I'm looking for some opinions on this graphics style. I've never went for something quite like this, but I'm thinking it is somewhat different. I'm actually doing this using 3d renders with toon shading to get this look. The only reason I'm not putting outlines on it is because it is in space and space is mostly black anyway and I don't think another color outline would look right.

What do you guys think? The game is a top-down space shooter that plays similar to Asteroids, but will have a variety of enemies, weapons, levels, etc... Would the style fit, assuming everything matches? I know screenies don't do it justice, but everything will be able to be animated. The asteroids already do, though it doesn't show yet. The aliens will have animations that will be easy to make in the same style, as all I'm going to have to do it is move polys around(either with bone animation, vertex shape keys, or both). And I have all the power of Blender as well, so I can animate things like the colors at will too.

The backgrounds will be similar as to what is on the screen, but with more variety of stars, and different colors too. I have made a nice base to work with that will let me easily change how many stars, what variety and colors etc... It isn't a "Star Generator" exactly, rather simply Blender particle settings.

Thanks in advance. Once I get some actual gameplay going I'll be glad to post a video to get better feedback, but I'd like to go ahead and get what I can.

OK, I finally got back to this(time is limited when your boss is on vacation sometimes...and I'm lazy sometimes).

After some effort, I couldn't get the toony style to work that well. It seems like the Asteroids looked OK, but I couldn't get anything to look good on the ship, or the alien. So I'm switching to a more "generic" style with the same geometry. It tends to work better from what I can see.

Any feedback for this? I would appreciate it.

Any feedback for this? I would appreciate it.

It looks kinda dark. How does it perform when the game is being played, with dozens of enemies and hostile projectiles on the screen? More than anything else, the primary function of all graphics in bullet hell games is to accurately communicate the state, position, direction and speed of each on-screen element.

I'm considering going with Unity5 instead of GMStudio for this project. By the same token, I'm using 3d models and a custom shader(Shaderforge) to attempt to get a similar look. The reason for this consideration is that I wanted to have pre-renders of plenty of directions for the ship and enemies, and not that I'm worried about the space requirements(as there is usually plenty of space), rather I'd have some offset looks if I expect to shoot things out of the tip of the ship, since it would pick the closest direction, unless I wanted to literally make all 360 degrees, which would be too excessive in my opinion. I also like other advantages as well of using Unity and 3d for this instead of pre-renders, for example blending animation instead of having to pre-render different combinations if I don't want to limit the game in that aspect, and there are other benefits too, like being able to get some specular highlights to go along with the cel-shading for some special effects.

So, I have made a nifty little shader. I'm trying to get some feedback in another place as far as making it perform better(though I haven't tested performance yet). But I'm posting here in order to get some feedback on the current look. There is a single light for the primary cel-shading, and then there are a couple point lights(that would normally be used with bullets and explosions), one green and one blue, which you can see on both the ship and the Asteroid.

The first image is a closeup shot, just to get an idea how bigger things will look. The majority of things won't be this big, but some bosses may very well be.

The second image is showing what things will probably look like at a more reasonable size for the objects.

So, how about the new look? Do you think it will be better than the other one? And do you think it will be worth going full 3d like this? I'm thinking it is better so things are done real-time instead of pre-rendered, allowing the separate angles to be rendered right, and other things I mention above, but what do you guys think? Thanks in advance for your opinions.

The blue light reflecting onto that asteroid looks pretty sharp. I would stick with that graphics style.