@Error014: This is one screen of your game, which is not as awesome to me as the other ones. Here are the reasons why I feel so:

1.) the reflections are a nice thing, but they break the design of your game. Your game is made of pixelated graphics, so that the visible texels are sharp and the outlines of the geometry are sharp. The reflection in return is pixelated, too, but in an unsharp and blurry way. Even the low-res sprites of the torches are made even more low-res in the reflection. I would massively increase the resolution of the render target so that the outlines of the geometry are at least sharp again and, the better, reflections of sharp texels are visible, too.

2.) This is an ice cave, isn't it? I'm sorry, but it doesn't feel so. The first reason for that is because the surrounding level background is black. If it where white or ice-blue, it would greatly enhance the frosty feeling. Plus, it is too blue. It is simply astonishing that so many games try to make something look icy just by adding a blue tint. Sure, an ice-blue color should be dominant but a reflected and unabsorbed light should illuminate the scene more and make it more white-ish. In your case, the blue color is really dark for an ice tone.

3.) The snow flakes are very soft, have you tried to use pixelated ones? One pixel snowflakes maybe?

4.) The same for the fire around the player: it certainly breaks the design when you use soft-fire flames for the fighting and then you have pixelated flames in the same scene.

5.) I don't know if you are using drop shadows, but the shadow of the floating "thing" at the lower left of the player has a drop shadow that is certainly too small wink

Your game is great but I think this screen reveals some design flaws, I'm sorry..

[EDIT] One solution to the reflections could be the "fake-way" by doubling geometry beneath the floor like in the good old days. Removes the necessarity to re-render the scene and you have perfect relfection in an instant.

Last edited by HeelX; 02/09/13 10:22.