Pixel Art Barrel Explosion: Pixel art explosive barrel: the fuse spits and the barrel blinks, a white hero frame, then a white-hot fireball rolls up into lit smoke while staves tumble, bounce and settle, sparks skip across the floor and a scorch mark cools.

Pixel Art Barrel Explosion

Pixel art explosive barrel: the fuse spits and the barrel blinks, a white hero frame, then a white-hot fireball rolls up into lit smoke while staves tumble, bounce and settle, sparks skip across the floor and a scorch mark cools. Use it for destructible props, traps and bombs in action games and shooters.

Pixel Art Barrel Explosion is a pixel art effect that loops seamlessly every 3.2 seconds, drawn on a 336 by 288 canvas at 3x pixels. It is built from 36 particle emitters and 3 glowing strokes.

Colour

Recolours the preview and the free downloads.

Free download with a transparent background, cropped to the effect, 96 frames at 30 fps. Use it in commercial games, no credit needed.

Licence: use it in any project, including paid commercial games such as a game sold on Steam. There is no per-project licence to buy and no credit needed. Terms.

Roblox: the download is a flipbook for a ParticleEmitter. Set FlipbookLayout to Grid8x8, FlipbookMode to OneShot and Lifetime to 3.2, then emit one particle per cycle. Roblox setup.

REMIX WITH AI

Try:

Left empty, it just opens in the agent, free. Each change is one AI build, and you start with free builds.

Engine data for Unity, Godot, GameMaker and Aseprite comes with a plan: open it in the studio.

OPEN IN THE STUDIO

Change the colours, timing or size, or export for Unity, Godot 4, GameMaker, Phaser, PixiJS and Aseprite.

Try variations: new colours, motion and shapes of this effect, free in the studio.

FRAME BY FRAME

8 evenly spaced moments across the 3.2 s loop.

Pixel Art Barrel Explosion at 8 moments, from 0 s to 2.8 s

HOW IT'S MADE

Pixel Art Barrel Explosion is pixel art, drawn at 3x pixels so it sits on the same grid as your sprites, and built from 25 particle emitters. Techniques worth a look: glowing strokes traced along shapes, sub-emitters set off by other particles, collisions, turbulence and post filters (bloom). 13 scene layers (ground and props) show in the studio for context and stay out of every export.

It loops seamlessly every 3.2 s, and 17 of its layers fire in bursts, so it pulses instead of flowing evenly. Start times are staggered from 0 s to 0.75 s, so the layers arrive one after another. To change its colour, select "Blast light" in the studio and edit Colour A and Colour B. Size on the same layer sets how big its particles are. Pixel size in the Pixel art panel sets how chunky it looks. The colour swatches by the downloads recolour every layer at once.

Layers, in draw order

  1. Blast lightparticles / additiveA single particle at 0.6 s. It grows as it ages. Colour: orange.
  2. Floor light, Scorch glowparticles / additiveA single particle at 0.6 s. Colour: orange.
  3. ScorchparticlesA single particle at 0.6 s. It grows as it ages. Colour: black.
  4. Scorch embersparticles / additiveA stream of pixels from a disc, its rate keyframed over the loop. Colour runs from pale gold to red over each life.
  5. Shock ring (far half), Shock ring (near half), Blast ringstroke / additiveA glowing line traced along a circle.
  6. Fuse glowparticles / additiveA steady stream of soft glows. Colour: orange.
  7. Fuse sparksparticles / additiveA steady stream of streaks. They fall under gravity. Colour runs from white to orange over each life.
  8. Barrel stavesparticlesOne burst of 4 pixels from a disc at 0.6 s. They fall under gravity, bounce when they hit something, spin and slow down with drag. Colour runs from orange to deep red over each life.
  9. Barrel staves nearparticlesOne burst of 3 pixels from a disc at 0.6 s. They fall under gravity, bounce when they hit something, spin and slow down with drag. Colour runs from orange to deep red over each life.
  10. Hoop scrapsparticlesOne burst of 3 pixels from a disc at 0.6 s. They fall under gravity, bounce when they hit something, spin and slow down with drag. Colours range between grey and dark grey.

15 more layers are in the studio.

DETAILS

Length
3.2 seconds, seamless loop
Canvas
336 x 288, pixel art at 3x
Layers
36 emitters and 3 glowing strokes
Blend
Mostly normal
Colours
whiteorangeredpale gold
Sprites
Kenney Smoke Particles by Kenney (CC0)
Tags
pixel art, pixel, vfx, explosion, barrel, fire, smoke, debris, blast

USING IT IN YOUR GAME

Phaser, PixiJS
The PNG sheet is a plain grid of frames that both can slice. A TexturePacker JSON atlas comes with a plan, from the studio.
Unity
Import the PNG sheet as a Sprite with Mode set to Multiple and slice it, or open the effect in the studio for a ready-made grid.
Godot 4, GameMaker, Aseprite
Open it in the studio and pick your engine in Export: with a plan, it writes the files that engine imports.
Web and chat
The GIF plays anywhere; the APNG keeps soft edges on any background.

Step by step: Unity, Godot 4, Roblox, GameMaker, Phaser and PixiJS, Aseprite, Web games (live runtime).

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