@Pilchard Glad you dig the vibe!
Thanks for the feedback, I too felt like something was wrong but pushed forward anyways! I'm glad to see some of you liked the original.
I centered the text and moved everything away from the middle:

- and with the buttons visible:

I need to take a couple of days away from it but I'm thinking something in between the two designs would work better; maybe dropping the lifeguard hut, making the radio smaller, and moving the chair further out? There is also a very big part of me that wants to make the intro screen a short panning animation that has the hut to the left of the chair so it's not a problem anymore...
@Mandle: In the first version clicking "New Game" and it cutting to the big empty beach felt really redundant. You saw the chair in the menu already so it just felt like it moved over a few pixels. I wanted to establish how isolated Andre is by cutting from a busy, forced perspective collage with upbeat music to this flat shot of him reading.
@selmiak: It could look good with a straight up gothic font.
