This is the ninety-fifth 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.

Here comes another random selection from the itch.io Bundle for Racial Justice and Equality. It’s Snapshot Shaders Pro (Unity), by Daniel Ilett, and its tagline in the bundle reads:

A collection of 30 image effects for Unity HDRP and URP

Do you have some images, but want to make them more effective? Then this one’s for you!

Look, I’m not going to be much help here. As you may have guessed, Snapshot Shaders Pro is an asset pack, specifically a collection of shaders. For those unfamiliar, shaders are what determine the levels of light and color when rendering computer graphics, and can be used to create all sorts of cool graphical effects. This pack is specifically for use with the Unity game engine, and since I don’t have Unity myself, I can’t even open the Unity packages provided. Fortunately, there’s a lot of detail on the itch.io page for the pack, including a ton of example screenshots showing off the different effects. There are several that imitate legacy displays, including scanlines, barrel distortion (imitating the curved surface of CRT displays), and pixelation, as well as color grading schemes that imitate specific hardware such as the Game Boy. There’s even a dithering shader to translate images into monochrome, similar to the art in Return of the Obra Dinn. But it’s not all retro! There are fancier color corrections, shaders that make the image look hand-drawn or painted, and crazier things like kaleidoscope effects and blurs.

How easy are they to use? I have no idea. But if you are building a game or other type of digital art in Unity and are looking for some cool effects, you should definitely check out this pack, especially if you already own the bundle. If you missed the bundle, Snapshot Shaders Pro is sold for a minimum price of $15.99 and may well be worth it if you need these kinds of effects for your project.

That’s 95 down, and only 1646 to go!