The VG Resource

hi, I thought I'd post a screen of my game I've been working on for about 3 years.

I'm just posting a screenshot to give you a look at one stage,

If you have any constructive criticism, feedback, etc. , go ahead, bare in mind this is a work in progress and the graphics are intended to be improved and nothing in the pic is final. 

while nothing is supposed to be final, my complaints are that it's kinda difficult to separate the character from the background due to both being saturated (bright). Usually lowering the saturation on things that are not interactive objects help.

The HUD needs a lot of hork, the elements are placed randomly and without any sense of cohesiveness. Games usually place those elements in a similar style and with even placement as to make it easier to understand - while not being a sore thumb compared to the rest of the game. For example, the pixeled Times New Roman font doesn't really work at all for this kinda game, nor it doesn't really make sense to put coins, lives and score in a place far away from the middle. It's rather unnatural

as for the individual graphics, they look kinda ugly due to the amount of stray pixels and unneeded dithering, such as in the palm tree. Dithering shouldn't get in the way and should be used for gritty textures, in small amounts. Avoid single pixel dots on sprites because they don't add detail or quality at all.

I know the HUD is terrible - the right side of the HUD is not even started. I'm going to completely redo it... It just looks like that for testing--- I know everything is placed randomly at the moment, it wasn't a purposeful decision .

ill try and lower the background but I don't want to generally lower the saturation too much because it removes the color and i wanted the game to be colorful. But I recognize it's difficult to separate the character from the background - ive known that for awhile. I tried lowering the brightness - but that didnt help much, ill try lowering saturation .

Dithering , yes i used way too much. I basically just learned to do dithering so I overused it- and I found it was a way of hiding my otherwise lackluster skill lol. I will definitely need to work on the palm tree- was never happy with that trunk I just did it quick to put it in the game.

You can help differentiating the sprites from background by giving the plater an outline. Many games do it and it could work well with some tests.

why is tinkerbell there?

Because I wanted to have a fairy like Navi from Ocarina of Time but I havent been able to make a one that doesnt look terrible.

Here's an updated screenshot showing the new HUD , and much improved football helmet .