Graphical Update 2 (alpha 0.2)

Last time I upgraded the graphics of my game, they still didn't look great and were very inconsistent in style.

But now, I've taken as much time as possible to completely revamp and rework all graphical aspects of my game. This is graphical update 2.

First of all, to improve the graphics of my game, I need to see what makes games look great in the first place. I looked many examples such as the new versions of Gelli World, many modern AAA games and some 90s PC games (i really like the aesthetics of those games for some reason.)

You might think that the first thing I added was the day and night filters (orange and blue-sih tints respectively), but even if your game has ton of beautiful effects and lighting, it may still look jarring compared to the inconsistent, ms-paint looking graphics you'd see in pc game compilations for windows 2000.

How my game looked 3 years ago. --->

To upgrade the graphics of my game I needed to see what made it so ugly. Many people told me different things, but the one thing I saw repeatedly was that my artstyle did never match with any game graphics I drew. The main character would have one style, the tilesets another, etc.

My fix to this was to practice for 6 months doing pixel-art, looking for a style that matched what I wanted to do most. In the end I chose the style you see in the game, simple but easy-to-read foregrounds so that you can instantly tell what you can interact with or not and incredibly detailed backgrounds that don't distract the player much so that they can focus on the action.

After all of this, last thing was to spice everything up with a day and night cycle, the first introduction of a moon and sun to my game and new animations to complement the overall upgrade.

Only thing left to add, I forgot to make the day-and-night cycle actually cycle. Welp, guess for another time.