Playing around a bit ... thought I'd share it (not only to show off
) but to back up earlier point - the 'refinement' is assumed and not proved. The following is a picture with high saturation/dark backdrop that better feels like Karamoon. Next to it is the low saturation backdrop with high saturation foreground. The latter would work for these "refinements" but lacks atmosphere. The former requires sprites which lack the value range (ie. dark bits) to work, which was criticised. Although this doesn't prove that SOTB or SOTB2 can't be improved on.
I think the Pixelation discussion and challenge did not pay attention to overall design, which is very important when u actually try and make a game. Some people did mentioned the point though:
"In the games that Psygnosis released during this era, including Sotb 1 and 2, Ork... and several more, the fact that the foreground was less saturated than the parallax background constituted to a feeling of otherworldliness, which I still find quite unique and.. kind of spooky, exciting." jj naas
"I noticed when I did my put high contrast sprite remake over one of the actual SotB backgrounds that large parts of it disappeared. All the sprites in the game are drawn with colours from the upper half of the palette. This is an interesting reversal of high contrast sprites on low contrast backgrounds." lackey