— can you give me some examples for the paper-cut-effect? Like in the screenshot below? Do you have some certain scenes in mind or is it a rather general effect throughout the whole game? maye some screenshots or room-coordinates (you can see them when pressing tilde, bottom left) would be really helpful.
One thing thats important for me to note though: Its not all pre-rendered 3D, actually i would say that 70% are drawn, especially most platforms, bg-elements. Clearly, the main-protagonist, some enemies and all the particles (fire) are done using Blender - normally i spend many hours afterwards with drawing and refining in 2D. But as you rightly noted, some elements still need tweaking (regarding colors, shadow-levels, contrast, etc...) to blend in more. Again, some specific examples would be really helpful
Regarding the (choppy) animations: I'm not really good at doing them, actually i would say i suck;) And honestly, doing them in a rendering program is even more beyond my skills and would consume too much time overall - i'm sure i would not even be able to finish a demo when trying to go that way. So resource-wise, thats one flaw you unfortunately have to live with, if i ever get to finish "Tornaby".
On the other hand: I do them each manually frame by frame, which somehow still connects to the intended 90ies feeling. Making HD-graphics was good for me, but i still wanted to keep certain aspects (mechanics, feel) true to those games back then - im not sure if doing it all 100% percent using pre-rendered 3D would not stretch the thing too far (originally, i did not want to use any 3D-tools at all - it is sometimes just a help making certain aspects looking not too crappy)
The dust is surely one thing i will change soon;)
The menu is a quick design for the demo - which will look better in the finished version.
As always, thank you all for your really helpful input!