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[AeornFlippout]

Hey all, honest feedback time. So, my friend John sent me a paintover color treatment of our game Race The Sun. He's been pushing for us to add color for some time!

We'd originally started out with a sort of monochrome yellow, and eventually decided to try a bold grey scale look, with bits of color for important gameplay elements.

Here's how the game looks now:


And here's the paintover:


What're your impressions? Does the latter seem more inviting, or more generic? Which would you be more likely to click on if you saw it in an ad or something?

(note, the florescent glow on the rings was a side effect of his technique, probably wouldn't be representative of what it looked like in the game.)

[vids]

Paintover is more inviting. Don't let that sun get too bright though, it's just about perfect right now.

[bitbutter]

Side-by-side in this thread the colourful one looks more appealing, but the more somber one would be more likely to get my attention in an advert or blog post--precisely because it's unusual, it'd prime me to expect other bold (and interesting) design choices too.

[AeornFlippout]

Thanks guys.

I've been thinking a lot about the grey look too, and how to improve it.
I really like the super bold look of The Unfinished Swan with its stark contrast. I'm wondering if I can just push the extremes of the light values apart a bit and make it look a little less drab...

[Binario]

Monochromatic looks more appealing to me, grey its cool but don't stop there, you have a vast array of colors to play with. Imagine frist level grey, 2nd blueish (tron if u like, but please dont) 3rd green, orange, yellow... whatever, you can even swap palettes buy upgrades or even by proximity of the sun. I'm just blabbing stuff but my point is that monochromatic is cool and you have a lot more of that than grey and yellow.

I like what you have going on =D

[Sergi]

Try a middle ground: a colored version, but instead of using three different colors, try using just one. Grayscale plus one color would look less rainbowish than the second image you have. The extra color could change while you play depending on what happens in the game, or something.

[Gregg Williams]

I like the grey, but the sun stuff in that grey picture, is pretty bad imo.

[vids]

I found the monochromatic image too washed out. Perhaps you could try and bring in some more contrast? One or two extra colors maybe?

[starsrift]

The top one looks boring, to me.

/ that was easy feedback

[Erobotan]

i prefer the gray one, it gives me the feeling like i'm flying over some hi-tech post apocalypse city ^^. The red sun is a nice touch :D

both screenshots are cool though.

[oahda]

They both look good. Can't really make up my mind. They do convey pretty different feelings. The gray one feels... sterile, I guess, which is not at all a bad thing as long as it suits the story and pursuit of the game. It makes me feel that the plane is fighting in a war. The colourful one, on the other hand, feels warm, and the effect is great, and it feels more like a cozy sandbox or mini game.

[gimymblert]

The color version has better composition too, the cloud are distracting, make a grayscale version of the colored one and see what happen (do not use desaturate by any mean)

[impulse9]

I prefer the paintover version. Just looks cooler.

[Noogai03]

Paintover looks better.

[PlanetKiller]

Try grayscale with coloured edging.

[failrate]

Depending on your gfx fu, you could transition between color schemes at different intervals.