Posted December 31, 2025 by posshydra
hey, its austin. happy holidays! i have not worked on checkmage the past week on account of visiting with friends and family. i also caught the flu, which i fought off while watching movies.
since i dont have any new stuff to share, i'll share some information on the color design and palette i use for the game.
above is the original work-in-progress sprite sheet for checkmage. it was created september 2023. i had no idea id be using them for a game at this point. but this is the earliest moment where i had made decisions about color and palette restriction.
you can see here the early look that tiles had. i think i was trying to balance the contrast of the checkerboard pattern with the clarity of the chess pieces. the final tile design had 4 colors, which by happenstance became the 4 colors i use for everything else in the game, ranging from the UI elements, character portraits, overworld tiles, and the base color for pieces.
i dont think i planned for everything to stay so restrictive in terms of palette, i just end up doing that when i draw pixel art to keep myself from going crazy. at one point in development, each area had its own "theme color" to use as accents. the library would have had a deep red, the grotto a verdant green etc.
i think using the mana blue everywhere challenges me more and is more fun, but things could still change this far into development. its easy to tweak colors of all the sprites, and i could apply a shader to change the colors real-time, as i do with the chess pieces in battle.
in the file system, each sprite is stored as a png image file.
with shaders, i can also change the palettes dynamically or give them special effects. im not very good with shader code, so this will need some improvement. below is the "glass" visual effect.
using these shaders, it's been really easy to implement custom palettes! these will be collectible unlockable things for players to find or purchase. enemies will also use palettes at some point in the mid-game.
i considered at one point letting the player obtain a palette customizer where they get to pick their own colors, but i decided against it as i value the collectible aspect of finding fun preset palettes over the creativity gained from designing your own. there are a lot of ways to personalize your deck in checkmage already, so i hope players forgive me for this decision.
Checkmage! is still in active development. If you want to support me, please consider sharing with friends. The game will be released on Steam and Itch for sale when I'm done making it.
Checkmage! on Steam - play the demo now!
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