Pixel Art Frost Nova: A frost warrior gathers cold, then slams out a ring of pixel ice crystals that burst from the floor, glint, and shatter into bouncing shards and snow.

Pixel Art Frost Nova

A frost warrior gathers cold, then slams out a ring of pixel ice crystals that burst from the floor, glint, and shatter into bouncing shards and snow. Use it for an ice nova, a freezing area attack or a boss slam in a pixel-art RPG.

Pixel Art Frost Nova is a pixel art effect that loops seamlessly every 3.2 seconds, drawn on a 480 by 360 canvas at 3x pixels. It is built from 41 particle emitters and 8 glowing strokes.

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 Frost Nova at 8 moments, from 0 s to 2.8 s

HOW IT'S MADE

Pixel Art Frost Nova is pixel art, drawn at 3x pixels so it sits on the same grid as your sprites, and built from 41 particle emitters. Techniques worth a look: glowing strokes traced along shapes, sub-emitters set off by other particles, paths, collisions and post filters (bloom). 3 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 38 of its layers fire in bursts, so it pulses instead of flowing evenly. Start times are staggered from 0 s to 1.6 s, so the layers arrive one after another. To change its colour, select "Release glow" 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.

Layers, in draw order

  1. Cold light poolparticles / additiveA single particle at 0.55 s. It grows as it ages. Colour: blue.
  2. Pool coreparticles / additiveA single particle at 0.55 s. It grows as it ages. Colour: white.
  3. Frozen floorparticlesA single particle at 0.59 s. It grows as it ages. Colour: blue.
  4. Frost rim far, Shock ring far, Shock ring 2 far +3stroke / additiveA glowing line traced along a circle.
  5. Charge pool, Charge glowparticles / additiveA single particle at 0.02 s. It grows as it ages. Colour: cyan.
  6. Charge ring far, Charge ring nearstroke / additiveA glowing line traced along a circle. It is drawn as dashes.
  7. Crystal glow, Crystal glowparticles / additiveOne burst of 7 soft glows along a path at 0.62 s. Colours range between cyan and blue.
  8. Ice streaks, Ice streaksparticles / additiveOne burst of 12 streaks along a path at 0.6 s. They slow down with drag. Colour runs from white to cyan over each life.
  9. Ice spike risingparticles3 single particles at set times. They grow as they age and ease to a stop. Colour: blue.
  10. Ice spike rising, Ice spike risingparticles2 single particles at set times. They grow as they age and ease to a stop. Colour: blue.

29 more layers are in the studio.

DETAILS

Length
3.2 seconds, seamless loop
Canvas
480 x 360, pixel art at 3x
Layers
41 emitters and 8 glowing strokes
Blend
Mostly normal
Colours
whitebluecyanpale cyan
Sprites
Kenney Smoke Particles by Kenney (CC0), Heroes by SpriteLab micro mode (Free to use)
Tags
pixel art, pixel, vfx, frost nova, ice, frost, spell, aoe, nova, shatter, rpg

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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