pixelfx

What it does

• 232 effects across 20 categories, every one a small code file — no images; pure effects export draw(p, t, o) so loops tile with no seam, simulated ones step real particles at 120 Hz
• Two buffers — pixels in color, additive glow in light added on top — and every random number seeded, so frame 40 is identical every run
• Recolor without code — any effect takes a dark-to-bright palette ramp, so a fire burns blue and a heal glows pink
• The skill runs a quality loop — draft, render the contact sheet, look, fix the worst thing, render again; check.mjs catches spills, seams, unseeded randomness and slow frames
• Export anywhere — sprite sheets with Aseprite-style JSON (frame rects, durations, pivot) that Phaser's atlas loader and the Godot and Unity importers read; the gallery runs the whole library live

When to use it

A browser game that needs fire, hits, pickups and weather without an artist or a texture budget — install from GitHub with no dependencies, or hand the skill a prompt like "Make five takes on a coin pickup sparkle and show me the best two." Engine teams get the same effects as sprite sheets; effect authors get a working starting point from node tools/new.mjs and a quality bar to iterate against.

Getting started

# Claude Code skill, as a plugin:
/plugin marketplace add patch-gg/pixelfx
/plugin install pixelfx@pixelfx

# or copy skills/pixelfx into ~/.claude/skills/

# the library, no dependencies:
npm i github:patch-gg/pixelfx

# author a new effect:
node tools/new.mjs arcane/my-spell
node tools/render.mjs arcane/my-spell
node tools/check.mjs arcane/my-spell

Things to know

MIT covers the code and the effects, but the Patch Pixel font in gallery/fonts is Patch's own and not covered (see NOTICE.md), and parts are adapted from Hugo Duprez's MIT effects, credited at the top of those files. For engines the path is sprite-sheet export, not direct import — Godot, Unity, GameMaker, Defold, LÖVE and Bevy read the sheets, while the code itself targets browser canvas APIs. The live gallery at https://patch-gg.github.io/pixelfx/ plays every effect. Created 2026-10-30: very new, and 232 is the count as of writing.