Pyxel Art Forge Beta Release- Pixel art app for game devs

DEMO out now on my itch.io store!

appiconDiscord | Purchase | Youtube Tech Demo

I have developed a pixel art application for game developers! It has 3 image editing modes : Image, Sprite, and Tileset. Each mode has awesome features to help speed up game asset creation! And project tabs make working on multiple files a breeze!

Image mode is the basic editor mode, all features in Image mode is available to the other two edit modes. You get 6 editing tools each with their own set of tool options! :

Screenshot 2026-06-21 162542

-Pencil has options for shape, brush size, pixel perfect, anti-alias, line drawing using shift, eyedrop with right clicking

image

-Eraser has options for brush size and also has the eyedropper feature

-Select has 3 modes, box, lasso, and magic wand, each with tolerance settings and the option to add and remove selection regions via shift and alt as well as a transform mode using ctrl-T that allows you to scale,rotate,and move your selection around. Copied items can be pasted between project Tabs!

-Shape has 2 modes box and ellipse with fill settings and thickness settings

image

-Fill as the name suggests flood fills the selected area

-Color Replace will replace the selected color on the canvas with the current brush color with the option to effect all layers

The right panel is where the magic happens! At the top you have the current brush color chip, a palette panel with custom and preset palettes, and the powerful layers panel with per layer effects! Pyxel Art Forge launches with 6 customizable effects, all stack-able and like layers reorder-able!

Effects:

-Blur blurs the drawn art on that layer as well as all effects below it using either a Box or Gaussian method with the option to effect both, just the layer, or just the effects below it

-Noise create a noise effect with color, resolution, and 8 different noise variations!

-Mask will let you paint regions you don’t want effects below it to draw to!

-Gradient has 3 different gradient options with a ramp bar that supports multiple colors! Rotation, and more!

-Outline draws an outline around the art drawn to that layer with color options

-Drop Shadow will as the name suggests creates a drop shadow with custom color, and offset options

And that’s just the image mode! Sprite mode makes creating sprites fun and super EASY! In right panel you get a new panel called animations.

below the canvas is the sprite timeline with onion skinning, animation playback, and an animation preview window toggle!

Each animation is made up of frames and each frame has its own set of layers. Frames can be copied and pasted between animations as well! It even has a special exporter that smartly packs your sprites and animations into one png and includes a .pyxelsheet file that when both are dragged into a godot project with my plugin(included with program) will auto import your sprite and create the sprite resource for you!

Tileset mode is another powerful project editor, the canvas is split up into a tiled grid based on your selected tileset size. The right panel now has the Tile Panel where you can add tiles to from the canvas and re-order them. The left tools panel gets 3 new Tile Tools : Stamp, Wrap, and Clear!

-Stamp lets you pick up, place and add picked up tiles to the tile panel, like tile panel it supports muli-tile selection and will send all picked up tiles to the tile panel by pressing ‘C’.

-Wrap is a neat tool that takes a tile and lets you shift it around its tile space to reposition it, auto wrapping at the edges

-Clear is like the eraser tool but for tiles!

One of the most ambitious things with this mode is the 3 tile editor windows for creating animated tiles, auto tiles, and collision polys!

Collision mode lets you edit each tiles collider individually add/remove points and shift them around!

All of which will export along side the exported png in a .gmap file that will import directly into godot using the custom plugin to auto create the tilemap and everything for you! Saving loads of time and lets you get right to just creating levels!

Tileset export supports max columns, padding, spacing, and edge bleed to eliminate that pesky tear between tiles!

There are two special importers as well besides the basic image importer, a sprite and tileset importer!

Sprite importer lets you add animations and select their frames, spacing, and padding. And auto creates all the animations so porting your sprite projects over couldn’t be easier!

Tile set importer lets you set the tiles width, height, padding, and spacing as well as how many tiles big you’d like the canvas to be. It then upon importing adds all tiles to the tile panel. Setup and getting started couldn’t be easier!

The color selection box is built from scratch with a built in shading section that suggests shading colors based on the current color using color theory!

Roadmap?

Pyxel Art forge is in a completed state but still has bugs and I have more features planned! So whats comming ahead?

-Mac and Linux version on full release no need to buy another copy!

-More effects

-Layer Folders for better organization

-Possibly an IPad/Android version later down the road

-Custom pencil brushes

-Plugin Support

When will it release out of Beta?

I plan to have it out of beta by spring of next year!

How can you help?

-Report bugs

-Send me feature requests for things you’d like to see

-Submit feedback

Whats it cost?

During the beta release you can purchase it for $10 after full release it will be $18.

Where can I get it?

You can purchase it from my itch.io store here : https://pyxel-forge.itch.io/pyxel-art-forge

Are there tutorials?

Not yet, but tutorials WILL be released to Youtube as soon as I am able. There is a getting started read me included along with the godot plugin!

What about Discord?

Right here : https://discord.gg/dgdsqGR4sg

It’s a page for people to submit bugs, request features, and show off their art made with this application.

A demo version with full features minus exporting will be available by Thursday for free, would everyone prefer github, Google drive, or something else to download the free trial version?

That’s a great tool you’ve made @Pyxel, I absolutely love the godot integration, and it’s use of tools like a professional app. The heavy hitter for me is that the price tag of 30 USD for the full release is a bit too steep for most people (including me), I think a much better price would be 15$ (the current one) and also, as a good seller, you should probably give some compelling reasons as to why people should avoid competitors such as Aesprite, and should chose yours

Personally, reaching a broader audience on it’s first stages is quite crucial, and you should never let your potential customers get discouraged by unsupported software. I think you should totally focus on that first (If it doesn’t take a lot of time), and get it out of the way

Dealing with google play store and apple store licencing fees is a headache on it’s own, unless you have to, I wouldn’t care that much (Unless you plan on making people sideload apps in android)

Google drive is a clunky and I’d say annoying solution, that eats up storage on your account and will always bother you when you want to clean up google drive space. I’d go itch.io, it’s more professional, and is for this exact use case

@WorldyBear Thank you for the input! I always forget about itch.io! Thank you for that suggestion, and I currently don’t have a Mac to compile a Mac version but I have the system set up to compile for it when I do. As soon as I can I will be getting a used Mac just so I can do that. But yes linux and Mac are high up on my priority table. And that’s a fair remark on the price point,one I have been getting questions about and quite possible will reduce the beta cost to 10 and final to 18 or 20. I should have a couple youtube videos posted later this week showcasing its many features across the videos. I know one of the key things for me when I started building this was easy of use and efficiency like the exporter allowing you to export a special import file for godot that auto creates the sprite and tileset resources for you. Tileset being the most complex cause it builds the collisions, animated tiles, and autotiles for you no manual setup(video on showcasing this is slso comming out this week.).

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Free Demo is now OUT! I also switched to itch.io for my shop : Pyxel Art Forge by pyxel_forge. Also reduced the Beta price to $10.

Tech demo for Pyxel Art Forge now available on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SISwRJPLICA

Mirror tool helper being added in next update!!! It can mirror in either Vertical, Horizontal, or both directions!!!

MirrorToolExample2

Version 1.1 of pyxel art forge is now live on my store : Pyxel Art Forge by pyxel_forge

Pyxel Art Forge v. 1.1.0.0

Release Notes

Additions

1. Transform Tool Button The Transform tool now has a dedicated button in the tool panel alongside Pencil, Eraser, Fill, and the other tools. Previously it was only accessible via keyboard shortcut. The button automatically disables itself when there is no active selection, so it is always clear whether Transform is available.

2. Helper Tool Panel A new Helpers section has been added to the left sidebar, sitting between the main tools and the tile tools. This gives modifier-style features their own home separate from the drawing tools. The first two helpers are the new Mirror tools, with room to add more in future updates.

3. Mirror Drawing Tools Two mirror buttons now live in the Helper panel. Horizontal Mirror reflects every stroke across the vertical center line of the canvas, and Vertical Mirror reflects across the horizontal center line. Both sides paint simultaneously regardless of which side you draw on. A blue line is drawn across the canvas to show the mirror axis while either mode is active. Clicking the active mirror button again turns it off.

Bug Fixes

1. Restrict to Tile not staying within the tile boundary while drawing

2. Backspace crash when renaming a second item

3. Duplicate Layer stopped working

4. Copy, Paste, Cut, Delete, Transform, and several keyboard shortcuts not working in Sprite mode.

5. Any undo action was clearing all mask pixels

6. Sprite Sheet export was placing each animation on its own row regardless of length instead of packing.

Dev Log Update

I’m working on a cool new small refactor for layer effects! Layer effects will now have regions you can apply them to or the whole canvas! Each region assigned will have an independent version of the effect using the same settings.

Next that’s coming is to the gradient effect, I’m adding more gradient styles to it and gradient settings!

I’m also adding a keyboard shortcut for the brush color to open the color picker that key being ‘C’

As well as a new 4th select tool called Color Select Tool that allows you to lick a color on the canvas and it will grab every instance of that color within a set tolerance on the current layer OR all Layers! And finally The last thing I hope to have included in version 1.2 if I can get it finished is a new Procedural Effect. More on that in the next update! Here’s a before and after preview of what it could do mind you it’s early testing results. Image 1 is Before, Image 2 is After.

Let me know your thoughts and opinions!

Ok, update time! Been working hard on new features and fixes. For now here’s some new features coming in the next update! First we have a new effect called Pattern! It’s a procedural pattern generator, it will have different patterns to choose from as well as different settings for each! Next is something I really love, a palette generation tool! It will be able to generate custom palettes, palettes from the canvas, suggest colors and shades for your palette using Color Theory! I’m still a couple weeks away I think before version 1.2.0 is released but I’d love to hear your input! General fixes are also coming mostly UI fixes and some text boxes not working/not accepting input. Thanks for reading!

Devlog update! Brushes!

Beta Version 1.2 is getting closer, here’s another new tool I’ll be adding in, the Brush tool! With it you can grab a selection from the canvas and make a stamp, export your canvas as a brush or stamp with the new brush export option! You have the usual brush size setting but you also have a spacing setting for setting distance between brushstrokes, random rotation, and a min max slider for limiting the angle of the random rotation. You can also rotate a brush with , and . keys! Let me know your thoughts and suggestions.

Check out the program here Pyxel Art Forge by pyxel_forge