@Constantini Thanks, I'll likely revisit this idea at some point, this was cobbled together quite quickly to make the compo, & there's a lot of aspects that didn't fit this/didn't have time to impliment.

Cool style, I dig it!

@StevenM Thanks, you touched on a lot of my intention with this, I'm happy to see I was somewhat successful in conveying a number of these things. With the old WIP, it was a much more basic version of this lacking most of the detail and only using about five colours, mainly just blocked-out regions with a few triangular sections.

The main inspiration came from real life, direct experience with having Long Covid; there's a lot of symbolism in this piece towards the cornucopia of symptoms associated with LC, most of which I have to deal with on a daily basis & have had a very negative impact on even basic functionality. I've been LC for about 23 months now in total. Had to take a break from pixelart since I posted this piece, as I was too exhaused to do anything, chronic fatigue is one of the constant irritants this disease has 'gifted' me.

@amberMechanic Thank you!

The splash screen being framed as this blank white with the title and main graphic overlayed across it is extremely striking, like a movie poster. Presumably this character is an anthropomorphication of the disease, but from the neck, visor and facial skin rendering they appear almost biomechatronic, while the hair and the tone of red on the face gives the impression of a Greek god. In that context the background almost comes off as a receding wall of flesh and machine as well, like something from the first Metroid (trying to convey Giger in 8-bit form). It's one of the best entries for this week IMO.

Did you post this WIP doodle online? Did you have any direct or subconscious inspirations behind it?

This is a lovely image doing so many interesting things with the colour palette.