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[letsap]

Without a doubt, the first one.

[MaloEspada]

I also vote for the first one. Less saturated, doesn't take away the player's attention.

[mokesmoe]

I agree. 1st picture.

[Xion]

faust.

[Afinostux]

Funny, I like the third one.

Keep in mind, the other way to get the player's attention is movement, and honestly there are a deluge of fine pixel arts with washed out backgrounds out there. Washing out the background visually diminishes its importance, which might be counter to what your goals with an exploration game. Depends on what you want the player to notice.

It's a trend that was sort of started by cave story and knytt (also fine exploration games), but it's not the only way to do it by any means. Basically, think of what you want to convey rather than what looks good in screenshots.

[alspal]

I think the last one is the best, seems to have the best distinction between foreground/background.

[deathtotheweird]

I agree with ZeuglinRush. The last one.  The second one is good too, I would probably say that I prefer that one if I saw it in action (playing moving and jumping around, and enemies). But you can't go wrong with the third one.

[Kingel]

The first one. I think it makes perfect sense to use low contrast for backgrounds, not because everyone else is doing it, but since we associate low contrast with distance. That's how it is in nature, after all. A landscape will fade as you get more air in between it and the viewer.

[William Broom]

I like the third one for a different reason - because it's darker it looks more like it's deep underground, whereas the upper two look more like they could be just below the... er... the surface...

[Hempuli‽]

Thanks for all these wonderful comments! It seems though that the opinion scatters a bit, especially between the first and the third one. I guess I'll go with the first one, but make the tiles a tad darker and more contrasted; they look quite reddish and chocolatey at the moment.

[sergiocornaga]

I think the background should be a lot darker, so it's good to hear you are doing that.

[Hempuli‽]

I think the background should be a lot darker, so it's good to hear you are doing that.

Actually I meant the wall tiles. Oh well.

[Loren Schmidt]

Hey, it's nice to see this coming along. Keep up the good work!

[JLJac]

That black detail in the bkg, you should have more of that. I think that all the middle pieces should be like that, so the blue stones are just borders around the actual terrain. Kind of thick borders, though, like in that first screenie.

This is because the rocks can look repeated, but the blue can not. The colour is great!

Also, this is looking super incredible

[skyy]

Hempuli mind sharing any details on the tech. behind this? I didn't see any on the past posts but what framework/API/libs and language are you using to dev this? It's looking dangerously delicious at the moment. Great job as always Hempuli.

 

[deathtotheweird]

I am half sure that he is using MMF. He did for some of his other games at least, just taking a guess.

[Hempuli‽]

Indeed, it's MMF 2. So nothing else to add there, I fear. Yes yes, MMF's all lame and why I don't use Construct right yeah.

JLJac: That is a nice suggestion! But does the background tile look too repetitive? I thought of using it as the background and then adding some separate, bigger stones near the borders as detail backdrops.

Oh, and about the game: I haven't wanted to work on the other parts until all the tilesets are in, so I'll still have to wait a bit until Cosmic_Fool can start working on them again. O've already added and changed some enemies though, and also planned a lot.

[sergiocornaga]

What news?

[Hempuli‽]

What news?

In a week Cosmic_Fool'll be able to start working on the rest of the tilesets, until then the game will be quite much frozen. Don't worry, not going to abandon this! I've got a nice amount of ideas ready for it.

[Loren Schmidt]

Keep ticking

Best wishes.