This is the one hundred ninetieth entry in the Scratching That Itch series, wherein I randomly select and write about one of the 1741 games and game-related things included in the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. The Bundle raised $8,149,829.66 split evenly between the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund and Community Bail Fund, but don’t worry if you missed it. There are plenty of ways you can help support the vital cause of racial justice; try here for a start. Lastly, as always, you may click on images to view larger versions.

Our one hundred nintieth random selection from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality is burying us under a thousand pieces of loot. It’s Heroic Asset Series: Icon Pack, by Aleksandr Makarov, and its tagline in the bundle reads:

Tiny 16×16 icons with 64 colors!

Reader, it is time to get tiny.

As the tagline suggests, this is an asset pack, offering more than 1000 icons to use when making one’s own games. It’s part of the Heroic Asset Series, which has a whopping 21 entries, all by Aleksander Makarov. Four of them are available in the bundle, and this is the first one we’ve stumbled upon in Scratching That Itch. The Heroic Asset Series in general seems focused on fantasy role-playing games, full of pixel art tiles and other graphics appropriate for a tale of swords and magic. The Icon Pack is mostly about the inevitable inventory system: a bunch of artwork to represent different items characters might collect in their adventures, all conveniently sized to fit in a square grid.

Given that each icon is only 16×16 pixels, I’m really impressed with the artistry on display. Items are easily recognizable and differentiated from one another, and even have some nice shading effects. The 64 color palette makes them reminiscent of the 16-bit console era, which is fondly remembered for its classic role-playing games. Many modern games intentionally imitate the art style of this time, so the Icon Pack should have a broad appeal. It’s offered with a generous license that allows free use in any commercial or non-commercial product, including modification of the assets, as long as Aleksandr Makarov is credited.

Icons are provided as .png images, and are organized both by item type (cape, torso, necklace, feet, etc.) and (for a subset of the items) into 23 named armor sets, complete with previews on a mock-up inventory screen. And that’s just what’s in the 1.0 version of the pack. Separate folders contain the 1.1 and 1.2 additions, which add a bunch more items as well as some skill icons with both single icon and three icon versions (presumably for a touch of animation?). Most icons come both with and without outlines, so users can match the intended art style for their game. Everything except the skill icons from the 1.2 update come as individual files; those skill icons are on a sprite sheet that will need to be manually divided up.

There’s not much more to say about this one. It’s got a ton of beautiful icons that should be widely applicable, including for smaller scale roguelikes or similar games where icons make up the majority of the art. If you missed it in the bundle, Heroic Asset Series: Icon Pack is sold for a minimum price of $7.

That’s 190 down, and only 1551 to go!