The Kobold (4 Dir with Attacks, Lo-Bit) (Patreon)

Hello! I hope you had a good weekend. Today's release is a really fun one!

Check out this guy:

I'd like to introduce you to my lo-bit kobold. Of course, the lo-bit style has a lot of interpretive flexibility, so he can be anything in your game project: an orc, troll, or whatever sort of generic beastly monster role he fits in...

But the point is that he's a monster with four-direction walk and attack animations! So he can have do his job in the gameplay.

I ended up doing a bit of research for these guys, and then as I started to write up my description for this post, I realized that I accidentally into’d a little write-up about the history of Kobolds in RPGs… so I just went with it.

So today's sprite drops with bonus lore!

(I’m gonna skip over the mythological inspiration and we’re talking here about Kobolds as one of fantasy gaming’s archetypal “monster races”)

Kobolds are interesting because there’s two distinct traditions for their depiction: the western style (through modern DnD) presents a race of reptilians, and the Japanese kobold is a little dog-man.

We can trace these branches clearly to the version introduced in old school DnD in the late 70s: their text descriptions were vague but explicitly called them both “scaly” and “dog-like”. So originally they appeared as a hybrid: scale-covered dog-like goblins. (See: grognardia.blogspot.com/2024/06/a-very-partial-pictorial-history-of.html)

It seems then that as the fantasy genre spread from (and beyond) the initial DnD influence, the west and east each emphasized differently which part of the description was more defining.

The major franchises in the west solidified their worldbuilding brands with style guides in the 2000s. The third edition Monster Manual in 2000 put kobolds into a family line of lizard-men (The post here links to a 1999 piece of art by Sam Wood, which goes so far to establish the Koboldus Minimus under the order Saurantha in the class Reptilia). This opened the door to the kobold's further development into a full reptilian race/culture that goes beyond a monster archetype.

Japan on the other hand followed a tradition of interpretation established by influential computer RPGs, which put visuals to their translation of the early DnD description of the kobold as reptiles with dog heads. The dog-headedness was emphasized by the visuals of the sprites and over time the eastern image of the Kobold became the dog-monster. (www.4gamer.net/games/436/G043667/20190719001/)

And thus over time the image of the “archetypal kobold” crystallized differently in western and eastern fantasy. Western kobolds are reptiles, and Japanese kobolds are dogs.

In the end, luckily for us, we don't have to make a decision:

My kobolds have the luxury of being in a low-resolution pixel art, which means that we follow the old-school tradition of describing them in a more vague, in-between state. Once you use these sprites in your game, you can interpret the details however the kobold fits into your world!

The sheet has multiple animations, and he comes in two color variants:

4-dir idle

4-dir walk

4-dir claw attack

three-frame head-nod

single-frame pose (shock/ouch)

single-frame dead/KO pose (in two directions)

Note: The main sprite and animations are designed to fit into a 16x16 tile-size. The attack animation goes beyond this, so the sprite is centered in a set of 32x32 frames.

Download the sprite sheet here:

Lo-Bit Kobold Sprite Sheet - 100% (16x16)

Lo-Bit Kobold Sprite Sheet - 200% (RMVX/Ace)

Lo-Bit Kobold Sprite Sheet - 300% (RMMV/MZ)

There's a specific reason that I went with the kobold concept and in the lo-bit style: because he fits into the 16x16 square, he's a small monster when used alongside other sprite styles. Kobolds are traditionally small lil dudes, so the original idea is that he (as an asset) could serve a role for different styles.

To illustrate:

While he's sort of orc-ish in the lo-bit context taking up the full 16x16 tile, he's perfectly kobold-ish when used alongside Time Elements or Time Fantasy characters!

Of course, they have a different color scheme, and to really make it work, there's additional manual changes to the colors (lo-bit has a more restricted palette, so it's the one I use as the animation base), so each color style is more complicated than a pure recolor: that's why I didn't have time to release today's animations for all of these styles.

I really want to revisit this guy's animation set to have a broader application as a useful four-directional monster that can work with all three of my major character styles. I feel like if there's something that games could always use more of, it's enemies with animation sets. What do you think? Worthwhile idea?

If this is something that would be useful for your game projects, I've even thought about expanding and remastering some of the other lo-bit monsters similarly: a simple set of 4-dir walk and attack animations. It might be a handy little series of cross-style "little monster dudes" that could be really useful for all sorts of game projects.

(Especially with the Elements action-combat potential, these kind of mobs for Zelda-likes...)

Let me know if you like this idea and would want me to revisit these monsters for future releases.

Okay, this was a big one!

I spent a lot of time writing for today's post... hopefully someone reads it and finds it worthwhile 🤣

I'll be back later in the week with something new. It might be the follow-up to this guy, or it might be something else from the request thread. We'll see.

Love you! Thanks for evberything.