Cool! What did you write it in?

FYI, the pixel art being scaled with some kind of filter is quite a turnoff to a lot of folks here. We like to see crisp pixels, ya know?

Hey guys, thanks for giving the game a try...

ScaryPotato, set the scale to normal and then double the view port size for better scaling without blurring.

Yes, it works!! Okay, so at long last, and after the disappointing previous post, here are the 100% scale screenshots from the game! This portion of the game is done finally, so if you have a little spare time, I'd really appreciate you giving my game a try:)

Hi Manupix, thanks for the comment! I did originally try giving the shadow effect a colour, but thought that it looked a little strange in the area where it was transparent. It just seemed to make the graphics underneath look a little off. Not to mention, all the stuff in the heads up display looked much nicer on a pure black background
As far as how it's done, that's a secret...nah! It is one big image that is centered on the player no matter where on the screen they are. I used a gradient tool in Photoshop for the image's alpha values. It seems to me that way back when I was just starting this game, someone suggested using small tiles with varying alpha values, and I'm sure that makes for a smaller file, but I was set on the notion of having a nice smooth transition and this was the only way I could figure it out.