Spelunky comic found!

e: For the third time, apparently!

Alhazred, by Donald Tyson. 

There are no tricks to it, one just has to learn discipline.

I'm from the US. Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, but I consider Bellingham, Washington my true home. I'm moving back in a couple months. It's got a lot of culture, and the downtown area is great.

[e: Found work! Sorry guys, I'm taken.]

Pixel artist/animator/concept artist here, looking to team up with a programmer for a small, but visually decadent game project!

Nothing big- something that could be pumped out in a day, or even in hours. Open for all kinds of projects- just please, don't start something you're not willing to finish!

Little sample of work:
Old art thread: http://forums.tigsource.com/index.php?topic=5165.0

Shoot me a message or email!

e: Found work! Sorry guys, I'm taken. 

That was strangely beautiful.

Oh man, this game could really be a gem! There are so many good things about the gameplay(I'm addicted!), but I'll focus on the problems-

-The little stop before the bossfight is sort of annoying- I don't know if it's on purpose or a bug, but it has a way of killing the atmosphere.

-The dithering on the tiles seems a bit sloppy, and there's no real variation in each level's tiles. Try some diagonal tiles, thin "pillar" tiles, triangles, etc!

-The gradient background looks unprofessional, along with the anti-aliased lettering here and there. Go for a consistantly anti-aliased style! Embrace it!

- Boss fights seem to ramp up in difficulty drastically, starting with the spinning armored fellow. Might want to make him easier, or make the preceding bosses harder!

Great work so far!

Mostly, the visuals could use some tweaking.

It would be a neat system for an MMO, and with such simple graphics, lag might not be a problem. I'm glad you all like the colors, this super saturated style is kind of new for me.

As an artist and wannabe game designer, I usually think of the gameplay and mood as the very first things, and then I focus the graphical style around that. I usually play the game part way in my head, before deciding on a definite graphical style.

I was recently playing Lyle in Cube sector, and really dug the graphical style. I wanted something bright, eye-catching, and with a limited color palette to give that old-school feel. Mostly, I just wanted things to pop! Color explosions! Eye candy! So I decided to use saturated colors against a black background.

I was thinking of starting it as a deceptively traditional oldschool shoot-em-up, but with a twist. The hordes of enemies would occasionally drop special powerups(in varying degrees of rarity) that allowed the player to buy special abilities for the character. The abilities will do almost anything, like allowing the protagonist to store a certain number of health powerups for later usage if he's full on health, the ability to hop on enemies to damage them instead of just chucking sharp objects at them, increased "flicker" immunity-to-damage time after character is hit, resistance to getting knocked backwards through the air after an enemy runs into the character, a higher jump, wall running, and so forth.

Instead of running all over to find the exact spot where the double jump power-up is, he might simply kill a few enemies as he explores other areas and then buy the double-jump ability with the loot he attains. Basically, this system will allow "flexible exploration", and the player will never be at a dead end, wondering where to go. If a player is getting his ass wooped by mega-monsters in a certain area, he only needs to "level up", as it were. But unlike a straight up rpg, you can run around in a "high level" area without being insta-killed, by relying on reflexes and skill instead of the power of the character and chance. If a player wants a challenge, he can give it to himself. And if he feels like his character is too strong, he can just flip the little off switch next to each ability in the menu screen!

After I figured on all that stuff is about when I decided to make some tiles and sprites.

Creating a protagonist- Thought processes:

-Ok, he's got to be bright, and high contrast, so the player can see him no matter where he is. Robots are cool. Lets do red and white. Yeah, a shoot-em-up sounds good, lets give him a gun. A golden gun. It's fun working with only the limited GIF palette in MS Paint.

Wait, fuck. White skinned robot, red, gun, low resolution, metroid-ey type setting...

- Ok, now he's green. I'm gonna cover up those eyes. Everybody uses the vertical black slit eye design nowadays. He gets a visor. But he looks a bit goofy.

-Ok, different look. Ehhh...he doesn't seem to have much personality. I'm going to go ahead and make him a non-silent hero, so he needs a complete face.

-Ok, a mouth, red hair, there's some personality. It goes well with the green. I am digging the color scheme.

-He still reminds me of a thinly disguised Quote. He doesn't get a gun. He gets throwing knives. And he will be able to flip around like a ninja and run up walls.

Yes sir. MS Paint.