I’m really considering completely overhauling the art style when it’s done. I’ve done it this way to improve production time, I’m capable of much better but since I have to draw out each level I did it this way.
But before I actually go through with changing it, is it currently appealing?
Well first off, you should probably post samples of your current style compared to the style you want to change it to, so we can see the comparison and judge what would be better
In the meantime, here’s an approach you could use that I’ve seen done that could possibly give you the best of both worlds
If you look at the development cycle for the game The Long Dark, you can see that throughout the public alpha they pretty much replaced almost every art asset in the entire game. They started with simple, effectively placeholder art for almost everything, from the menus to the enviornments to the items, and over time they iterated over all of the different art assets, changing them as they made better ones. They’ve changed the pause menu at least 3 times so far. I believe Kerbal Space Program used a similar approach as well from their earliest alpha versions to their 1.0 release.
So following that philosophy, you use the current art style to get the game working, make all your levels and get the game feature locked and everything, and then go back over it and if you see assets that you think could look better, improve them piece by piece until you have the look you want.
Like mentioned above, I’d have to see an example of a new art style to see if it’s better, but I quite like some of those scenes.
The ones with more stuff going on in the background as opposed to when they are all one colour look the best.
This is what the new art style would probably look like
Yea, I think I will create some background things to have more detail