I love 2D sprite-based games; they are easy to read and a great way to showcase beautiful art and character designs. A major downside is that drawing each sprite is a significant amount of work, and it can grow exponentially depending on the game perspective!

Choosing the right game perspective has a big impact on your game’s art budget. Here’s a rundown of different 2D game perspectives and how many different sprites you need to budget for.

Summary

Perspective	Sprites Needed	Genres	Examples
Top-down (vertical)	1x	action, arcade, puzzle, vertical scrollers
Side view	1-1.5x	beat-em-up, fighting, infinite runner, metroidvania, platformer, run-and-gun, side-scrolling
Isometric (4 directions)	2-2.5x	business simulation, turn based strategy, turn based tactics
Oblique	3-3.5x	action RPG, overhead shooter, RPG, RTS
8-directional	5-5.5x	8-directional shooter, real time tactics

Top-down: 1x

Games with a perfectly vertical perspective are the cheapest to create sprites for. You only need to create one set of sprites, and even if you need characters to face different directions, you can let your rendering software rotate the sprites. A lot of simple or retro game genres use this economical perspective - arcade games, top-down action games, puzzle games and so on.

The downside is that it’s not a very flattering perspective. Characters can’t show off their face, only the tops of their heads. Buildings only show their roofs, which are rarely shown in real life, plus it’s hard to show important parts like doors.

On the other hand, cars and other vehicles look perfectly fine in this perspective. This is why games like top-down vertically scrolling shooters use airplanes or spaceships instead of human characters.

Grand Theft Auto 1 and 2 used a top-down perspective for its human characters and cars. The cars look great; the human characters less so.

Side view: 1-1.5x

Side view games are also very cheap to draw for. Compared with top-down games, it shows off characters and scenery much better. Because of this ability to intimately show off characters, it’s popular in fighting games and metroidvanias.

Games like infinite runners only have one fixed view of the characters; even if you allow the characters to move left and right, as in platformers, side-scrollers or run-and-gun games, you can mirror the sprite, which is very cheap to do.

Contra sprites are simply mirrored, which makes the character’s handedness change. But it’s so fast-paced that most people don’t notice.

One caveat is if the characters are handed, it can look odd when they are simply mirrored. Sometimes you can get away with it; if not or if you care about it enough, it can take some time to rework to mirror the sprites.

Dragon Quest, like many JRPGs, have the player look at the character sprites for long periods of time, so it pays off to make sure they are holding their swords and shields on the correct sides, no matter which way they are facing.

Isometric (4 directions): 2-2.5x

Isometric games combine the advantages of the freedom of movement of top-down games with the attractiveness of side-scrolling games. If you limit movement to the four diagonal directions, you can get away with only creating 4 sets of sprites: front-facing and back-facing, with the other two directions simply mirrored!

In Super Mario RPG, although the main characters can be viewed in 8 directions, most characters are only shown in the 4 isometric directions.

Similar to the side-scrolling perspective, if your characters are handed, you may need to slightly rework sprites when they are mirrored.

Because not being able to move vertically or horizontally feels unnatural for action games, this perspective finds more use in slower-paced genres like turn based tactics and turn based strategy games.

In the business simulation game Theme Hospital, players build out rooms in their hospital while managing staff and incoming patients. The isometric view helps show off the rooms and quirky characters.

Oblique: 3-3.5x

3/4 oblique perspective is a highly versatile perspective. It can show off characters and scenery well, as well as feeling natural for players to move around in, so it can be used for a lot of genres. Overhead shooters, RPGs, RTS games, ARPGs, as well as genres that work with the other top-down-style perspectives… oblique perspective can handle them all.

The cost is that the sprite work required is substantial: you need at the very least 3 sets of sprites: side view (mirrored for left/right), front view and back view. Again, if your characters are handed, you may need to rework the side view sprites too. For this reason oblique view sprites tend to be simpler compared to side-scrolling games.

Super Contra has overhead shooting sections where the player can face many directions. Its iconic, set-piece bosses however are fixed in one perspective, so the artists can afford to put extra effort into them.

8-directional: 5-5.5x

If you want to draw characters moving in 8 directions, the amount of sprites required approaches the limit of what’s sensible for hand-drawn sprites. You must draw at least 5 sets of sprites: in addition to the 3 sets for the cardinal directions, you also need 2 sets for the diagonals.

Gauntlet 2, a fast-paced shooting game, being able to move and shoot in 8 directions is crucial, so the sprites are drawn in all 8 directions.

The substantial artwork cost means you should carefully consider workarounds:

1. Allow players to move diagonally, but only draw 4 directions

2. Use the perfectly vertical top-down perspective, letting your renderer or image editor do the rotation for you

   

3. Use 3D-rendered sprites, which also lets you add arbitrary number of angles

   

This perspective only makes sense for games where showing the 8 directions is really important, like 8-directional shooters.

You can use either oblique or isometric perspectives for buildings; oblique may be easier to navigate but isometric shows off more sides for buildings.

Role playing games come in many different flavours but the game loop is a common element in all of them. Whether the game is combat oriented, or it focuses on stats and progression, exploration, or story telling, almost all RPGs follow this simple loop:

The terms and mechanics may differ between games but the loop is the same. The dungeon may not be a literal dungeon, but a forest, ruins or wilderness.

What’s interesting is how different RPGs use mechanics to compel players through this loop. Let’s look at a few classic mechanics:

Quests ❗️

There wouldn’t be much of a game if there’s no reason to enter the dungeon where you can get killed. Most RPGs have a main quest, the call to adventure that compels the player to venture forth.

But RPGs, especially Western ones, have lots of side quests, big and small, which give players a more immediate reason for fighting. They could be as mundane as killing 20 rats, or as involved as pulling off a heist.

In Oblivion, The Ultimate Heist is a 7-part quest that involves stealing a unique item from the most heavily guarded location in the game.

Quests are extremely flexible and are only limited by the quest designer’s imagination. They can direct the player to arbitrary places and perform arbitrary tasks, thereby showing parts of the game that the designer wants. In return, players want the quests to make sense in the game world, and reward them with game lore in addition to mechanical rewards. Players tend to look down on lazy, highly mechanical quests such as “kill X creatures” or “fetch some item”.

Once quests are complete, the prospect of returning to the quest giver to collect the reward can be an incentive to return to town, so quests can work in both directions in the game loop.

Energy 💚🏥

This is where dungeon fighting consumes a form of energy, which is replenished back in town. The most common is health or HP; fighting almost inevitably involves getting hurt, and the most effective way of getting healed is returning to town. A great example is in Final Fantasy: although alternate healing methods exist, resting at the town inn is always the cheapest option, by far. Pokemon takes this even further, with its free healing Pokemon-centers.

Health is an unforgiving energy system because the penalties for losing it are harsh - your party dies and you lose the game! But it is not the only type of energy, and the penalties don’t need to be as harsh for it to work. Mana, or MP, is also common. For magic-focused characters, fighting without mana is much harder, which is a strong incentive for returning to town.

A side note on restoration items: they can alleviate the harshness of energy penalties, but usually they are expensive, so that they don’t completely bypass the energy system.

Encumbrance 🧳

Loot is a big part of many RPGs. Many older RPGs had limits on how many things a character could carry, due to technical constraints. But others set limits deliberately, so that characters could not loot items indefinitely, and must return to town to sell excess loot.

Diablo in particular, focuses on inventory management and looting to drive its game loop. A typical dungeon run will have the player pick up mostly useless items, return to town to sell them off, and only occasionally do other things typically done in RPG towns - heal and recover, buy restoration items, upgrade equipment. This focus on looting was done to focus the game on the excitement of finding rare items.

Other RPGs, like Fallout, The Elder Scrolls and various Dungeons and Dragons-themed CRPGs use weight limits, coupled with the fact that stronger characters can carry more items, for more flavour.

Compared to energy systems, encumbrance has the advantage of not harshly penalising the player, but still simulating the fatigue of adventuring that feels thematically apt. The obvious downside is that the encumbrance system needs to be designed just right - the game must not give the player too much or too few loot items - otherwise, in the case of too much loot, it can push players to return to town too often to avoid missing out on selling loot.

Crafting and Identification 🔨

Crafting is a game mechanic that has grown popular in RPGs over time. It adds flavour to the game world, but also acts as an additional force on the RPG game loop, by making loot more valuable if it is taken outside the dungeon.

Consider in The Witcher, where alchemical ingredients are usually harvested in the wilderness, but the player must return to a safe resting zone in order to make potions, oils or bombs.

As a general rule, crafting ingredients are virtually useless on their own, but are also hard to gather unless the player travels to many different locations. This creates a weak, bi-directional pull in the game loop - players are encouraged to return to town to create useful crafting items, but also to travel to different locations to gather more ingredients.

Incidentally, item identification - with roots going all the way back to table-top RPGs - is somewhat similar to crafting, in the sense that unidentified items are useless, giving an incentive to return to town to identify them and make them useful.

Compared to energy systems and encumbrance, the influence of crafting on player behaviour is very weak, since crafting ingredients are usually very lightweight, meaning players are free to hoard them and not go back to town just to consume those ingredients. Many crafting systems are secondary in nature, so that players can often ignore crafting altogether.

Afterthoughts

After examining these different mechanics, all designed to keep players in a hamster-wheel-like loop of town-dungeon-town-dungeon, it may seem arbitrary and player-hostile. Indeed, many RPGs have added quality-of-life conveniences designed to shorten this loop, reduce its urgency, or in some cases to skip it altogether. These include things such as:

• Fast travel / town portals
• Torchlight’s pets who can return to town to sell loot and buy potions on your behalf
• Item stashes, pack mules to carry more loot
• Special items that replace town functions (full-healing items, identify scrolls)

So why do we even need this loop, why not keep the player in combat the whole time, and allow them to do everything there?

Delayed Gratification

A lot of the “pull”-type mechanics give the player something to look forward to, by delaying the immediate reward. Items that must be crafted elsewhere, rare items that need to be fixed or unlocked, quest rewards that need to be collected, these all act as mini-cliffhangers, something to keep the player in the game, or for them to look forward to once they return.

Pacing

Games need a regular pacing in order to keep the player engaged, without being bored or fatigued.

[pacing in games fills] a very important role: it helps the player stay in “the flow”. … The clear [rhythm] it gives to the game helps [players] learn to anticipate challenges and get ready right on time. Providing relief in regular intervals prevents players from getting tired too quickly. Sudden surges of intensity supply them with adrenaline rushes, and the increasing wave structure makes sure they have time to recover afterwards.

Beyond Pacing: Games Aren’t Hollywood

Towns in RPGs are an effective way to serve as lulls in the action, so the player can mentally take a break, reflect, and prepare for the next surge in action.

Composite Game Design

RPGs can be seen as an example of a composite game, a combination of story-telling and turn-based combat. It is therefore important to have different sections that showcase one or the other.

Indeed, the grandfather of RPGs, Dungeons & Dragons had roots in wargames, and was created by adding role-playing elements like character creation and storytelling to wargames.

D&D’s combat was based off a medieval wargame. Wargames have a rich and long history, going back centuries as a tool to train officers. Some have kept this tradition by focusing on realism. Others streamlined the mechanics to make it more fun and interesting, for example by adding fantasy elements.

Just as in composite games where lessons learned from one genre can be used to solve problems in the other, RPGs often use story-telling elements to influence combat, and vice versa, to create a genre that is greater than the sum of its parts. Great RPGs often have superb examples of this inter-dependence of genres. New items, mechanics or characters are introduced via the story. Players in turn can often influence the story or game world by taking on different quests, representing different combat encounters, or sometimes even by performing combat in different ways. This way, players engage with the game on multiple levels.

In Final Fantasy 4, the main character undergoes a permanent class change as part of a key story arc, tying his character’s moral redemption to a big change in gameplay.

The separation of town and dungeon segments becomes clear. It is hard to tell an engaging story while the player is focused on combat. RPGs therefore need a safe, slow-paced town segment to develop and engage with the story, such as taking on quests and tweaking their characters, and a dangerous, fast-paced dungeon segment to fully explore the combat impacts of their choices.

…on time, every time.

I’ve been game jamming for many years, from physical jams like Global Game Jam and online ones like Ludum Dare, as a solo jammer and in teams, using lots of different engines and tools. Some games did really well, others not so much, but most were fun, and every one was a useful learning experience.

And I’d like to share some wisdom with you!

One of the toughest challenges in game jams is how to finish on time. Everyone tells you the same advice - keep your scope small, have a plan or schedule, be flexible, use the tools you know best, take breaks and sleep - and after a few jams this advice quickly becomes experience… but somehow we keep having trouble finishing on time! Making something in such a short timeframe is really tough.

But here’s the one trick that has worked really well for me: make something you’ve already made before.

I know; that sounds wrong! Aren’t you supposed to make something new and innovative! What about the jam theme, are you just going to ignore that? Hear me out.

Have you ever lost hours of work before - maybe you were writing an essay but your computer died, or writing some code and accidentally reverted the work? Oh no! you think; this is going to take me forever to redo!!!

But instead of hours, it takes only 10 minutes to restore.

Sure, it was tedious and painful, but it was finished before you knew it. How was it so easy?

Because the reason it took you hours the first time, is because you didn’t know what you were doing. It was completely new to you. The hard part, in any creative endeavour like writing code, creating art, composing music, was figuring out what to do in the first place. The execution part is quite simple. Once you’ve done it before, it’s fresh in your mind.

So here’s my advice for game jams: make something you’ve made before, finish it quickly, and then gradually change and polish it into your ideal jam game. The first part is easy, because you’ve done it before - that’s the point. You’ll have a finished game very early in the jam, and this is a big advantage - no rushing to get integration and builds working last-minute, no stressing out over menus or stitching game screens together. Then you iteratively improve the game - make a change, test it out, fix it, come up with new ideas - all the while having a working, finished game. It’s low stress, and very effective.

Example

Suppose your idea is a platformer with a fun gimmick. But you’ve never made platformers before; you’re not even sure how to implement your gimmick! But you have made top-down shooters before. So just start with that! Build a top-down game, with a player running around the screen. Add walls and collision, rudimentary animation. Add some basic objectives, like collecting things, progressing to the next level, maybe a hazard so the player can die and go to a game over screen. That’s all there is for a basic, finished game, and it probably only took you half a day, because you’ve done it all before.

At this point things could go one of three ways:

• You gradually implement your original idea into the game, piece by piece. No problem; you always have a working game, and you have a steady stream of progress showing your vision taking shape

  

• You notice hey, maybe the top-down game wasn’t so bad, or maybe you have an even better idea at this point, and completely pivot into another game. That’s cool too! It’s all about the process of finding the fun

  

• Or most likely, you do a combination of the two. As you build out your idea, you find things that work, things that don’t, and adjust accordingly

  

How to Execute

To pull this off, you will need your basics covered. This will depend on your approach:

• If you’re quite new to making games, or don’t have a good game to work off, find a good project template or tutorial, one that is easy to follow, easy to extend, and has all the features of a complete game. Despite what I’ve implied, I also think it’s great to try new things in a game jam! But just be aware of the added danger of getting stuck and not knowing how to proceed in a new engine or tool. It’s therefore very important to pick the right tool and project template to work off. Stick to mature products and popular templates/tutorials, do your research to find that it fits your needs.

  

  There’s no shame in taking a game template, then changing it until it’s an unrecognisable frankenstein-game, and it works well! Personally my best games haven’t been made this way, because it’s much more productive to work with tools you know well, but when I do use this approach, it’s usually been fun and an excellent way to learn something new.

• If you’re making a game from scratch, but based off a previous game you’ve made, know your tools like the back of your hand. Make sure you’re practiced in the game engine, programming language, or whatever tools you used to make that game, so you can re-make it without friction. Do some refresher exercises to see if you still remember all the tricks. It might even make sense to avoid using the latest version of the tools, just in case something broke or doesn’t work the same way as before, but if you do, try it out first.

  

  I’ve been bitten by this on quite a few occasions. After not using a game engine for a year, I come back to it thinking everything is the same, but there’s always one or two things that aren’t. Debugging this, Googling for answers, cost valuable minutes and hours that I could ill afford in a game jam, which threw my entire schedule into chaos. I’ve since learned that updating versions is a luxury you cannot afford for a jam. Leave it for before, or after the jam.

• Also, keep making games! Make different games, different genres, using different techniques! Not only will you get better at making them, but you build up your repository of knowledge, so you have more games to re-make quickly.

  

  The game jams where I learned the most were ones where I tried to make a game in a different genre. I was at my most creative because I had less experience to draw from, so even though I tried to make things that I thought would be fun, I was unconsciously doing things differently enough to create surprising results. And sometimes this works out really well! Either way, you build your repertoire of game making tricks, and knowledge of what works and what doesn’t.

And that’s my two cents. I wish you good luck in your next game jamming adventure!