---
name: pico8-asset-standards
description: "Standards for building cohesive, production-grade PICO-8 asset sheets, tilesets, and spritesheets with consistent palette, perspective, and detail flow."
---

# PICO-8 Asset Standards

## Purpose
Ensure every PICO-8 asset (tileset, spritesheet, character sheet, or asset sheet) is cohesive, production-grade, and ready to drop into a game without rework.

## Core Requirements

### Palette Discipline
- Use the PICO-8 16-color palette exclusively.
- Establish a dominant color family (2–3 related hues) for the main subject.
- Reserve accent colors for highlights, danger zones, and focal points only.
- Maintain consistent color roles across all assets in a sheet (e.g., if shadow is dark blue on one tile, it is dark blue everywhere).

### Perspective & Lighting
- Choose ONE perspective per sheet (top-down, side-view, or isometric) and never mix.
- Apply light from a single consistent direction across all tiles and sprites.
- Shadows follow the same shape logic on every asset (e.g., all cast shadows point bottom-right).

### Detail Flow & Hierarchy
- Start tiles/props from the palette's dominant colors, then add edge highlights and shading.
- Keep tile density uniform — avoid one hyper-detailed tile next to empty flat tiles.
- Props and decorations should read clearly at 8x8 or 16x16 without zooming.

### Sheet Organization
- Group related assets together (terrain together, props together, characters together).
- Leave consistent spacing between assets for clean cropping.
- Label sections visually through grouping, not text.

### Cohesion Checks
Before finishing an asset sheet, verify:
- All colors appear in the PICO-8 palette.
- Perspective does not flip mid-sheet.
- Lighting direction is consistent.
- Edge treatment (dither, outline, anti-aliasing style) matches across assets.
- No orphan tiles that don't connect to any neighbor.

## Common Pitfalls
- Mixing 8-bit and 16-bit detail levels.
- Using outline style on some tiles but not others.
- Forgetting palette constraint — colors outside the 16 PICO-8 colors.
- Inconsistent tile edge connections (a grass tile that only connects to one dirt variant).