---
type: reference
title: PICO-8 Asset Standards
description: Production-grade standards for PICO-8 asset sheets — palette discipline, single perspective and light direction, detail flow and hierarchy, sheet organization, and the cohesion checklist.
tags: [pico8, game-dev, pixel-art, standards]
timestamp: 2026-10-05T00:00:00-07:00
---

# PICO-8 Asset Standards

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.

## 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 (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 8×8 or 16×16 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 a sheet)

- 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 the palette constraint — colors outside the 16 PICO-8 colors.
- Inconsistent tile edge connections (a grass tile that only connects to one
  dirt variant).