The thing inspired pixel art and custom dark shadows

[16Bitnights]

Some sketches I did for a "The thing" inspired creature for my game, hope you enjoy



ANd implemented version:


I believe the environment is critical when creating a horror atmosphere and since our game is made in C++ and all shadows and lights must be hand-drawn/animated, I now resumed some of the light "systems" polish. On the good side, with such a system the game will basically run even on a potato computer.

My aim here was not to create realistic lights but rather atmospherical ones.

- top layer got an alpha object with main shadow shapes

- all walls and big objects generate a shadow PNG

- light object shapes used to cut through the generated wall shadow

So each time a map starts the game will generate one huge shadow / light layer PNG. We also got light animations that we had to fake trough some torture procedures.

So here are a few possible shadow/light combos that we use in the game. Hope you enjoy