Brentai wrote:I think tendinitis is a pretty valid reason not to want to manage 7 layers of tiles per screen though.
Well sure, but it's not like you have to use all 7—heck, if you wanted, you could just draw your level as a background image and use invisible blocks to fill out the geometry. That's pretty low-impact as far as computer usage goes.
Plus, as far as "not wanting to make something awful" goes, this is Knytt Stories. Awful is inevitable; just figure out how to make the awful bits you're responsible for as interesting and worthwhile as possible.