You should make Goomba's mouth black like his eyebrows because you can't see it at all.
Other than that, it's looking rather improved.
I don't think the problem is that he is using "waaay to many colors", but that he's not using a better pallete. This one is dull and boring, and the contrast is so low that it's hard to define depth. Also, the banding with the shadning on the actual chess piece part could be remade..
Oh you're right, earlier it looked like it was 8 colors in the snout alone, now that I look at it again, you're right, it's just considerably dull and the contrast is very low as you said.