Pixel art combat VFX: hits, slashes, explosions, dust (32 animated effects, PNG and JSON)

This pack is for developers of 2D action and platform games who want every hit to land without drawing the effects themselves. It brings together the effects of a fight: impact sparks, slashes, jump and run dust, muzzle flash, explosions, smoke and sparks. Each effect has a documented anchor, per-frame timings and plays either once or in a loop, so it sits on your sprites. The pack contains no characters. Its palette builds on the one from the pixel art dungeon kit, and the effects are made for dark or mid-tone scenery.

• 32 animated effects, 292 frames in all, in 6 families:
  • Hits: hit-spark-large, hit-spark-small, impact-blunt, impact-pierce, claw-strike, weapon-clash, parry-spark, critical-burst, critical-star, stun-stars;
  • Slashes: slash-wide-arc, slash-horizontal, slash-vertical, slash-diagonal, slash-cross, thrust-line;
  • Dust and dash: landing-dust, jump-dust, dash-dust, dash-streak, footstep-dust, ground-crack;
  • Gunfire: muzzle-flash, bullet-tracer;
  • Explosions and smoke: explosion-small, explosion-medium, explosion-large, smoke-puff, smoke-column, debris-rocks;
  • Sparks: sparks-burst, sparks-fountain.
• 28 effects that play once (wind-up or contact, peak, fade) and 4 looping effects (stun-stars, bullet-tracer, smoke-column, sparks-fountain).
• A 24-colour palette (dungeon-fx-24), as HEX, as GPL and as an image: the dungeon kit colours plus bright colours for the effects.
• Animated previews of every effect, as GIF and WebP, on a transparent background.
• A demo page that shows every effect on three backgrounds, to open in a browser, offline.

Archive layout:

LISEZMOI-format.txt
demo/index.html
frames/1x/<effect>/<effect>-<number>.png
palette/dungeon-fx-24.gpl
palette/dungeon-fx-24.hex
palette/dungeon-fx-24.png
preview/gif/<effect>.gif
preview/webp/<effect>.webp
sheet/combat-fx-<1x|2x|4x>.png
sheet/combat-fx-<1x|2x|4x>.json
strips/<1x|2x|4x>/<effect>-<width>x<height>.png

The format guide LISEZMOI-format.txt is written in French, with an English note on the atlas.

How to use it

• Strips: one horizontal strip per effect, with no spacing between frames. The cell size is in the file name: most 2D engines slice the strip with a uniform grid.
• Sheet and JSON atlas: the sheet holds every effect, one row per effect. The atlas gives each frame’s position, duration and anchor, plus one tag per effect. An importer for this format builds the animations by itself; otherwise, build each animation from the tags and durations.
• Anchor: each effect has its origin point, written in the atlas and in LISEZMOI-format.txt. Centred for impacts, slashes and explosions, placed on the point of contact; on the ground for dust; at the hand or the muzzle for thrusts and muzzle flash.
• Direction: effects that have a direction are drawn facing right. For the other side, flip the image horizontally: the drawing stays pixel-exact.
• Dash: the pack provides the streak and the dust; the character afterimage is done in your engine with the player sprite.
• Scaling up: the files come at 1x, 2x and 4x. For another size, scale by a whole number with nearest neighbour, never with smoothing.

Checks performed

• Pixels: every frame uses only palette colours, with hard transparency, no smoothing and no black outline.
• Grid: every cell is aligned on the 16 px grid, with an always empty border: nothing is cropped.
• Scales: the 2x and 4x versions are identical to an exact enlargement of the 1x, and the atlases match the sheets.
• Atlas: the 32 animations were loaded into a 2D engine by both routes described above, with all 292 frames, exact slicing and exact durations.
• Loops: the last frame of each loop joins the first with no jump.
• Previews: every GIF and every WebP was read back, durations included.

Good to know

• The effects are made for dark or mid-tone scenery. The demo page shows each effect on three backgrounds: you can judge on yours before placing them.
• Durations follow a 50 ms grid: they stay exact in GIF, in WebP, in the atlas and in a game.
• The pack contains no characters and no character afterimage.

Production and AI

Each effect was written in code with an AI assistant: several takes rendered to video, one kept, then refined and checked (palette, grid, anchor, loops, timing). No image was produced by an image generator.

• PNG strips at 1x, 2x and 4x: one strip per effect, on a transparent background, sliced by grid in most 2D engines.
• Separate PNG frames: every frame of every effect, numbered, for a frame-by-frame import.
• Sprite sheet and JSON atlas: one sheet per scale and its atlas in the JSON array format common to pixel art editors and 2D atlas loaders, with durations, anchors and animation tags.
• Animated GIF and WebP previews: looping, on a transparent background, viewable in a browser.
• HEX and GPL palette: as a hexadecimal list and in the palette format read by most drawing and pixel art software.

The pack is sold under the commercial licence (terms in French): you can use it in your personal and professional projects, including for your clients and in the games you sell or release, but you may not resell or redistribute the files, on their own or in another pack, even for free.

The pixel art UI and reward effects complete this pack outside of combat (pickups, loot, healing, shields, teleport), with the same palette, anchors and formats.

The pixel art elemental effects add fire, ice, lightning, water, earth and wind spells (impacts, projectiles, auras, areas and statuses), with the same palette and anchors.

Do the effects work with my game engine?

The strips slice with a uniform grid, which most 2D engines do. The JSON atlas follows a common array format; if it is not read as is, LISEZMOI-format.txt explains how to build the animations from the tags and durations.

Do the effects show on light scenery?

They are made for dark or mid-tone scenery. The demo page shows them on three backgrounds: open it to see the result before you integrate them.

Can I use the effects in a game I sell?

Yes. The commercial licence covers the finished products you sell or release, games included. It forbids reselling or redistributing the effects as a pack, even for free. The details are on the licence page.

1.0.0 (11 November 2026): first release.