pixel art

The 8Bit Deck is a regular ol’ deck of playing cards, only with some very nice pixel art replacing the traditional styling. The cards were made by artist Michael Myers (who you might remember did our old social media banners), and are available to purchase here.

It’s much easier to make a pixel art mock-up than a full video game, but that doesn’t stop them from being beautiful gestures toward  what might be. These illustrations of a side-scrolling Mega Man Legends game by artist Phil Giarrusso are a perfect example.

Star Renegades’ art style looks even hotter in this new trailer. The role-playing roguelike always had lush pixel graphics, but the developers over at Massive Damage have added a bunch of depth that almost gives the game a Mode 7 look. The game is due out on PC and console next spring.

I Am The Hero is a pixel-art beat ‘em up coming to PS4 and Switch sometime in 2018. Previously on PC, the game has a Dragon Ball Z-ish combat style that helps distinguish it from all the other retro pixel-art games bathed in nostalgia currently out there.

Wizard of Legend is a pixel animated brawler coming in early 2018. Created by Contingent99, a small studio consisting of two high school friends, the game looks like the Hyper Light Drifter combat that’s become so popular distilled down into a co-op dungeon crawler for PS4 and PC.

Children of Morta is coming next year and has a new trailer. Revealed back in 2015, the lush pixel art roguelike is a procedural game focusing on single family. Think FTL meets Bloodlines. We might be awash in these types of indie games at the moment, but I just can’t resist some damn good pixel animations.

Here’s pixel artist Paul Conway with an excellent Lucasarts x The Thing mashup. Because SCUMM always needed the option to tie someone to that fucking couch.

Falco and Fox trump Mario in this beautifully-choreographed Smash Bros./Super Mario Bros. crossover, “Super Fox Bros.” Pixel art animator Rebaz Talei crafted a “runthrough” of a Mario World level with a Falco-Fox duo. “Come on!”

That’s some damn good pixel art. Looks straight out of a high-quality RPG—even though it’s not: it’s “merely” an isometric, 23-color piece done by DeviantArt’s noaqh. You can check out his other pixel art scenes over here, in his gallery folder.

Those are some wicked lighting effects. The GIF comes from the devlog for MegaSphere, an action-RPG-roguelite-platformer currently being developed for PC, and is one in a series of GIFs demonstrating a newly introduced weapon, Storm. Lots more info here.