Devlog #3 – Pixel Art and Visual Feedback

Hi everyone!

This week has been very productive on Wildborn, with significant progress on the visual aspect of the game. Here's a quick summary of what I’ve worked on:

Pixel Art: First Steps and Lots of Learning

This week, I started taking pixel art seriously. I’m not a pixel artist at all, so I was quite apprehensive.

I chose to mainly work with 16x16 pixels. For the visual style, I’m strongly inspired by Stardew Valley, which also uses 16x16 pixels per tile.

Objects and Environment

Here’s the list of sprites I created this week:

• Stone, twig, stick, branch

• Campfire (both extinguished and lit)

• Campfire blueprint, using the same sprite but with a transparent effect

• Wild berries (though I’m not fully satisfied with the result yet)

• Tree (Oak)

Dynamic Shadows

I also implemented a system of dynamic shadows for trees. Their opacity changes depending on the sun’s brightness. The effect looks beautiful at sunrise and brings a lot of life to the environment. I still need to implement this for other objects and the player character.

Player Sprite and Animation

I created a player sprite that is one tile wide and two tiles tall. From that base, I created:

• A front-facing version

• A back-facing version

• A side-view version

• I also implemented a dynamic system that updates the sprite based on the player’s direction and movement state (idle or walking)

This makes movement feel much more lively and immersive.

What’s Next

• Keep working on visuals for more game elements and improve existing ones

• Create visuals for biomes beyond the currently implemented grassland

• Add a shadow for the player character

• Improve the game interface

Thanks for reading! If you have any feedback or ideas, I’d love to hear them.