The Twins' Arcade

Good characters first.
Then build the game.

Six visual lanes we can genuinely produce in this repo. These examples use authored character assets, animation files and models—not anatomy assembled from Canvas circles.

Four expressive animated pixel dinosaurs Animated source frames

01 / Pixel

Best fit now

Authored pixel sprites

Recognisable silhouettes, proper run cycles and character-specific movement. Still tiny and fast, but drawn by an artist rather than encoded as one static grid.

Pipeline
Aseprite → atlas → Canvas or PixiJS
Best for
Runners, platformers, collecting games
Character cost
Low–medium
Soft illustrated bunny character Move over it · press it

02 / Vector puppet

Live Rive

Responsive storybook character

The illustration is rigged once, then eyes, ears, face and body react continuously. A state machine can blend idle, hover, pressed and happy without dozens of exported frames.

Pipeline
Illustrator → Rive rig → state machine
Best for
Peekaboo, feeding, dress-up, stories
Character cost
Medium–high, highly reusable
A complete illustrated cast with many authored poses 45 poses per character

03 / Illustrated atlas

Most flexible

Cartoon cast with pose libraries

Characters arrive as a coherent family with expressions and action poses. Games swap atlas regions rather than constructing bodies procedurally.

Pipeline
Layered art → pose sheet → PixiJS sprites
Best for
Matching, music, dress-up, adventures
Character cost
Medium
Illustrated rabbit sticker
Illustrated panda sticker
Illustrated monkey sticker
Separate transparent characters

04 / Sticker book

Fast to expand

Collectible character pieces

Each animal is a finished transparent asset with its own face and silhouette. White keylines and spring motion make them feel physical without redrawing their anatomy.

Pipeline
SVG/PNG assets → atlas → spring motion
Best for
Matching, sorting, rewards, galleries
Character cost
Low–medium
Rabbit in a layered paper world
Layered scene + authored character

05 / Paper theatre

Distinctive

Cut-paper worlds

Characters stay properly illustrated while scenery becomes tactile layers with imperfect edges and real depth. Limbs can be exported separately for simple puppet animation.

Pipeline
Painted layers → PNG parts → PixiJS scene
Best for
Shape sorting, fishing, bedtime stories
Character cost
Medium–high
A cast of recognisable low-poly animated farm animals Rigged animated models

06 / Toy world

Biggest shift

Low-poly animated animals

Real modelled anatomy and reusable animation clips give a toy-box feel. We can render live with Three.js or pre-render models into lightweight 2D sprite sequences.

Pipeline
Blender rig → glTF or rendered atlas
Best for
Animal band, farm, driving, building
Character cost
High setup, excellent reuse

The rule for future games

Choose the lane before writing the renderer.

Dino Runner stays as it is. If we ever upgrade its cast, we replace complete sprite sheets together—never one conditional overlay.

Every new game gets an asset brief first: character source, required poses, animation states, attachment points and licence.

PixiJS and Rive are options, not house style. Each game loads only the runtime its chosen visual lane actually needs.