We realized that we could really make the background artwork go off in any direction, as long as the playable space was still basically a grid. The game's story was pretty vague at this point, and I was using some generic religious/fantasy imagery as placeholders.. i still like that entombed demon.

March 16, 2026 - 18:05 UTC

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This mockup was where I finally figured out how the game should look. I stopped trying to do either a digital painting or traditional pixelart, and started trying to make everything look like a pen-and-ink drawing, done with a 1-pixel brush. Sort of the guiding principle for the rest of the game.
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I shouldn't even invite comparison to the GOAT but Hellboy was a big inspiration for some of the early levels.. I really tried to limit myself to as few colors as possible, allowing for lots of solid black, and using gradients and "soft" brushes sparingly
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