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name: gamedev-2d-art-palettes description: | Color palettes for 2D games: color theory practical (warm/cool, complementary, analogous), restricted palettes ready-made (PICO-8, GameBoy DMG, DB16, DB32, AAP-64, NES, C64), hue shifting (warm-cool ramps), palette swaps for character variants and time-of-day, indexed mode workflow, .gpl/.pal/.ase/.json export.

USE WHEN: starting a project's palette, choosing restricted palette, designing color ramps for shading, planning palette swaps. allowed-tools: Read, Grep, Glob

Color Palettes for 2D Games

Quick refs: lospec-recommended-palettes.md, hue-shift-recipes.md

A pixel art project benefits from a restricted palette: limits creativity productively, ensures cohesion, eases palette swaps for character / time-of-day / status variants.

Color theory cheat sheet

Practical rules for game art (not academic):

• Complementary: opposite on color wheel (red / cyan). High contrast, draws focus. Use for hero vs background, key UI elements.
• Analogous: adjacent on wheel (orange + yellow + red). Cohesive, natural. Use for environment palettes.
• Triadic: 3 evenly spaced (red / yellow / blue). Vibrant, balanced, classic cartoon look.
• Split-complementary: base + 2 colors adjacent to its complement. More forgiving than full complementary.

Mood mapping (rough):

Mood	Palette feel
Cheerful, kid-friendly	Saturated triadic, warm dominant
Tense, horror	Desaturated, dark, narrow hue range
Mystical / magical	Analogous purples + blues with neon accents
Apocalyptic	Brown + orange + dark teal (Mad Max look)
Underwater	Cyan + teal + green dominant, warm accents on creatures

Restricted palettes (recommended starts)

Palette	Colors	Source	Use case
GameBoy DMG	4 (greens)	Hardware	Authentic GB look
PICO-8	16	Lexaloffle fantasy console	Modern lo-fi indie
PICO-8 secret	+16 (32 total)	Hidden in PICO-8	Extended lo-fi
DB16	16	DawnBringer (Dan Hascome)	Versatile general use
DB32	32	DawnBringer	Stardew / Hyper Light Drifter style
AAP-64	64	adigun a. polack	Painterly pixel art
NES	54	Hardware (4 sub-palettes of 4)	Authentic NES
C64	16	Hardware	Authentic C64
MS-DOS / EGA	16	IBM EGA hardware	DOS-era games
Resurrect 64	64	Kerrie Lake	Modern indie
Sweetie 16	16	GrafxKid	Friendly cartoony

Lospec.com = the de-facto repository. Sortable by color count, search keyword, download in any format.

Color count tradeoffs

• 4-8 colors: GameBoy / Atari look. Forces strong silhouettes. Animation cheap.
• 16 colors: PICO-8 / DB16. Sweet spot for indie. Rich enough for shading + outlines + accent colors.
• 32-64 colors: AAP-64 / DB32. Modern pixel art. Allows hue shifting without running out of slots.
• 128+ colors: Painterly territory. No longer "restricted palette" — becomes texture-based art.

Most modern indie pixel art uses 32-48 colors total project-wide, with sub-palettes of ~16 per scene/character.

Hue shifting (the key technique)

Naive shading: take base color, decrease lightness for shadow, increase for highlight (RGB straight-line).

shadow      base       highlight
#3a3a3a → #6e6e6e → #aaaaaa   (gray ramp - boring)

Hue shifting: rotate hue toward cool (blue/purple) for shadow, toward warm (yellow/orange) for highlight. Result feels alive.

shadow      base       highlight
#3a3a6e → #5e6e6e → #aaaa6e   (subtle hue shift in shading ramp)

See quick-ref/hue-shift-recipes.md for canonical ramps (skin, foliage, stone, water).

Rule of thumb: shadow side hue rotates toward dominant ambient/sky color (often cool blue), highlight side toward warm (sunlight orange).

Color ramps

A "ramp" = ordered list of N colors used for one material's shading. Typical ramp length: 4-7 colors.

Foliage ramp (5 colors):
#1a3a18 → #2e5a2a → #4a7a3e → #7a9a52 → #aabd6a
darkest    shadow    base       lit       highlight

Stone ramp (5 colors, hue-shifted):
#2a2638 → #4a4252 → #6c6276 → #8e8896 → #b0b0b0

Skin ramp (warm bias):
#5a3232 → #8a5050 → #b87878 → #d8a070 → #f0c898

Water ramp (cool bias):
#1a2a4a → #2e4a76 → #5278a8 → #88a8d0 → #b8d8f0

Reuse a ramp across multiple objects of the same material → cohesion.

Palette swap conventions

Replace the palette without redrawing the sprite. Used for:

• Character variants (red / blue / green hero in same outfit).
• Faction colors (good guys orange, enemies purple).
• Status effects (poisoned = purple tint, frozen = cyan tint).
• Time of day (day → dusk → night palette swap on the entire scene).
• Damage flash (full white palette for 2 frames on hit).

Two implementation strategies:

1. Indexed mode (Aseprite + engine support)

Sprite stored as palette indices, engine looks up colors at render time. Trivial swap: change palette LUT.

• Aseprite: Mode → Indexed.
• Unity: requires custom shader sampling palette texture.
• Godot: built-in via shader texture(palette, vec2(index, 0.5)).

2. Color replacement shader

Sprite stored RGB, shader detects "base color N" → outputs "swap color N". Works in any engine. Supports up to 8-16 colors (limited by shader uniforms).

Day / night palette shifts

Sample workflow:

1. Author the day palette as default.
2. Define a night palette mapping: each day color → corresponding night color (usually cooler + darker + slight purple tint).
3. Engine fades between palettes over X seconds at sunset/sunrise.
4. Optionally: emissive sprites (street lamps, fireflies) bypass the palette swap (always lit color).

File formats

• .gpl (GIMP) — text format, widely supported.
• .ase / .aseprite — Aseprite native (binary).
• .pal (JASC / Microsoft) — text RGB list.
• .json — Lospec / custom (RGB array).
• .hex — Lospec text export, just hex codes one per line.
• .png — strip image (1px tall), sampled by engine.

Aseprite's Edit → Convert Palette → Save Palette exports any combination.

Common mistakes

• Too many colors: 200+ colors = painted, not pixel art. Restrict.
• Not reusing ramps: every object has its own colors → no cohesion.
• Pure value gradient (no hue shift): looks dead.
• Mid-tone gap: ramp jumps from 30% → 70% lightness with no 50% → banding. Fix: paint mid-tones.
• Outline always pure black: looks heavy / cartoony. Use very dark variant of fill color instead.
• Saturation crushed in shadows: shadows shouldn't go gray; keep some chroma.
• Over-saturated palette: looks cheap. Pull saturation back ~80% from picker max.

See also

• pixel-art-fundamentals/SKILL.md
• lighting-art/SKILL.md
• tools/SKILL.md — Aseprite indexed-mode workflow