Which style for a game is better? First or second one? (I am making a simple platformer game with minimalistic graphics)
Gametrees and foliage floating above ground looks wrong to me.
Player and other entities are another story. The blue warrior on the right is more visible, when above ground.
If their position is pixel-accurate, I'd want to see entities moved only one pixel down
(looks like the separation is 2 pixel apart from the ground).
Edit: Rewording
Hmmm this will be first level so it will be quite different for level 2 which will be at night. Also I will add some lightening so Player - blue warrior will pop out more.
Without is better
without, but I think there's literally a middle ground here, your assets like the magic character have been moved up 2 pixels each. maybe you need to move them up 1 pixel?
but i think I'd prefer the first non ground separation mode anyway.
Without for sure!
It doesn't really make sense to me to see things floating above ground for a game. Especially the player and enemies
The ground separation is so jarring that I angrily clicked on this post in my feed to advocate against it. I don't play platformers, but PLEASE do it without separation.
I will ;)
Ground separation for non-interactable objects, no separation for interactable objects/obstacles and other characters. I like the separation but I'm also a huge proponent for easily identifiable "play".
Yes this is a problem, when it comes to purely artistic choice separation is better but it will be a game so I we need to think about strictly in terms of gameplay.
What about in between? There are 2 pixel difference between the two images.
Without. In this case, separation feels like a misguided attempt to solve a different problem, which is lack of contrast between environments and characters. Obviously, there's only so much you can do with a relatively low number of available pixels and colors, and classic games often suffered from the same issue. But there are ways to highlight character sprites, make environments feel more in the background, etc. Try playing with colors a little more to achieve the effect of separation rather than actual physical separation.
Love the art style! Exactly my forte. What are your references, especially for animation. Are there any builds I can play and see animations?
Hi. Thank you very much for appriciation. The game is in an early stage of development so probably it will change a lot both in terms of artstyle and level design. I got an inspiration from V3X3D assets that I bought and so far I changed it little bit to fit my concept of a game. It was from start meant to be very minimlaistics in terms of graphics. Actualy characters that I made are only 8x8 canvas size. I will post a game when it will be finished for free in my itch.io page: https://devkxm.itch.io/
This is exactly up my forte. How do you animate?
I am doing animation sprite sheet in Aseprite, then I set up it in the Animator in Unity. This 8x8 canvas is pretty hard when it comes to animation because you are very limited in terms of pixel placement, but I think I did a pretty good job with it. Currently, I have all the animations for different states. Here is a walking animation, for example :)
Without looks more natural to me tbh
Without is better