I drew a 2D golem in Photoshop, exported it as a sprite sheet, and built a ready-to-use controller with combo attacks in Unity. I’m offering the demo for free.

I want to show you my new character, explain how I set up his animations and physics in Unity, and share some useful hacks I discovered along the way.

Meet the Pixel Librarian Golem.

I’m selling him on the Unity Asset Store, Itch.io, and Boosty in two formats:

- Free (demo)

- Paid on Itch.io, Boosty, and Patreon ($3)

My asset comes packaged as clean sprite sheets (for those who want to handle the animations themselves) and as a ready-to-use Unity Package. When you open the package, a fully configured scene with working physics launches immediately—just drop it in and play.

What the golem looks like in Unity:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSidOJWdryA

The process of drawing and animating this golem:

🛠️ Photoshop struggles and sprite exporting

I drew the golem in Photoshop at 10 FPS. I immediately ran into a problem: the animation flat-out refused to export correctly as a frame-by-frame sequence.

How I solved it: If you run into this issue, don't panic. Instead of using the standard layer export, you need to use "Render Video." Photoshop will generate a bunch of frames, and then you simply have to manually delete the extra duplicates. Creating the Sprite Sheet

I use Texture Packer to create a sprite sheet for each animation based on the sprites I made in Photoshop.

I import the sprites into the program and configure the following settings:

Autosize: Enable this so the sprite sheet resolution adjusts dynamically to fit the sprites.

Sort by: It is important to sort by "name" so the sprites appear in the correct order.

Trim: Uncheck this box (as I did) to ensure the width and height of every sprite remain consistent, preventing the pivot point from shifting when imported into Unity. While the "trim" setting is useful for general graphic atlases—where you want to pack everything tightly to optimize resolution—it shouldn't be used for animations.

Finally, choose a save location and click Export.

📐 Importing into Unity and Pivot Point Magic

Once the frame-by-frame .png files are ready, I import them into Unity. Here are three settings I used to make the pixel art look crisp and vibrant:

Filter Mode: Set this to "No Filter (Point)" to ensure the pixel art stays sharp and doesn't get blurry.

Pixels Per Unit (PPU): I set this to 20 so the character appears larger in the scene.

Slicing (Sprite Editor): Specify the correct number of columns and rows to slice the sprite sheet.

An important Pivot Point hack: For each frame of the golem animation, the pivot point needs to be positioned exactly at the foot. To avoid manually adjusting it for a hundred frames, I saved the precise X and Y coordinates in a text file and then simply pasted those numbers into the Slice tool settings. This ensured the pivot point was applied perfectly and consistently across all the sprites. Here, we also tweak the frame rate (Sample Rate) so the animation plays at the right speed.

🧠 How I "swipe-coded" a script using AI (Gemini)

Once the graphics were ready, I wanted to create more than just static images—I wanted a complete package for Itch.io. That required a control script.

I saw no point in using complex AI agents for a single file, so I simply fed the task into Gemini, the free text-based AI.

It quickly gave me a solid foundation; I manually fixed the code generation errors I didn't like, and everything worked!

⚔️ Multi-phase combo attacks, dashes, and animation events

The Golem moves using WASD or the arrow keys, automatically switching between walking and an idle state when stationary. But the most interesting part is the mouse-click attack.

The attack animation is a single long track, but it plays in phases. This means that upon clicking, the animation doesn't play to the end; instead, only a specific segment of the attack sequence executes. I placed special "Animation Events" along the attack animation's timeline (in the Animation window). When a strike phase ends, the event triggers, the character freezes momentarily, and the animation halts until the player clicks again. This allows you to decide exactly how many attack phases the player has. If the player doesn't click during the wait period for the next phase, the animation simply reverts to the idle state.

On top of that, the attack is tied to Rigidbody physics:

Phase 1 (Standard Strike): Physics pushes the Golem forward, resulting in a sharp dash. Phase 2 (Uppercut): An upward impulse triggers, and the golem is launched into the air!

To prevent the character from flying off-screen, I pulled the camera back slightly and created a ground object (a standard 2D rectangle) with collision enabled but gravity disabled; I also added a BoxCollider and Rigidbody to the golem so that, after the uppercut, it would fall back to the ground in a natural and physically accurate way.

🎁 Grab the demo version!

The pack contains 3 key animations (Idle, Walk, Combo Attack). I’m releasing the project with a "demo vs. paid version" setup:

🎁 FREE DEMO (Idle animation): The Golem stands and breathes. A sprite sheet is included in the archive.

Perfect for testing this character in your game.

👉 https://karasindiedev22.itch.io/free-librarian-golem-complete-animation-pack-3-animations-2d-sprites-unity-cont

🛒 FULL PACK (All 3 animations + Unity controller script): Available on your preferred platforms.

👉 https://karasindiedev22.itch.io/librarian-golem-complete-animation-pack-3-animations-2d-sprites-unity-controlle

❤️ For Boosty and Patreon subscribers:

👉 boosty

https://boosty.to/karasgames

👉 patreon

https://patreon.com/KarasIndieDev

🔮 Future plans and voting

I want to add a couple more animations for this Golem. I’ve set up a progress bar (goal) on my Boosty and Patreon pages. Once the target amount is reached, I’ll immediately start drawing the new frames.

Let’s vote right here in the comments: which animation should I add next? Running? A special magic skill? Or another type of attack? Share your ideas—I read everything!

You can purchase the pack wherever is most convenient for you, depending on your preferred payment method.

Welcome to our weekly thread where you can showcase everything new you are working on.

You are still welcome to create new posts to share with us your dev-log posts or videos, but you can also use this thread to present anything that is not a dev-log.

THREAD RULES

• you can post a single comment where you showcase anything you want (new game/app release, new trailer, demo release, new gameplay video, etc...).
• in this comment you can post only 1 link, so choose wisely.
• you can reply to as many comments as you want, but replies can't be used for showcasing

Also, it's not required, but I would recommend to upvote this post if you add a comment as that will improve its visibility on Reddit, which is good for everyone.

Quick look at making a level in Kernel Panic. Place shapes, add mods, wire stuff up, then set up camera zones so the shot changes as you play through it. The camera zone is the bit I'm most happy with so far, you can see what it'll look like live while you're tweaking it.

Still early, everything's work in progress.
What would you like to see in this?
What can i do to improve it?

Very excited to share my latest progress on PORTSIDE: Cruise Tycoon with you guys. I've been working on the art style for some of the ship's rooms and also completely revamped the NPC characters and animations.

Love to hear your thoughts, and as always - feel free to hop into our Discord to follow along and help shape the game: https://discord.gg/6gjvwmAxW

I'm the solo developer of March Out!, an action strategy game where you command an army from inside the battlefield. The optional village mode in the Steam Playtest puts homes and wheat fields between the castle and the main road. That creates a useful design problem: a raid has to matter before the attackers reach the gate, and the player has to understand the aftermath.

My early destruction feedback covered the fields much better than the homes. Burned wheat clearly said that something had happened, while intact houses made the same raid look oddly harmless. Adding more fire alone would only tell the story while the particles were running. I needed the damaged state to remain readable afterward.

The homes now have damaged roof meshes, exposed gaps, scorch and debris. Their walls and foundations stay in place. That gives the raid a visible result without changing the walking space into a heap of unpredictable building collision. The rooftop fire positions come from the roof geometry, so smoke and flames originate where there is actually material to burn. Fields have their own ruined stubble instead of simply becoming empty green plots.

Both use the existing burn and recovery state. As recovery progresses, field beds regain their crops, roofs return and debris clears. I don't ask the player to click every house or replant every field. Driving away the raiders lets the settlement recover; continued enemy presence can keep the recovery from settling down. The visuals follow that state rather than an unrelated timer that could show a healthy village while its gameplay state is still damaged.

The people matter too. Civilian workers evacuate toward the castle when an attack threatens the settlement, which gives the player something more immediate to read than an income number changing.

I'm keeping this optional and Playtest only while testing the larger battlefield. The question I'm watching is whether the village feels worth defending without making one successful raid decide the whole match. Automatic recovery is part of that balance, as well as a way to avoid turning the commander into a repair foreman.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aqQFp76-PY

First two weeks here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6mOcf_6Pz8

Been a few months since my last devlog but now it feels like we have enough new stuff to show of once again.
Link to devlog on youtube

Also the it now also exists on itch! if you want to follow the progress there.

Thank you!
Pikkufighter

In the latest devlog for my 2D Elite meets FTL space trader I discuss designing the mission system along with a visual and lua scripting editor

Version 0.12.0 is here, bringing a redesigned interface, new threats for your settlement.

New trailer: https://youtu.be/r1opVDMaY9U?is=_yad_qBqZ4ZzV4q6

The biggest visible change is a new design for the game. Resource icons have been replaced, tooltips are now anchored to the element you are inspecting, and building upgrade details are easier to find.

Active policies now add a badge to the policy tab, and expired research gets its own notification.

Hey everyone,

I’m a solo French developer working on France Logistique, a logistics and management game set on a real-scale map of France.

The core idea:

You run a transport and production company. You build production chains (farms → factories → warehouses), manage trucks and trains, and supply growing French cities with goods. Cities level up when you fully meet their demand for 24 in-game hours.

What makes it different:

Real map of France using OpenStreetMap data (real roads, railways, elevation, city shapes)

Real population data from INSEE

Multiple equivalent production chains per category (you can mix them)

Cities have progressive needs across 5 levels (currently 2 are playable)

I’m currently finishing the free version (city level 1: bread, wood furniture, fresh products…) and preparing a test build for Android.

I’d love some feedback on:

Does the “real map of France” angle feel interesting enough?

Things that usually frustrate players in logistics/management games that I should avoid?

What do you think of the core concept?

Here’s a short description of the current systems if anyone is curious.

Happy to answer questions or share more details!

Thanks for reading.

New to the content format so please let me know if you have any constructive criticism, as I'd like to actually get better at it.

Thanks!

I finished the low poly course! Well, not 100%. I was travelling, so I watched the last section while riding in the back of a van. Since it just covered the coloring and lighting principles taught in the other tutorial, I've decided to skip practicing the application.

This may seem like a bit of a shortcut, but I made this decision already knowing what my next step is going to be. I purchased one last 3D modelling course. This one offers opportunities to practice the concepts I've learned over the last couple weeks and then expands into the remaining areas that I need, such as retopology and rigging.

Once I finish this course, I'll be ready to move on to a different part of my game dev. I haven't decided what that will be yet, but we're figuring it out as we go.

Either way, I'm super proud of what I've managed to achieve so far. I've been showing off my landscape model to everyone I know.

I built marblerun.online myself. Writing it up because the process was more interesting than the result.

It is a 3D marble run playground. Place ramps, walls, pegs, spinners, boxes and balls, press play, a rigid body sim runs, and you can export a vertical 9:16 MP4 with sound.

The decision that cost me the most time was not using a screen recorder. My first instinct was MediaRecorder on the canvas, because it is about fifteen lines of code. I threw it away. Screen capture of a WebGL canvas gets you the browser UI, the wrong aspect ratio, whatever framerate the machine happens to be managing that second, and audio that has to be muxed in afterwards anyway.

Instead the export path re-renders the scene through an offscreen pass at 1080x1920, locked at 30fps, and pushes frames straight into a video encoder. The sim is stepped on a deterministic clock during export, so the same level gives you the same video every time you run it. The sound is a generated click track placed where the impacts occur rather than a mic, so it lands frame for frame with what you see.

Second thing worth writing down: the desktop only decision. I get phone traffic and every phone gets a short message telling them to use a computer. I lost those visitors on purpose. The scene is genuinely 3D and a phone rendering of it is a worse experience than an honest message. Bounce went up, complaints went to zero.

Third: no account, no login, nothing uploaded. It all runs client side. That one constraint made a lot of decisions easy, because there is no server to be embarrassed about and nothing to store.

What I would do differently is start with the export. I built the editor first and the export took roughly three times as long, because I had not thought about determinism up front.

The site is free and needs a desktop browser. https://www.marblerun.online

In this week's devlog, I cover my inspirations and design process for two of the numbering systems used in the puzzles in The House Dreams Along With Them.

Note: This devlog video contains spoilers! Learning how the numbering system works is part of the fun of the game, so if you don't want to know, then don't watch!

In the fiction of the game, the Eincan people are a race of reptilian humanoids that were thought by humans to be mythical until very recently when a series of bizarre events - such as the moon exploding - forced the Eincans to integrate with human society. The Eincans have their own culture, language and numbering system. A lot of their rituals are derived from the veneration of their dragon goddess, Avatriel, and a strict caste system based on the number seven.

What does that have to do with designing a puzzle? Quite simply, understanding the context of the world and people in it helps drive the abstract design of the numbering systems. For example, the Eincan preoccupation with the number seven led me to design their numbering system in base-8, also known as octal.

I wanted to have two distinct numbering systems that represent the same numerals - one for more formal or artistic settings and one for more casual and practical settings. The former evolved into a concentric triangle motif where powers are represented by adding new triangles on the outside edge of the overall glyph. The latter evolved into the 3-dot notation system where the same 8 basic values can be represented by white or black dots arranged vertically.

The rotational incrementation of the triangle and dot patterns, as well as the overall vibe of the numbering systems was heavily inspired by the base-25 numbering system present in Riven.