Topic: Could I have feedback on the art of my game?

I'm making a major update to a game i created on itch, and that involves lightening backgrounds instead of making them near pitch-black in the first 7 rooms, adding background elements, a new ability, speedrun timer, a new area etc!

How good do these screenshots look?
I'm looking mostly for feedback on the Art, the Background Scenery, How good the gradients of red match the other gradients, etc but any feedback is welcome!

Thanks for your time.
[I will be updating this thread if i need more feedback]

Note: I will not provide any links in this thread as that can be deemed advertising, but you can find the link in my profile description if you're curious!

(Tagging @antdickens so he can give the ok)

In the meanwhile, I would advice you to use a more descriptive title, as we do have a rule against vague titles.

@Eel Alright, I updated the title to be a bit more descriptive

The outline to the scenery in the background is far too close to the outline of the scenery in the foreground and I think you lose some sense of depth because of it.

@Eel yep, all fine by me

I think the foreground red is too harsh, it's a bit hard to look at

Yes, perhaps a softer shade of red would help. The character also gets lost, I think it would be worth considering making it entirely white, or adding a white outline to it.

@GrailUK I don't think its all too bad, i was aware of this so i tried to make the BG a darker shade of red while the foreground is a bright shade. I'll see if i can make some adjustments though to make depth more visible

@sForzan theres nothing i can really do about the ground terrain being bland, i was going to add some good detail to it but i was having exporting issues with those tiles and since i was making it for a game jam, i ended up just scrapping those and embracing the simple terrain

Think of the background as some sort of super-massive cave (the top can help visualize this but its not entirely in view in these images) that also has some large mountains in the cave due to how big it is.

@Dogorilla Hm, fair point. I just wanted to use a more vibrant red instead of a washed-out one for the foreground personally.
You can always turn down the brightness of the screen to help, though i might add a saturation slider in the V2 update to also help

@Eel I cant really make any changes to the character because
1. Lore reasons; In this universe the characters come from different kingdoms centered around different colors (red kingdom, blue kingdom, etc), and the main character in this game is from the Red Kingdom, making it so he has to be primarily red.
2. Since i created the character in procreate, and procreate has terrible exporting for pixel art, its nearly impossible to make changes to the character without tediously exporting around 10 sprites, replacing the current sprites, making them not blurry, etc.
I appreciate the feedback though!

Also, as a quick side note: the character only really blends in a bit in the red area (which is 10 rooms), the other 20 rooms of the game take place in orange and blue areas where the red character is easy to see.

Overall, thanks for the feedback everybody!

@DiamondCore Good luck with your game

The style is fine, but the red on red on red is a bit blinding.

@GrailUK thanks!

@FishyS Alright, thanks for the feedback! The red-on-red is only 1/3 of the game, the other 2/3 are different colored areas

I've made the background for the bonus world of my game, how is it?

The colours are very invasive, the foreground is not really detailed enough

Perhaps adding a soft blur to the background might give it a nice effect. With some parallax scrolling for extra fanciness. It would make it somewhat like looking into a 3D box.

@Princess_Lilly The lack of detail was intentional (refer to a previous reply)
I’ll probably add a desaturation slider in the major update so it’s less invasive

@Eel The BG actually did have a soft blur originally, but I turned it off. I could readd it pretty easily though so I might do that.
Although I can’t do parallax scrolling, as the original BG file is just one layer

I am in no way educated on what goes into this or anything, but from the standpoint of just a gamer, it looks fine, except the red is too much red. I feel like I'm looking at a Virtual Boy game. The orange you show later fixes this, with the white outline rather than it being more orange. The background looks like it's actually more in the background to me in the orange pic because of the white. Something to contrast the red would be way easier on the eyes.

@Cotillion Alright, I’ll see what I can do

I’m currently working on a singular piece of concept art for a much more detailed monochromia

I will probably swap out the sprite of the basic bright red ground with a more eye-appealing one, and I’ll probably add a white sparkling effect in between the background and character to add a distinction or something
I’ve also realized that the sRGB is probably not 100% on my laptop, so I have to keep that in mind from now on.

If I ever make my game into a fully-realized commercial product, I may just have some sort of story element like “The green kingdom and the orange kingdom forged a bond with each other” to have each world be much more detailed then a single-color

The red does a number on my eyes, but I do like how you used brighter red so I could see the platforms! But I still think the red is too much. Sorry if this sounded rude.

@Snatcher No, that’s not rude at all, thanks for the feedback!

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(general post, not replying to anybody):

Getting closer to being done with the concept art…
Character outline doesn’t really fit, so I’ll fix that soon