixel art because they DO like the hand drawn stuff you've added and the stylized UI. As you've mentioned these styles don't mesh perfectly and deciding to go all in on one design or the other will ultimately make the game look better. It's up to you to decide which side of the art style to go with. Personally I also really like the stylized art.
I'd say that the major issue with the pixel art in the game would also be consistency - The terrain and attacks have no black outlines, but character and ennemies do, which is fine, but then *why do trees and rocks in unaccessible part of the map do also have outlines?* - Also *the unaccessible part of the terrain is very detailed with texture everywhere, grass included, while the rest of the play area have flat colors without texturing,* which is especially jarring for the walkable ground that is a flat color, that look even weirder considering that just aside the flat walkable grass there is textured grass - *Also as for the color, the values (how light or dark it is if you look the game in greyscale) is a tad bit odd* It is nice how the character, ennemies and more importantly the attacks pop up lighter on the dark ground, but then the non-walkable ground is much brighter and vivid compared to the walkable one, maybe it would be good to darken that innaccessible bright grass a bit down so it's the same or darker as the play area? (and so the same thing for the trees and rock in it of course) That way you can also get a nice hierarchy with the very important attacks that are the brightest, character and ennemies second, wakable ground third, and finally non-accessible part thourth as they'd be the darkest Another smaller issue may probably be the design as far of what is drawn in said pixel art, in the gameplay clips you show while talking about the game we see what seem like a forest or some valleys or some greenery type of thing like that, but the game have crustacean ennemies like crabs that are beach themed So maybe the theme of the game is that these ennemies are invading a place that aren't theirs and this is why they don't fit the world they hinabit, but in that case maybe push this aspect with maybe showing in the decor ways these crabs would transform the world around them ? Like bringing odd patches of sands or making dirt castles or something like that that make the world look like it is indeed being invaded by a species that does not fit it? Also on design also ennemies like the crabs with monocles give off a "joke" vibe which would fit the fun dynamic gamplay while the background and characters look pretty subdued and "basic" comparativly with pretty normal designs, some people with normal clothes and looks in a normal forest with pretty normal rpg look Also more generally I don't feel like I can gleen a lot from the characters design alone? Liam seems pretty easy going with untamed hair and flower on their shirt, and the orange may hint at a pretty social person? Yuri looks pretty well kept reversly, with a sort of v-neck and short hairs, and blue hair inspire calmness and trustworthyness but also the short kind of contradict it? And Ava seems to be the most original of the bunch with the bright red hoodie tied around her with tanktops that give a sporty vibe like they're ready for a work out that fit the impulsiveness of red These are good basis if that is indeed what the character are, but first it take a lot of thinking to get this since it's purely based on type of clothing and hair, but also it isn't really clear how this relies with gameplay Shape-wise none of them have any hugely distinctive or marked shape, there's not a more angular one that'd be attacking with speed or dynamism, or a bulkier square-er one that'd be more tanky, or some design element that show some element or type of damage related to them, visually they just look like three harmless people with similar life and they don't look very battle-ready They may be regular people swooped under all this, but I think they'd still have something about them that would stand out or like a shape that hint at what kind of fighting style they'd go for Finally the proportions on the character head might be a tad bit odd? It's mostly good but when the character look front it look like a cute typicall round rpg head with the neck under but from the front the neck look like a huge chin, maybe pushing the head a tad bit to the front of the character when seen from the side would look better? I don't know about that tho, the character just don't look to me as good as the ennemies even if they seems pretty similarly styled
I think it's been mentionned, but gotta try different color or saturation for the ground. The sprites are good, but the way these sceneries are spread out feels stale. I feel like you would gain by having less trees/rocks and work a bit more on breaking repetition by working on tilesets.
I like the environment pixel art, but like others have mentioned, I'm not the biggest fan of the character art. It feels like the environment is in one art style, the enemies are in a slightly different art style, and the characters are very different from everything else. Personally my favorite of all the sprites here is the dapper snapper/crab enemy. It's clear, and there's enough contrast within the sprite to tell where all of its body parts are at any given time. My issue with the environment is that some parts of it (the trees in particular) seem really small in comparison to the player. Maybe you could try making the trees a bit bigger to give the player and crab a more realistic scale? As for the player sprite, my issue with it is that it doesn't seem to have a sillhouette that's easy to read, and it's very angular when compared to the round crab. Maybe you could try rounding out the edges and exaggerating the character's motions more so that it's easier to see what they're doing? Anyways, good luck with the project!
Your game looks fun and the art style is actually quiet nice. If you go down on the hard outlines and use instead of black a dark colour fitting to the object or player, it would look more fitting. As well as, your UI looks good, but i don't think the Style of the UI fits the over all game style. I think it is a bit to sharp and maybe play around a little with the font style.
Brrrrrrrruuuuuuh... I like pixel art. They be cup o' haters... I mean of course they're noticable improvements to be made over time especially the landscape but the characters look fine. Shoot I wish I had the time to animate walk and attack animations.
Just seeing your game for the first time, visually it reminds me of one of the hobby RPG Maker games. I don't think the artstyle needs to change at all, but I do think you need to address the scenery sprites on the borders of the map. Make the foliage thicker and then make everything that is not a play area darker to tell the player where to put their eyes. The ground also does not appear to have a texture which is strange because the non player area has a grassy texture to it. I think your game is interesting but I feel like the character switching would by quite clunky and not something I would want to do too much in the game. I have a suggestion that would change this and would fit in with your focus system. Focus should constantly be depleting and should increase by a small amount everytime you hit an enemy. When the focus meter reaches zero you auto switch to the next character. Characters recover focus while not active and always come back with some minimum amount to prevent too much auto switching. Players can use the special attacks at any time but will deplete a large amount of focus. If an unactive character gets their full focus back then a button prompt appears on the screen to do a switch attack which switches out the character and performs a powerful move. Hitting enemies only confers a small amount of focus, so it always depletes faster than you can regain it under ordinary circumstances. To tie in with my above suggestion, characters should have much less health and should faint when they reach zero health. After a character faints, the player auto switches to the next character. Fainted characters can be picked up, but only after their own focus has recovered to full. The player must interact with a fainted character for 2 seconds in order to recover that character, during which time they are vulnerable. Obviously, a fainted player can not be used or switched to, and so the player must work with increasingly fewer resources as they lose characters. Once all characters have fainted then the game is over.
In terms of the pixel art issues, I wonder if it's because you put in the effort to make dynamic environment objects (take a look at the rocks and trees - they have some nice shading), but your characters and monsters don't share that level of detail, which makes them feel flat in a world that looks like it should be dynamic.
The environments are very bland, the character is small and generic, it's action are desconected with the attacks that look like pasted on top, the same the enemies. The characters personalities don't show in the design. UI is pretty simple also.
on the topic of the artwork, while I'd need a much closer look to say specifically what I think could be improved, it does generally look quite underdeveloped. Though, one specific thing that really stands out to me is the ground the player walks on. It being a completely flat color with no detail or shading makes it look really off. It is by far the least interesting thing to look at in any given shot, which is undesirable since it's where the gameplay is actually taking place.
The mayor problem with the pixel art is not the artistic technic itself but the desing of the characters. The proportions are too right. I would suggest to do research about character design and form theory (triangles are aggresive, squares are bold, circles are happy and unofenssive, etc). Your main characters all look pretty the same, you dont play too much with the cartoony proportions your current style allows. Maybe a character is tall and has a big torso but tiny legs, the other has a big head but is short and slim, and the other one has triangular big hips, etc. Obviously i would suggest that the character design tells itself how every character has to be played. If a character has a dash ability it should look agile, if it slower but bulkier, it should be bigger or thicker, etc. Also, the perspective is a little bit off, for example, the basic crab enemy its drawn from a front perspective but the game camera is top-down. Also the outline is inconsistent? The characters have it and i totally recommend you to keep using it in them, but some background elements dont have them and other do? for example, trees have it regardless that they are not important/interactible, but grass and tiles dont (The pilars with red eyes are some-what part of the background tile layer but they have outlines too)
A lot of pixel art games at this resolution have only 4-frame animations or so. The running animations feel weird because the arms are flailing and the legs are moving all about and it feels exaggerated in an uncanny way. The pixel and high-res art mash-up can work REALLY well, but the characters' jutted out and awkward posing with the smooth and rounded off terrain makes the pixel art feel REALLY WEIRD.
Quick note about the art is that RIGHT AWAY, the very first thing I think when I see it is, "MS Paint." You're the developer so you know more about the game, what you want, and art in general than I do, but I feel pretty confident that if the first thing a potential player thinks when he sees your art is that it feels unfinished, uncanny or ungood, then there's definitely a problem _somewhere._
Ok your #1 issiue. Is you think your right. I've been told by lots of people that you should ditch your first idea cause "You have no idea what if fun or not yet"
the issue with the graphics are the empty boring green fields and there's also very little contrast to what the player should be looking at. The ui where you select a character is also very bland
The character art isnt the best looking, and the giant crab with ruins on his back looks weird. The ruins look very out of place, like someone just attached ruins to his back as an afterthought. Also maybe make the enemies look more like enemies, they look realy feiendly and adorable.
PIXEL ART ADVICE: Your grass is flat. Never use a single color to fill up space. It makes your game look like a 57th place gamejam game. Look at other games pixel grass👍
To me personally the pixel art graphics just look boring and generic. The playable characters and environments just don't look visually interesting, if anything it looks like they were pulled from Terraria.
cuphead is a bullet hell with a parry. don't make "other people don't do that" your argument. it's not a good one even if cuphead wouldn't have a parry. in general you should prefer logic over comparison and decision making by feeling. the first bullet hell ever didn't think "oh i am making this genre i just made up and this and that belongs to it and everything else is banned". no they just created a game they thought would be fun to play and they implemented concepts they think would be beneficial to the gameplay. i like parries a lot
The GUI it's fine, but needed more juice for me. Instead of copy the same style, why you don't try to make that the GUI look like part of the gameplay or scenario? The pixel art background and enemies it's great, but the characters looks like are assets from another game. If you like pixel, keep doing pixel art. Maybe they need to have the same style that the enemies and don't be soon small. It's difficult to see them with so many thing around.
Interesting devlog but the title is a bit misleading. What comment broke your game? The document? The combo system being commented out? I would have been a lot more invested in the video if its hook were more relevant to the content of the video, which is more about design decisions than it is about bug fixes. (they are only briefly mentioned) I know it's generic algorithm stuff that every youtuber is doing now, which is a shame, but you could hook in your audience by talking about how game design flaws can be just as bad if not worse than compile errors or logic errors. (Maybe something like "My game's biggest mistake/flaw," etc. then expand upon the points you made about the rocky foundation leading to greater problems, a lot of people make the mistake of committing to a concept before even finding out if it's fun or doable.) Either way, very interesting video.
My main dislike to the pixel art is it's... just there. Pixel art in of itself isn't a art style entirely. Like if you were to look at deltarune, Starbound, terraria, and Katana Zero they all have a style of their own with the backdrop, and character art. There was design intentions to make things look like they do, then they made that pixelated. Currently your game just looks like stock assets more then something designed with intention for a world.
Ig the art lacks polish, or a character or a theme. like take celeste, if u show me a part of the screen at any time i can tell its celeste coz it has that style
People are all over the place with their art advice. I see only one problem: The characters and enemies are fine, the background is generic and boring. Grass trees rocks. Big spaces of just green.
WTF does TH-cam keep deleting my comments for? I am not even saying anything bad, was just offering compliments, support and direction advice -_-. Anyway, in less detail than I originally described, I said it's good you are refocusing the gameplay, because on the video you introduced the parry system it started to feel like your feature creep was getting out of hand, and you were adding stuff because you had seen it in other games and thought it was cool and not because it actually fit the game you are making. Then on the pixel art, I said I think your pixel art characters are actually fine, good even, that I believe the problem is they don't really fit the bland backdrops and terrain - and that now, before you've created levels, would be a good time to try to find an art-style for your terrain that works well with your character art, Is saying that much okay, TH-cam? -_-
more than anything, the artwork is very generic. the main cast have uninspired designs, the colors are plain and highly saturated, and theres no depth or antialiasing incorporated into the linework. ive also seen someone mention the apparent lack of detail in the environments, which should be addressed
on top of that, you say that youre taking inspiration from the artwork used in persona 5 and celeste, but dont necessarily understand what makes that art direction work outside of just its visual appearance. persona 5’s plot heavily follows themes of rebellion and pushing back against a corrupt system, which is reflected in the ui’s sharp angles, strong reds contrasted against black and white, and just overall coolness factor. celeste, on the other hand, follows themes of overcoming personal barriers, showing instances of calm and relaxing areas to reflect the meditative nature of this journey as well as violent and chaotic moments that reflect the internal struggle. all this to say that you need to decide on a consistent theme for your game which various aspects of it, including the art direction, tie back to. you seem to be going for a beach or nautical theme, so id recommend expanding on that and making more direct ties to it
your art does not look bad alone but it looks bad when its all together in my opinion. you are good at art just you put multiple artstyles together and it had a bad result
![200 Days Of Indie Game Development! [Omega Devlog]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/dtap5USESNI/mqdefault.jpg)
I think the main problem with the artstyle is just the lack of theming and any character, it's generic modern fantasy-ish world, it just doesn't have anything to say for it itself, games like undertale and celeste have strong settings (entire underworld civilization spanning multiple biomes with unique qualities and a cast of monster characters with personalities and relationships/ a mountain peak turned into a metaphorical self examination and overcoming), because of these story settings and themes art has a foundation to build on, direction to follow, art has a more clearer purpose - to emplify emotions together with the gameplay, the art direction should follow this emotional guidline (ultrakill with it's ps1 graphics uses bright colours and theming of hell to make players feel more agressive, as the gameplay is the best when players fight fast and head on, the original story setting of a spaceship operator gome crazy that Hakita wrote just didn't correlate with the gameplay). Wacky characters don't equal to a chraming game, undertale and deltarune work because of the writing behind those characters and their interactions, allowing even simple enemies to have character of their own. Your game is in a need of a drastic design change, try laying down core ideas/emotions/gameplay feel and etc. your game, in theory, will evoke, and change your art, and general design, where it fails to do so.
Art choices aren't made without purpose, you added stylized ui like in Persona, but Persona has a whole aesthetic, bold and bright colours contrasting with pure black, it extends to ui being very graphical and moving, almost no elements in that game are static, even the day countdown screen has movement. Not only are those choices made to more resemble manga, they are also allowing the central theme of the franchize (jumping between realities) to shine, all art direction choices are made to make the contrast between two parallel realities more apparent. It wasn't simply made to look cool or flashy, it builds on the whole aesthetic of the game, and also allows turn based combat to be more dynamic and fun to look at.
Well said.
This is absolutely at the heart and soul of countless masterpieces. It's something that tons of artists and developers need to hear, but isn't said enough. Perfectly put.
This is an incredibly valuable comment for any game developer (or artist in general). I'd like to also add Hollow Knight as another example. Hollow Knight's art style could be described as "bleak and cartoonish" which is interesting of it's own but that would also miss the way the theme of insects wraps itself into every detail of the world, between the chitin-like walls and distant plains, to the iron fences showing the outline of scarabs. It's a great study-piece for how to wrap setting and art-style together into a cohesive and immersive experience.
The thing I find wrong with the character pixel art, is the sharp, black outline. It looks very jarring to me, and doesn’t really fit with the environment (same goes to all the enemies). The shading is also quite weird on the characters, where the shaded parts just look too short and the color seems to flat, and there I’d encourage using a very nice technique called hue shifting. (You change the hue of the color very slightly to make it look slightly lighter or darker according to your needs.
Edit: for some reason I can’t explain, the outline just feels off on the characters (I recommend playing around with it, such as making it wider), the weapons look fine to me
Another thing I’ll point out that the UI should be changed to fit in with the rest of the pixel art, as it seems like it’s out of a different game, and that kinda ruins the immersive experience.
Yeah, definitely more of an "inconsistent art style" thing rather than a pixel art thing.
Something i also noticed at least to me is that it is all a bit to green, the grass is a very bright green and the trees are almost the exact same color
Black outlines are a high contrast thing that typically should be avoided unless it's specific to your art style
in terms of art direction, I think the best choice would be to start working on a consistent color pallete for all assets to use, and try to make the pixel size consistent between assets. Games like earthbound, legend of zelda: links awakening and early pokemon games also have way more cartoonized proportions for the characters, and are way less detailed
Lmao don’t give everything 1 palette that doesn’t really make much sense
@@kekcrocgod6731 How does it not make sense? Most games do this. Look at Pokemon, Celeste, Persona. They have specific color palettes. Maybe not the same for every scene/biome etc, but within a single area it has a single, unified, restricted color palette. If you google Celeste you can see that even the color palette for the player character changes depending on the area in order to be unified with that stage. Each stage has it's own color palette that all elements in it, including the player adhere to. So it's not a unified color palette throughout all stages/areas like older Pokemon games, but it is always a unified color palette in each area taken by itself.
@@RosemaryWilliams49fruitsyes but the original commenter said to have one palette for *everything* which is what kekcrocgod is disagreeing with
@@RosemaryWilliams49fruitsusing a single palette for biomes and shit is CRINGE I’m sorry lmao
It’s so boring and uninteresting, you need to have color diversity in your shit or else it’ll all blend together. The examples you brought up literally do not do this. I think celeste in particular is a great example of this as it’s really solid pixel art imo; each area has a diverse color palette with lots of different colors in both the terrain, enemies, bg, and Madeline herself. Going monopalette is just a terrible idea lol
Believe me I have had WAYYY too much firsthand and secondhand experience with ppl trying to go monopallete for areas in their projects and it’s never a good idea lol
@@kekcrocgod6731 a single palette doesn't mean things blend together, and there can be a wide range of types of colors. It just means having a set list of specific colors you choose to use, and those colors usually stay within the same category, such as only cool colors, or only warm tone colors. That doesn't mean excluding hues, you can still have reds blues, and greens in either a cool or warm color palette, it just means choosing all the blues, greens and reds within the cool side or warm side to keep them harmonious. As I said, all games have set color palettes. Celeste has a wide range of colors it uses per stage, but it is still a single palette for each of those stages that it sticks to which is why everything looks so beautiful together.
These are all personal preferences but looking at the pixel art this is my take...
I think that there are inconsistencies with the shadows:
- It looks like the rocks don't have shadows.
- The trees have standard drop shadows but the player and tools have the long shadows.
- Some of the enemies don't have any shadows either.
I'm sure there is more but lighting is one of those things where consistency is important. Drop shadows are really good for grounding your objects in the world when doing top down art like this. It's why so many 2D games use them, but that isn't the only option of corse, just make sure they are consistent.
There is a lot of green on screen at any given time, and all the assets have very similar greens. If you look at many classic pixel art games, they will usually have only a few colors, but that are more 'spread out' across the color spectrum, if that makes sense.
Also inconsistency with the saturation of the colors. The tree trunks are very saturated compared to the cliffs. The moss on the stones doesn't match the trees, and so on.
In a 3D game this would come down to lighting and post processing, but since this is a pixel art game, you have to implement these things manually. If you aren't well versed in color theory I would highly recommend using a color palette. That can really help with cohesion. Not necessary but it is very useful.
As for the environment layout:
I think there is a bit too much blank space in the playable area. Again, empty space is fine for arenas like this, but I think its a bit too empty. Having a path moving through the area, or longer grasses close to the cliff, or shrubs can really help. As for the forrest surrounding it, the trees should have a different color from the grass around them, and as a general rule of thumb, play areas are usually lighter than out of bounds areas, so I would darken that grass and those trees, and use the lighter grass for the playable area. I think adding much more density to the forrest could be beneficial.
One note about perspective, with many of the enemies and characters and environment art, it's almost entirely a front on perspective, but the crab boss is almost completely top down, could be worth adjusting.
Most of your issues can be fixed with the paint bucket and some minor tweaks in my opinion. Just remember to keep your artwork consistent!
The black outlines are fine. You said celeste was an inspiration for you and that game has black outlines. Black outlines are really great from tracking the player in complex environments. I think that the outlines just stick out because the environment is very basic. I think the lesson I would take away from celeste is the amount of variety and color variation that each level has.
Another suggestion is to lock the camera on the arena when you enter. This can really help as you won't have to design the whole forrest in the surrounding area.
Love pixel art. Main character could be a little cuter (chibi) or cooler (maybe hyper light drifter or Celeste like) but right now the characters kinda just look like students exploring a park. Grass also needs texture and there should be shadows of characters and from walls on the ground
Just some thoughts :)
A lot of other people have made some very good points on the artstyle, so I'll throw my hat into the right with my biggest issue: Not only is the background a bit oversaturated, which kind of hurts my eyes during the flashy combat, but the ground and walls have zero blending, the texture of the sand or grass just ends at the wall, with a sharp cut-off line. This can be fine for side-by-side areas, where the cliff's ledge is very clearly defined by its own border, but looking at the sand or grass against the bottom of a wall it looks unnatural. Adding some blending tiles, like grass creeping up in front of the rocks, or rocks from the cliff periodically poking through the sand at its base would make it look much less jarring!
I haven't watched the video yet, but i noticed some comments and thought id share my thoughts. To put it plain...
If you want this game tk succeed, the art needs to change. Focus on a consistent limited colour palette for your art. Stick to a specific style (not sure why some of the world is pixel art, and the UI isnt). Stick to a specific pixel size and style of pixel art (for example, dont mix outlined and non outlined pixel art). Infact just generally go on youtube and learn about pixel art. The entirety of what a game consists of is what you see and what you hear. I think improving your art is the number one most important thing to make your game better. Best of luck!
I think when it comes to the pixel art, imo the worst offender is the ground. It's just plain green, with no detail whatsover (that I can see anyway), wich clashes with the rest of the more detailed pixel art.
Also the character art seems good to me on a technical level (I especially like the run animation), but the character designs are very bland.
Part of that is just youtube compression not taking it well. But I agree that the ground needs work. If you look at something like Stardew's grass, it has things that break up the monotony. Things like pebbles, taller grass, grass sprouting in dirt, flowers, mushrooms, etc. All of which are non-interactable and have no collision, they have no purpose other than to break up the visuals for players.
This project currently has two kinds of grass mainly just to show depth and nothing to break up the pattern..
One thing I have seen other game(s) do, is to put black fog of war type deal around the borders of the map to help keep focus on the center where all the battle is happening. They dont remove the borders, but add the black fog/blocks to help accentuate the borders. Not sure I am describing this well enough sorry. Like: Hades, The Binding of Isaac (new games), Enter the Gungeon, etc.
For your plan state, you should look into Megaman Battle network, or a game called 'one step from eden'. The idea is that you fight normally but while fighting a meter is charging (just a timer) and once that timer is full, you can press L or R to open a plan menu. From that menu you can select a few one-time-use abilities to deal huge damage. But once those are out, you have to resort to doing poor damage again until the meter fills up. It leads to tense moments where you are watching the meter with a close eye, just waiting for that last frame so you can press R and get a few more cards. I think your system doesn't blend perfectly with that EXACT idea, but you could work something out where the plan stage feels like a blessing, while also making it something that the player does when they are ready.
The other issue I noticed with the plan state would be that it seems like it just takes a bit too long to go in and out of it. You might want to speed it up and make it so the characters dont go far from where they were standing when planning started, as the transition feels jarring and takes you out of the flow state.
I think other comments already said what needed to be said about the artstyle. The game itself seems pretty unique so I hope you keep working on it
I am not an artist, however I can definitely say the art in the game is not great. I know people have already pointed out some stuff about the main character, but I want to throw in some general stuff.
The game as a whole feels extremely saturated, as in everything has bright vibrant colors. Generally in game design you make the important information vibrant and the less important stuff like the background less. This provides a contrast, lets people easily read the game at a glance, and subconsciously focuses the attention of players on the action. From what I can see of the game, the background is just as vibrant as some of the enemies and players, if not more so, making it hard to focus.
On top of this, I would saw that most of the drawn stuff isn't too bad, but but grass ground you walk on is literally just a solid green color. It looks terrible, hell even the grass on walls on the side of the map have at least some kind of texture to them.
Just a quick aside 2:56, the bow that the main character has, is it facing backwards? The string appears to pull towards the enemy?
something to look into is the pixel art tearing as well, very often int he game you can see vertical lines on the wall sprites where the tiles meet. It isn't too had a fix but it does exist and should be fixed.
Other than that, the weapon distance from the player is incredibly inconsistent at 5:35 you can see a weapon so close to the player that it literally overlaps with them, but at a different time at 2:56, the bow is very far from the player and never even comes close to overlapping them.
One final note, the game's artstyle is quite inconsistent. Sure the main gameplay is all pixel art, but the UI is all vector art. It is weird seeing angled stuff like you might see in persona juxtaposed against a pixel grid just feels really bad to see.
anyway, I don't mean to piss on the game, but that's what I think about the art. A lot of the individual sprites are good IMO, like I quite like the trees and rocks around the edges of the map, but there is too many issues elsewhere for it to be appreciated.
I like the pixel art but I think the shadows need to be rendered differently (darker, closer, and tilted?) and maybe add some grass patches, flowers, etc. I think something like Mother and Pokemon would be good to reference for stylizing your game. Also I think the characters might need to be scaled and/or tilted since they look slightly out of place compared to the background layers. If you watch Shesez’s out of bounds videos, theres some great info on how the Zelda Links Awakening assets were designed unconventionally to make the topdown view more appealing. But these are just minor suggestions and I really like the way the design and gameplay is headed!
I’m no pixel art expert, but I do have some experience in it and here are the first things I noticed
The primary shade of green used for the trees and grass is ugly. I wish I could better suggest how to change it but I’d try experimenting with changing that shade of green, maybe to something darker; mint green just doesn’t work for grass and trees.
Also, give the characters and other things selout maybe (also the 3 characters you play as in general have uninteresting designs imo)
Also the like crab boss generally has an uninteresting design (and the shading makes the crab itself look flat), it’s just a cartoon crab with some rocks on top of it. I’d give the crab a redesign; maybe make the rocks look more like a shell akin to hermit crabs? And definitely make the crab less stock-art-y. You can make a stylized crab without it being a circle.
Also reduce the screen shake from your character’s bow, it’s wayyyy too much I can’t watch gameplay for more than a couple seconds without feeling nauseous
fuck the haters, your character art looks insanely good ESPECIALLY that running animation from all angles WOW
You'll polish the environment one day and I understand that, what you have right now looks insanely fun! Also, great vlog!
In terms of the pixel art I feel like maybe adding some decor to the floor like grass and stuff like that would be good because rn the battle area looks kinda empty and also probably make the base tone of the ground of the battle areas a bit lighter because right now it looks a bit jarring and it clashes with the lighter green of the walls surrounding it to much
Oh yea and another suggestion: make the walls blend a little bit with the floor
The pixel art isn't awful, but it does read as kind of amateurish (coming from another pixel art amateur). If I encountered the game in store, the art in its present state might put me off from buying it. I think you could elevate it massively by softening your outlines just a hare. Eg. for a blue object like their shorts, instead of a black outline, use a very dark blue outline. It makes the edges a little softer and less jarring, but still feels like a border for the sprite. Agreed with some other comments that shading of some objects (player characters included) looks kind of funky and could use some work. The characters are actually animated beautifully though, so really I'd just focus on outlining/coloring/shading largely
finally you addressed it , I've Talking about the pixel art for a while now , the pixel art is not eye candy , I think you will need a Professional Pixel artist for advice , and believe me after you re do the Pixel Art you will see by your self how the people will interact with it.
I really like the plan state being after a wave of enemies instead of the middle! I wonder though if it'd be neat if, when a plan state is going to trigger, instead of it suddenly happening, it'll give you a notification somewhere saying "plan state ready" and you can press a button to activate it when you feel ready to? While that could open up a bit of cheese in places, I feel like it'd be neat to give the players some choice in the matter?
What the sugg file was talking about regarding "crowd of enemies"... They were talking about orthogonal enemy design. Like in DOOM, or Serious Sam. Every single enemy does something different, to try and make the player move in a certain way, or perhaps to make the player focus on shooting a more high-priority targets. Some enemies charge quickly at the player, others use hitscan weapons that force the player to take cover or take damage. Some enemies shoot at where you're standing, so you can't stand still. Some enemies shoot at where your velocity is going to take you, forcing you to mix up your movement.
And what makes DOOM and Serious Sam so brilliant is how it mixes crowds of enemies to create complexity. Fighting an Arch-Vile becomes so much more interesting and complex when they're deliberately hidden behind a swarm of tough Pinkies, and supported by simple Imps from platforms above.
If you want your enemy encounters to shine just as brightly, take inspiration from other enemies. I bet that Enter the Gungeon would be right up your alley.
the pixel art looks good, the only problem with it is the characters, i dont think them (specifically their backs) have enough detail for example in one of them their hair is a solid color, it really stands out because you are always looking at it
also the white shirt guy looks kind of weird
the blank shirt guy looks interesting looking
in terms of character design, all of the playable characters seem very boring. even disregarding things like shilloutes, nothing on the character stands out. even giving each character one identifying feature (like a hat, or scarf, or something that represents the character) would go a long way to make the characters memorable
also the enemies are good, but the creativity of them don't match with the completely generic background and characters. when i see 'slot machine snail' i don't think 'super mario forest level'
The animations and art for the game are very high quality so far! Having a consistent amount of detail, and perhaps more defined shadows all around, will really improve the art. It looks like a lot of effort was put into this project! Best of luck, and awesome video! 👍
I just got thinking about something what person in comment mentioned, that your environment should use light and dark colors to tell what is going on, which part of environment you can interact with, where are you etc. It got me thinking that it's not really problem with pixel art or even colors but shading and lighting. What you need is probably a good shared that will darken parts of the world that are just a background noise and give some light sources to active area or projectiles.
Cool website. I like how everything is going with the game. I personally think the UI you created for your game to look very good but, at the end of the day, it's your decision on how you make your game.
Nice devlog. I think the main problem with the pixel art is the amount of detail and coherent style. I could definitely see a change between the tileset and floor art as a big improvement. Besides that the changes are pretty good.
Thanks for the feedback, I think I'm going to put my focus (once I get to redoing the art) on the environment mostly, while I will probably come back and improve the character designs later, I think that my main focus should be making a more interesting and unique environment, and also fixing the UI
Sounds great@@ButWhyLevin
The character art is what really stood out to me.. not in exactly a good way. I'm no pixel art expert, nor do I have exactly what you're looking for in terms of feedback, but I've just found characters in games like deltarune, omori, and similar to have a lot better and memorable looking designs.
you might want to make the plan state more like the one in Transistor
Hey! My points about the pixel art (and the art in general):
- Not sure if you're doing this already but a limited color palette is a must, the smaller the better. A smaller palette forces your game visuals to work together and look like they belong to the same world.
- Your sprites are too saturated. The screen is constantly full of screaming saturated colors which fight with each other, focus on making certain elements pop out (like bullets, enemies, player projectiles and characters) while keeping rest a bit blander. This of course affects the general vibe of the game, if you are going for very saturated cartoony stuff, then go for it.
- The style of the art is not consistent. Most stuff in the world have outlines, while the tileset doesn't. they should have a similar style to fit with each other. Also at 3:22 some debris in the ground only partly has outlines, which is not a great choice in my opinion. Also, if you decide to stick with outlines, then maybe try to tune it towards a dark grey, a 100% black is quite heavy.
- Shadows! You need shadows, and a lot of them. Basically everything that would cast a shadow in the real world should also cast a shadow in a pixel art game. You might want to create a shadow sprite for each sprite, like you seem to have with a character and the weapon. And also choose a direction of light and stick with it, consistency is key! For example, with the player and weapon shadows the light seems to be coming from the bottom right corner, while the tree shadows seem to be cast by a light that is straight over the tree.
- Shading. For static sprites and sprites that don't flip on X-axis, you might want to pick the same direction of light as with the direction that casts shadows, and shade the sprites accordingly. You could do this with flipping sprites too, if it looks great half the time it's better than if it didn't work at all. Of course you could do mirror shaded versions of each flipping sprite as well.
- Ground. This is similar to skyboxes in 3D games: changing the default skybox to something more interesting makes a huge difference while being relatively easy, since sometimes it fills like 50% of your screen. The same goes here: you might want to add some texture and random props to the moveable area of each room. It could be just a simple tileset with a default tile and some variations of that. Add some grass, bushes, mushrooms, stones etc. to make it look more like a forest.
- Lights and bloom: This is for some extra juice while also being a stylistic choice. You might want to consider adding 2D lights and/or bloom in small amounts to things that might emit light (like enemy projectiles, player projectiles, torches, maybe to the eyes of the cool looking crab boss) to make them pop more! That gives depth to the overall look of the game and brings out important things gameplay-wise.
I wish you great success in the development of your game! I've been following your progress for a while now, and the videos are always entertaining. Not trying to promote myself here, but we are also making a pixel art game. If you're interested to check that out, we have a trailer of it at our channel.
Ps. I think the hand-drawn art you mentioned at 4:13 looks pretty good, not sure if you want to give that up :)
Very cool that you're taking feedback🙂
A good start for improving the art is some shaders like glow and some 2d lighting (something simple like a circle of light). I also recommend some texture for the ground tiles with differences preferably not just a repeating texture, make sure to use colors that complement the enemy's of the area and have some contrast.
last thing is the game should feel breathing more alive that could be achieved if for example the trees reacted to wind, good idle animations for players and enemy's, baked shadows based on a source of light or a time of day, it cant just be the middle of the day all the time if your trying to sell a story of some sort.
This game has so much potential, keep going 💪🏻
i think a big problem with the art is that it just feels empty, then highly detailed
it ends up giving the illusion that its mixing different scales
the 'area' you fight the little crabs in is just... green. theres nothing there and the detailed player sticks out just a bit too much
add some grass! some flowers! add more details in the tree areas to make that area less plain too
I like the pixel art. And your new battle system seems a lot better.
I feel for the art, having some kind of art for the ground, over a single green color, could help, also I was about to say to add shadows... until I looked a little more and realized there were indeed shadows 😅I feel they are a bit light and kind of disconnected from the art fsr, maybe because they cast upward instead of downward. That's one of the big challenge of topdown, having the feeling that the characters are actually touching the ground and not floating over it.
Cool video !
For the art:
-I like pixel art not the problem.
-The perspective is messed up between differents assets, Character dont have the same perspective than the environment, etc... your character and most of monsters are in side view but the environment and is in 3/4 top down.
-Consistent size of pixel for all assets.
-Consistent color pallete for all assets.
But at this point of the creation of the gamplay loop, you should really just use placeholders from internet, to get a unified/consistent visual to show on youtube, dont lose too much time on making art right now.
Your didn't finish to create the base gameplay, you're not shure about how to make the plan state.
Use quick prototyping techniques and add juice and when the game is in a good state for gameplay start learning art theory and go for it.
About juice, the camera shake is to present to feel rewarding or impactfull.
for me the biggest problem with the art is the color palette, there isn't much room for improvement when it comes to the designs themselves, since you're not an artist, but I'd pick a palette from Lospec, and stick to that, everything is really bright and sticks out so much. Also, adding details to the grass outside the playable area while making the playable area a solid color is not a good idea, as you'll drag the attention away from the action, lastly, when it comes to shadows, don't just make the color darker, change the hue too, so the trees should look more yellowish on the illuminated areas, and blueish on the shadows (picking a good palette will solve that for you) there are some 24/32 color palettes that aren't too restrictive and will work fine, I tried using a 6 color one and ended up adding colors up to 28, but i'll probably reach 32 soon.
I on contrary will say that I love pixel art, specially character move/run animation. It's very well done. I will agree with very empty and uninteresting space (you are creating only square/rectangle shapes and whole palette is using like 7 sprites? 3 trees, 2 stumps, light grass, front walls. Rest from what I see is just a color. It's not that single color terrain is bad, it's alright if you make whole environment interesting enough. Then also remember to design your terrain around your character so player never loses sight of their character or enemy. You usually achieve it by contract though black outline also serves this purpose.
Persona inspired UI has to go. Or be modified to be stylized but less into your face. Maybe persona-like pixel art UI would fit if you want to go in that direction?
Someone mentioned that your characters look plain and I also kinda agree. Nothing memorable about them, nothing what would scream their personality. It doesn't have to be a lot. For example yellow haired guy can be huge sports fan and wear a shirt with number on it. Or he might wear rugby helmet and/or pauldrons. He might be the only one with sport shoes, shorts or knee protectors. Also since he is active, he would be more buff, taller maybe as it helps with various sports etc.
One thing that could maybe be improved art wise is the perspective of the sprites. It doesn't seem super consistent, the ground tiles seem like they are at a 45 degrees angle but most other assets (characters, enemies etc) look more like there at a 20-25 degrees angle. The crab boss also has a weird perspective I think, especially compared to the other sprites.
The swinging animation that plays on the sprite when running also is too strong imo and makes the movement a bit jaggy.
Finally the UI would probably be way more pleasing if it was in a style that is closer to the rest of the game.
But honestly I think you're in the right direction the design of the characters and monsters is great ! They just need some reworking to make them more consistent perspective wise, color wise etc
I think someone already mentioned this, but for the plan state, you could look into the Megaman Battle Network series for inspiration, because it has a very similar gameplay flow to the one you are trying to achieve
About the pixel art I think the thing that really brings it back is it being just too big and it makes it look overall empty not only the environment but also the characters and enemies you can't even tell it's pixel art from afar
It could be the people who don't like the pixel art because they DO like the hand drawn stuff you've added and the stylized UI. As you've mentioned these styles don't mesh perfectly and deciding to go all in on one design or the other will ultimately make the game look better. It's up to you to decide which side of the art style to go with. Personally I also really like the stylized art.
I'd say that the major issue with the pixel art in the game would also be consistency
- The terrain and attacks have no black outlines, but character and ennemies do, which is fine, but then *why do trees and rocks in unaccessible part of the map do also have outlines?*
- Also *the unaccessible part of the terrain is very detailed with texture everywhere, grass included, while the rest of the play area have flat colors without texturing,* which is especially jarring for the walkable ground that is a flat color, that look even weirder considering that just aside the flat walkable grass there is textured grass
- *Also as for the color, the values (how light or dark it is if you look the game in greyscale) is a tad bit odd*
It is nice how the character, ennemies and more importantly the attacks pop up lighter on the dark ground, but then the non-walkable ground is much brighter and vivid compared to the walkable one, maybe it would be good to darken that innaccessible bright grass a bit down so it's the same or darker as the play area?
(and so the same thing for the trees and rock in it of course)
That way you can also get a nice hierarchy with the very important attacks that are the brightest, character and ennemies second, wakable ground third, and finally non-accessible part thourth as they'd be the darkest
Another smaller issue may probably be the design as far of what is drawn in said pixel art, in the gameplay clips you show while talking about the game we see what seem like a forest or some valleys or some greenery type of thing like that, but the game have crustacean ennemies like crabs that are beach themed
So maybe the theme of the game is that these ennemies are invading a place that aren't theirs and this is why they don't fit the world they hinabit, but in that case maybe push this aspect with maybe showing in the decor ways these crabs would transform the world around them ? Like bringing odd patches of sands or making dirt castles or something like that that make the world look like it is indeed being invaded by a species that does not fit it?
Also on design also ennemies like the crabs with monocles give off a "joke" vibe which would fit the fun dynamic gamplay while the background and characters look pretty subdued and "basic" comparativly with pretty normal designs, some people with normal clothes and looks in a normal forest with pretty normal rpg look
Also more generally I don't feel like I can gleen a lot from the characters design alone?
Liam seems pretty easy going with untamed hair and flower on their shirt, and the orange may hint at a pretty social person?
Yuri looks pretty well kept reversly, with a sort of v-neck and short hairs, and blue hair inspire calmness and trustworthyness but also the short kind of contradict it?
And Ava seems to be the most original of the bunch with the bright red hoodie tied around her with tanktops that give a sporty vibe like they're ready for a work out that fit the impulsiveness of red
These are good basis if that is indeed what the character are, but first it take a lot of thinking to get this since it's purely based on type of clothing and hair, but also it isn't really clear how this relies with gameplay
Shape-wise none of them have any hugely distinctive or marked shape, there's not a more angular one that'd be attacking with speed or dynamism, or a bulkier square-er one that'd be more tanky, or some design element that show some element or type of damage related to them, visually they just look like three harmless people with similar life and they don't look very battle-ready
They may be regular people swooped under all this, but I think they'd still have something about them that would stand out or like a shape that hint at what kind of fighting style they'd go for
Finally the proportions on the character head might be a tad bit odd?
It's mostly good but when the character look front it look like a cute typicall round rpg head with the neck under but from the front the neck look like a huge chin, maybe pushing the head a tad bit to the front of the character when seen from the side would look better?
I don't know about that tho, the character just don't look to me as good as the ennemies even if they seems pretty similarly styled
For me the biggest problem with the graphics are the flat colors as ground. The world looks very prototype like, it needs more going on.
I think it's been mentionned, but gotta try different color or saturation for the ground. The sprites are good, but the way these sceneries are spread out feels stale. I feel like you would gain by having less trees/rocks and work a bit more on breaking repetition by working on tilesets.
I like the environment pixel art, but like others have mentioned, I'm not the biggest fan of the character art. It feels like the environment is in one art style, the enemies are in a slightly different art style, and the characters are very different from everything else. Personally my favorite of all the sprites here is the dapper snapper/crab enemy. It's clear, and there's enough contrast within the sprite to tell where all of its body parts are at any given time. My issue with the environment is that some parts of it (the trees in particular) seem really small in comparison to the player. Maybe you could try making the trees a bit bigger to give the player and crab a more realistic scale? As for the player sprite, my issue with it is that it doesn't seem to have a sillhouette that's easy to read, and it's very angular when compared to the round crab. Maybe you could try rounding out the edges and exaggerating the character's motions more so that it's easier to see what they're doing? Anyways, good luck with the project!
Great video, would be nice to have more varied clips to watch while you talk, this was mostly 8 minutes of watching crabs being killed haha
Your game looks fun and the art style is actually quiet nice. If you go down on the hard outlines and use instead of black a dark colour fitting to the object or player, it would look more fitting. As well as, your UI looks good, but i don't think the Style of the UI fits the over all game style. I think it is a bit to sharp and maybe play around a little with the font style.
Brrrrrrrruuuuuuh... I like pixel art. They be cup o' haters... I mean of course they're noticable improvements to be made over time especially the landscape but the characters look fine. Shoot I wish I had the time to animate walk and attack animations.
Great changes to the game. I agree that something about the pixel art feels off. Perhaps it needs to be more unique or stylised.
Just seeing your game for the first time, visually it reminds me of one of the hobby RPG Maker games. I don't think the artstyle needs to change at all, but I do think you need to address the scenery sprites on the borders of the map. Make the foliage thicker and then make everything that is not a play area darker to tell the player where to put their eyes. The ground also does not appear to have a texture which is strange because the non player area has a grassy texture to it.
I think your game is interesting but I feel like the character switching would by quite clunky and not something I would want to do too much in the game. I have a suggestion that would change this and would fit in with your focus system. Focus should constantly be depleting and should increase by a small amount everytime you hit an enemy. When the focus meter reaches zero you auto switch to the next character. Characters recover focus while not active and always come back with some minimum amount to prevent too much auto switching. Players can use the special attacks at any time but will deplete a large amount of focus. If an unactive character gets their full focus back then a button prompt appears on the screen to do a switch attack which switches out the character and performs a powerful move. Hitting enemies only confers a small amount of focus, so it always depletes faster than you can regain it under ordinary circumstances.
To tie in with my above suggestion, characters should have much less health and should faint when they reach zero health. After a character faints, the player auto switches to the next character. Fainted characters can be picked up, but only after their own focus has recovered to full. The player must interact with a fainted character for 2 seconds in order to recover that character, during which time they are vulnerable. Obviously, a fainted player can not be used or switched to, and so the player must work with increasingly fewer resources as they lose characters. Once all characters have fainted then the game is over.
The art and animations are great I just think you need a new color palette
In terms of the pixel art issues, I wonder if it's because you put in the effort to make dynamic environment objects (take a look at the rocks and trees - they have some nice shading), but your characters and monsters don't share that level of detail, which makes them feel flat in a world that looks like it should be dynamic.
bro the hand drawn ui was fire just make the whole game hand drawn would be 100 times better on jehovas witness
The environments are very bland, the character is small and generic, it's action are desconected with the attacks that look like pasted on top, the same the enemies. The characters personalities don't show in the design. UI is pretty simple also.
on the topic of the artwork, while I'd need a much closer look to say specifically what I think could be improved, it does generally look quite underdeveloped.
Though, one specific thing that really stands out to me is the ground the player walks on. It being a completely flat color with no detail or shading makes it look really off. It is by far the least interesting thing to look at in any given shot, which is undesirable since it's where the gameplay is actually taking place.
hey so i really love the movement and attacking in this game would you ever consider making a tutorial on the movement and stuff?
The mayor problem with the pixel art is not the artistic technic itself but the desing of the characters. The proportions are too right. I would suggest to do research about character design and form theory (triangles are aggresive, squares are bold, circles are happy and unofenssive, etc). Your main characters all look pretty the same, you dont play too much with the cartoony proportions your current style allows. Maybe a character is tall and has a big torso but tiny legs, the other has a big head but is short and slim, and the other one has triangular big hips, etc. Obviously i would suggest that the character design tells itself how every character has to be played. If a character has a dash ability it should look agile, if it slower but bulkier, it should be bigger or thicker, etc.
Also, the perspective is a little bit off, for example, the basic crab enemy its drawn from a front perspective but the game camera is top-down.
Also the outline is inconsistent? The characters have it and i totally recommend you to keep using it in them, but some background elements dont have them and other do? for example, trees have it regardless that they are not important/interactible, but grass and tiles dont (The pilars with red eyes are some-what part of the background tile layer but they have outlines too)
A lot of pixel art games at this resolution have only 4-frame animations or so. The running animations feel weird because the arms are flailing and the legs are moving all about and it feels exaggerated in an uncanny way.
The pixel and high-res art mash-up can work REALLY well, but the characters' jutted out and awkward posing with the smooth and rounded off terrain makes the pixel art feel REALLY WEIRD.
Quick note about the art is that RIGHT AWAY, the very first thing I think when I see it is, "MS Paint."
You're the developer so you know more about the game, what you want, and art in general than I do, but I feel pretty confident that if the first thing a potential player thinks when he sees your art is that it feels unfinished, uncanny or ungood, then there's definitely a problem _somewhere._
Ok your #1 issiue. Is you think your right.
I've been told by lots of people that you should ditch your first idea cause "You have no idea what if fun or not yet"
the issue with the graphics are the empty boring green fields and there's also very little contrast to what the player should be looking at.
The ui where you select a character is also very bland
The character art isnt the best looking, and the giant crab with ruins on his back looks weird. The ruins look very out of place, like someone just attached ruins to his back as an afterthought.
Also maybe make the enemies look more like enemies, they look realy feiendly and adorable.
yea i like that you removed the combo system it did kinda suck good vid and I GOT FIRST COMMENT AND LIKE LETS GOOO
i like the art
utilize 2d lighting, could help look
PIXEL ART ADVICE:
Your grass is flat.
Never use a single color to fill up space.
It makes your game look like a 57th place gamejam game.
Look at other games pixel grass👍
To me personally the pixel art graphics just look boring and generic. The playable characters and environments just don't look visually interesting, if anything it looks like they were pulled from Terraria.
cuphead is a bullet hell with a parry. don't make "other people don't do that" your argument. it's not a good one even if cuphead wouldn't have a parry.
in general you should prefer logic over comparison and decision making by feeling. the first bullet hell ever didn't think "oh i am making this genre i just made up and this and that belongs to it and everything else is banned". no they just created a game they thought would be fun to play and they implemented concepts they think would be beneficial to the gameplay. i like parries a lot
The GUI it's fine, but needed more juice for me. Instead of copy the same style, why you don't try to make that the GUI look like part of the gameplay or scenario?
The pixel art background and enemies it's great, but the characters looks like are assets from another game. If you like pixel, keep doing pixel art. Maybe they need to have the same style that the enemies and don't be soon small. It's difficult to see them with so many thing around.
the people look edited in
Interesting devlog but the title is a bit misleading. What comment broke your game? The document? The combo system being commented out? I would have been a lot more invested in the video if its hook were more relevant to the content of the video, which is more about design decisions than it is about bug fixes. (they are only briefly mentioned)
I know it's generic algorithm stuff that every youtuber is doing now, which is a shame, but you could hook in your audience by talking about how game design flaws can be just as bad if not worse than compile errors or logic errors. (Maybe something like "My game's biggest mistake/flaw," etc. then expand upon the points you made about the rocky foundation leading to greater problems, a lot of people make the mistake of committing to a concept before even finding out if it's fun or doable.)
Either way, very interesting video.
My main dislike to the pixel art is it's... just there. Pixel art in of itself isn't a art style entirely. Like if you were to look at deltarune, Starbound, terraria, and Katana Zero they all have a style of their own with the backdrop, and character art. There was design intentions to make things look like they do, then they made that pixelated. Currently your game just looks like stock assets more then something designed with intention for a world.
Bro why is everyone yapping about the pixel art😭😭.
Ig the art lacks polish, or a character or a theme. like take celeste, if u show me a part of the screen at any time i can tell its celeste coz it has that style
I am not a pixel artist but i really really love pixel art, but in your game it look unprofessional.
Weezer cameo?
good
People are all over the place with their art advice. I see only one problem: The characters and enemies are fine, the background is generic and boring. Grass trees rocks. Big spaces of just green.
But why, Levin?
WTF does TH-cam keep deleting my comments for? I am not even saying anything bad, was just offering compliments, support and direction advice -_-.
Anyway, in less detail than I originally described, I said it's good you are refocusing the gameplay, because on the video you introduced the parry system it started to feel like your feature creep was getting out of hand, and you were adding stuff because you had seen it in other games and thought it was cool and not because it actually fit the game you are making. Then on the pixel art, I said I think your pixel art characters are actually fine, good even, that I believe the problem is they don't really fit the bland backdrops and terrain - and that now, before you've created levels, would be a good time to try to find an art-style for your terrain that works well with your character art,
Is saying that much okay, TH-cam? -_-
more than anything, the artwork is very generic. the main cast have uninspired designs, the colors are plain and highly saturated, and theres no depth or antialiasing incorporated into the linework. ive also seen someone mention the apparent lack of detail in the environments, which should be addressed
on top of that, you say that youre taking inspiration from the artwork used in persona 5 and celeste, but dont necessarily understand what makes that art direction work outside of just its visual appearance. persona 5’s plot heavily follows themes of rebellion and pushing back against a corrupt system, which is reflected in the ui’s sharp angles, strong reds contrasted against black and white, and just overall coolness factor. celeste, on the other hand, follows themes of overcoming personal barriers, showing instances of calm and relaxing areas to reflect the meditative nature of this journey as well as violent and chaotic moments that reflect the internal struggle. all this to say that you need to decide on a consistent theme for your game which various aspects of it, including the art direction, tie back to. you seem to be going for a beach or nautical theme, so id recommend expanding on that and making more direct ties to it
your art does not look bad alone but it looks bad when its all together in my opinion. you are good at art just you put multiple artstyles together and it had a bad result
2nd
dude atleast say somthing
@@BlockMainaic lol i just want to see if i can start a chain reaction of order of viewers