Recently Updated Software

BitFontMaker2 is a bitmap font editor that runs in a browser: draw each character on a small grid, set the widths, and download a TrueType file. It has been around a long time and stayed simple, which is why it is still the quickest way to get a pixel font out of an idea.

FontStruct builds fonts by snapping shapes together on a grid, which makes it a natural fit for pixel and bitmap lettering. Finished fonts download as TrueType, and the site is also a large public gallery of fonts other people have built, most of which can be opened and taken apart.

PixelForge is a font editor built for pixel fonts: draw each glyph on a grid, set the spacing and kerning, and export a TrueType file that installs like any other font. It can also import an existing TTF - if it is genuinely a pixel font it detects the size and loads the glyphs back onto the grid for editing.

SpriteIlluminator generates normal maps for 2D sprites, either algorithmically from the shape of the art or painted by hand with its own brushes, so a flat sprite reacts to moving lights in an engine. It also does specular and emissive maps, and previews the result under a light you can drag around.

PixaTool converts images, sprite sheets and video into pixel art, with control over the output resolution, the palette, dithering, outlines and CRT-style effects. It works in batches and from the command line, which makes it useful for putting a whole folder of art through the same treatment.

DragonBones was one of the first 2D skeletal animation tools, and for years the free alternative to Spine, with runtimes for the major engines and an export format several of them read directly. Development stopped some years ago, but the editor still runs and the runtimes are still around.

Spine animates 2D artwork by rigging it to a skeleton rather than drawing every frame, and ships runtimes for most engines so the animation plays back as bones rather than as a sprite sheet. Used with pixel art it needs care - rotation and scaling fight the pixel grid - but for characters with a lot of motion it is far less work than hand-pixelling each frame.

Deluxe Paint was the paint program of the Amiga era and the tool a great deal of 1980s and 1990s game art was made in. Its custom brushes, palette cycling and animation features set conventions that pixel art editors still follow, and its keyboard-driven workflow is why so many later programs feel the way they do. It is no longer sold; the versions that survive do so through archives and emulation.

Pixly is a game-oriented pixel art and animation editor for Android, with the gestures worked out for a touchscreen: two fingers to pan and zoom, three to change the brush size. It covers layers, onion-skinned animation, symmetry, real-time tiling and cloud sync. Its own site is still up and still points at Google Play as the only way to get it, but that listing no longer resolves.

Pixelmash takes high-resolution artwork - painted, photographed or rendered - and pixelizes it through a stack of layers whose settings stay editable. Change the output resolution or the palette at any point and everything downstream re-renders, which makes it a way to try pixel sizes rather than commit to one.

Pixquare is a pixel art editor for iPad and iPhone with a deliberately dense feature set: layers, animation, palettes, tiled preview and pressure-aware Apple Pencil drawing. It reads and writes the formats desktop editors use, so a drawing started on a tablet finishes anywhere.

Resprite is a pixel art and animation editor for iOS, Android, Windows and macOS, built around a touch interface without losing the tools a desktop editor has: pixel-perfect lines, alpha lock, dithering patterns, custom brushes, gradients and symmetry. It imports and exports GIF, sprite sheets, PSD and APNG.

Pixen is a pixel art and animation editor built as a proper Mac application, with the same project openable on an iPhone or iPad. It is aimed at low-resolution bitmaps and 8-bit sprites: layers, palettes, an animation timeline and the system features a native app gets, like versions and autosave.

Picotron is a fantasy workstation from the makers of PICO-8: a small imaginary computer with its own desktop, file system and built-in tools - a sprite editor, a map editor, a tracker and a code editor - all inside fixed limits. It is roomier than PICO-8 and keeps the same deliberately constrained feel.

Phaser is the most used JavaScript framework for 2D games in the browser. It covers sprites, tilemaps, physics, input, audio and scene management, has a very large body of examples and tutorials behind it, and runs anywhere a browser does.

PuzzleScript is a browser engine where an entire puzzle game is a short text file: a legend of characters, a set of rewrite rules, and the levels drawn as ASCII. Games run and share as a single link, which has made it the usual home for small tile-based puzzle experiments.

Bitsy is a tiny editor for making small worlds: a few rooms of 8x8 tiles, an avatar that walks around them, and short conversations with the things in them. The limits are the point - there is no scripting to speak of and two colours at a time - and a finished game is a single HTML file.

GDevelop builds games out of events - conditions and actions picked from a list - rather than code, which makes it a common first engine. It handles tilemaps, 2D lighting, physics and multiplayer, exports to web, desktop and mobile, and the underlying engine is open source.

Defold is a small, free 2D engine that builds unusually light games for desktop, web, mobile and consoles from one project. It is scripted in Lua, ships as a single editor with no licence tiers, and its tilemap and sprite handling suit pixel art directly.

Unity is a general-purpose game engine with a well-worn 2D pipeline: a sprite editor and atlas packer, a tilemap system with rule tiles, 2D lights and shadows, and a large asset store. It is heavier than the dedicated 2D engines, and in return it goes anywhere.

Arkos Tracker 2 writes music for the AY and YM sound chips of the Amstrad CPC, ZX Spectrum, MSX and Atari ST, and for a handful of other machines. It comes with the player routines needed to get the music into a real program on those platforms, which is the part that usually stops people.

BambooTracker writes music for the Yamaha YM2608, the FM chip in NEC's PC-8801 and PC-9801 machines, and its relatives. It has a full FM instrument editor alongside the tracker, and exports to the formats those machines and their emulators play.

Bosca Ceoil is aimed squarely at people who have never written music. Everything is on one screen, the instruments are chosen from a list, and the scale and chord helpers make it hard to play a wrong note. Blue is the maintained rebuild of the original, and it runs on desktop and in a browser.

Renoise is a tracker that grew into a full production environment: the pattern editor is the classic vertical one, but underneath it are VST hosting, automation, a sampler with its own modulation, and rendering to audio. It suits chiptune work that has to sit in a finished mix.