I’ve got a confession to make: I’m hooked on Rimworld. It’s easily the most annoying and thought-provoking game I have ever encountered. I won’t say it’s a great game, but for the right kind of player, it results in some truly amazing game-play.

I also find the little characters (“pawns”) to be oddly cute and expressive. The whole bad/retro art look of the game works magic on me because my brain fills in the voids with its own stuff; it becomes kind of like a framework for imagination like, when I was a kid, I used to play with toy soldiers and imbued them with personalities, back-stories, and motivations. The other day I was thinking maybe it’d be fun to try to 3D model some of my pawns and sculpt them, but I think I lack those skills. Besides, I have so many other things I should be building, instead.

But, in the course of doing that thinking, and some research, I stumbled across something cool: The Universal Sprite-Sheet Generator

It’s almost perfect, except it needs a “randomize” or “evolve” button (“evolve” would move one setting a small amount, allowing you to change a character subtly). But, you enter your preferences and it spits out a drawn sprite for you:

That’s Grunnhild, shortly after getting poked in the right eye with a mouse-click. The options are insane and they even give you an animation loop.

I guess I’m easily entertained but I spent a while creating various characters, just for the pleasure of seeing how they looked. Many things are possible with this set-up, but some aren’t: I tried to re-create Tim Curry’s Frank-N-Furter but the options just aren’t there.