Had a conversation with the "technical leaders" today musing about some cute extras I could work into the program. At first they wondered why I was talking about such frivolous bits so early in the project. Far as I'm concerned, it ain't early in the project for me. Save for sound, everything's in the game, although much is still in placeholder form (and not my responsibility).
Saw some of the early art, and they definitely hired the right folks for the job. It's actually a rather ho-hum game concept, but the art is gonna give it a lot of personality.
I'd like to say the sound will help too, but there's not much you can do with monophonic ring-tones.
So anyway, I'm looking for cheap special effects. And by "cheap", I mean stuff that looks cool but won't kill a slow processor. I'm thinking along the lines of some of those old 1980's-era Amiga demos. One nice set is the SDL Demo Effect Collection. The plasma or the blobs might work well for this game.
If you know of any good processor-friendly effects, lemme know.