CryPixels

Sprites are essential in any 2D game if you want anything to move in there. Creating them is simple enough, but it may take some effort if you want to do some variations. This is where CryPixels comes in. It lets you draw sprites pixel by pixel, but its main strength lies in the fact that it can create many other sprites, based on your original design, through the process of procedural generation. This way, you only need to design one sprite and you will have countless others to work with.

The software is free to try, with some limitations. Its components are distributed in a ZIP archive, so you only need to extract them and run an executable, instead of going through an installation process. You don't have to give up too much disk space, RAM or processing power and there is no need to install any prerequisite tools.

Once you define a canvas size, you can start drawing right away, by simply clicking individual cells in a grid or clicking and dragging. Besides a standard canvas, you can also start drawing on a mirror canvas, which can make your work much easier, since you will have to draw only half of your sprite. The software lets you choose between vertical and horizontally mirrored canvases.

You will notice a few colors on the left side of the user interface, but they are not for making your sprite look more interesting, at least not in the way you think. They are for telling the application how to look at the sprite when generating new ones. With the available colors, you can mark body segments and borders. Based on how you use the colors, the software will vary your design starting from specific areas and points.

It takes a single click to generate countless variations and they are all display instantly, directly beneath the drawing area. By default, they are all black and white, but you can set the application to generate 1-bit or multi-bit sprites. You can also choose how many sprites to generate, what colors to use and make many other fine tweaks.

Creating countless unique sprites can take only a few simple clicks with CryPixels.