Sixteen pixels and not one more

Let me get this out of the way: I am not an artist. My best drawing is a stick figure, and even then the proportions are disputed.

This matters, because I’m making a pixel art game, and pixel art has a reputation for looking easy. It does not turn out to be easy. It turns out to be the part where every single pixel is a decision, and you have thousands of them, and you’re bad at decisions.

So before drawing a single thing, I had to pick the scale everything else hangs off.

The decision

• Tiles are 16×16 pixels. Every patch of soil, every rock, every bit of spaceport floor.
• The game renders at 640×360, then scales up to fit your screen.
• It only scales in whole numbers. 2×, 3×, 4×, never 2.7×.

That last one is the important one. Pixel art looks crisp when every game pixel becomes a neat square of real pixels. Scale it by an awkward fraction and some pixels end up wider than their neighbours. Everything goes wobbly and slightly smeared, like looking at your farm through a fogged-up helmet visor.

640×360 is handy because it multiplies cleanly into the common screen sizes. Times three is 1920×1080, and times four is 2560×1440. Most people get a sharp picture without black bars eating half their monitor.

Why 16 and not something bigger?

Bigger tiles mean more detail per tile, which sounds good until you remember who has to draw that detail. 16 pixels is small enough that a turnip is a handful of well-placed dots, which is about the level of turnip I can confidently deliver. It’s also the scale a lot of beloved farming games use, so the look will feel familiar in a good way.

I’ll be honest: some of the art will probably start life with help from tools and asset packs while I learn. The plan is to get the game playable first and worry about my pixel-pushing later. A fun game with mediocre art beats a beautiful slideshow that never ships.

Next time I post a screenshot, please be kind to the turnips. They’re doing their best. So am I.