So I've been making steady progress with painting up the backgrounds these last couple of months. The next couple weeks I'll be taking a break from this to concentrate on sketching out the concepts for the next island in the game (did I not mention that there were separate islands!?...guess not, silly me!).

The 2nd island is going to be a far brighter affair, the 1st is relatively crowded with NPCs, speech and a little handholding. The 2nd will have more in the way of hint-free games and little toys to find and play with. There will also be far fewer NPCs, I want this to be an island that the player feels they are exploring for themselves. The first island has a dense English forrest appearance, the second will be more about bright and more overgrown vegetation.

Been playing Fable II an awful lot, something I find really engaging in that game is just travelling around and seeing the sights. On the one hand, I'd love my game to have a real sense of scale, on the other hand I can't forget that I'm ultimately trying to design something that people can drop in and out of...and more importantly 'get something out of' without a huge time investment!

Dense & Instantly Gratifying Vs Sparse & Absorbing?