Level Backgrounds

Whilst I personally would have been happy with nothing but black backgrounds for all the levels, as it fits the minimalist aesthetic whilst avoiding cluttering the game screen and potentially confusing the player, the rest of the team has been very adamant about their inclusion. I thus considered a number of possible concepts for background designs, my primary concern being to avoid busying the game screen resulting in player confusion.

CIRCUITRY BACKGROUND
The first concept was simply something that aims to match the in game graphics with the menu graphics; incorporating the circuitry aesthetic into the game world. Addiotionaly altering the standard neutral grey colour scheme of the platforms to the dark green used previously. Whilst working relatively well, I don't feel the use of the green coloring alone marries the two aesthetics completely. I would preferably like to incorporate more of the circuitry design into the game world to better refine the overall aesthetic, though the complexity level of doing such a thing is quite high and result in redesigning a lot of the game.

SIMPLE GRADIENT BACKGROUND
This is a very basic design which keeps the minimal aesthetic and avoids confusing the game screen. It also serves a secondary function of illustrating the gravity orientation, should it appear different from the norm.

PICTURE IN PICTURE BACKGROUND
My personal favourite concept. Imagine all the levels of the game as a series of overlayed screens or "window", each successive one visible behind the previous, creating a picture in picture effect. The result is that the player has the feeling of advancing deeper and deeper into something as they progress through each stage. We could go as far as to animate the player object jumping between each one.

The chief concern is that, more than anything else, this design will serve to confuse the player, with background objects appearing as though they may be foreground interactive objects. Substantially darkening the background scene may be a viable solution to this, or else somehow distorting the background scenes to differentiate them from the foreground. It would also require a large amount of coding in order to develop a system to render the stages in the background.