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What about statues?

I was thinking of using these textures in a couple different castle areas, so I would adjust the colors to make them look distinct from each other.
I was thinking of having the windows be a third palette and then having lightning strike randomly, and the windows flash when that happens. (Well, maybe just in one of the castles. But I guess the other ones could use the same palette as the foreground.)

Torches? Ooh, I like that idea.

Statues sounds good too; I was thinking about adding suits of armor. Also, crests, curtains, and some crossbars for the lower areas to make them look like a dungeon.
But of course, before I spend two weeks with all of the detail, I want to make sure the basic design looks good.

I was inspired by Batman's maps, how they look so dark and moody by having a lot of blank tiles, and the area that do have tiles fade to black.

Any thoughts about the stairs?

You could always use the brown somewhere else.


The original stairs are the best. I don't really get the back on them though, I'd just get rid of that part.

I wouldn't change it, as it is now, it has perfect warm/cold color contrast. Red/Blue.
Changing that to similar colors would just make it monochrome, which is less visually interesting.

In color theory, you generally want to grab colors from the opposite end of the color spectrum for contrast, or, at least something relatively close.

(Insert color wheel here)

You want it in reason though... Half of pictures I've seen in games, movies, etc. don't fully go from one side of the color wheel to the next, as it doesn't make any sense 90% of the time, and I feel that this falls within that percentage.

It's like this picture: (They're way to high resolution to show here)

http://img14.deviantart.net/518f/i/2006/118/6/9/ocean_sunset_by_ryafacan.jpg

Versus this picture:

http://www.hdwallpapersnew.net/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/ocean-sunset-high-resolution-wallpaper-for-desktop-background-images.jpg

There's so much unnecessary contrast in the second picture that it almost looks unnatural.

Like I said though, he could insert torches. That would make more sense and look more visually appealing for contrast in my opinion, but I personally feel that it's pretty good as it is.

The BG here is purple, not blue, so having a brown/red foreground is fine. It's up to preference here, do you want purple to blue or purple to red?

Even if the bg were stark blue, Castlevania regularly put bright orange blocks over a blue background.

I know brown is a mixture of red and blue, but I don't think that this brown is as close to the purple as the blue is. It's preference, but I personally think it looks better. The brown with a more red background would probably look good, and you could use it as a palette swap.


I always thought it looked awkward though, as if the level takes place in a bathroom at a Mexican restaurant.

Considering how many bricks people shit when they play it...

You know, if this were inverted, it really would look like Castlevania: