Lets talk about art, which is always political

Designing the tileset for Mosblobo was a huge learning experience. I went through several variations before landing on the version. At first, my approach to making the different tiles was very "realistic" in approach. By that I mean I would have a top layer with some grass, a layer before that with multiple layers of various shades of dirt, and then under that I would use rocky tiles. I would arrange these in a way that made sense for the hill or valley I was trying to make. It looked pretty decent, but it made making levels a huge pain and I found myself constantly having create new variations of tiles for various situations. I realized I needed a style that would allow me to spam tiles at will while still looking good. I looked around at various other 2d platformers to see how they design their structures, before I remembered that Sonic CD used these very odd geometric shapes for its walls and platforms. This inspired me to create my own "puzzle dirt" which are a bunch of tiles with a jigsaw puzzle-esque pattern that I can spam all over the grid in any fashion I desire

I was pretty happy with my tileset, but there was something just a little off about it. It felt like the foreground and background were on different planets and I couldn't figure out exactly why. I wasn't too fond of the shade of green I was using for the grass, as the various shades I tried either looked too similar to Mosblobo or just looked plain bad. I probably could've found a shade of green that worked with more trial and error, but I realized that if I made the grass teal it would look much more in line with the background, which features various muted shades of green. My inspiration for this was the planet Namek from Dragonball Z, a surreal planet with blue grass and green skies.  It was a very simple change but I think it makes the game look a lot more cohesive. It also makes Mosblobo just a little bit easier to distinguish from the ground and helps to sell the idea you are in a strange world, which opens up all sorts of avenues artistically.  I wonder if Akira Toriyama made the grass blue because Namekians are green just like Mosblobo.

Here's a link for a song I'm working on for the game! I'm pretty happy with the direction its going in, but I have a couple issues with it. 1, the song is a little disjointed. I like that there's some tension and relief, but the pretty part needs to sound a little sillier to bring it in line with the rest of the song. If this wasn't a song for a game I would like it, and I don't think it sounds like a different song, but I want more consistency from a platformer soundtrack. Maybe I'll keep the pretty melody but add some goofy percussion. My other issue is that the kick drum sounds annoying. I think I tried too hard to get it to cut through the mix and ended up with something harsh.
https://myleskerrigan.bandcamp.com/track/mosblobo-song