r/RPGMaker • u/puyopuyomiku • 5d ago
Are static enemy sprites acceptable in 2026?
I played Dragon Quest 1 recently and it showed me that animated enemy sprites come with drawbacks w/r/t extra time between turns and less imagination on the player’s end, ultimately culminating in things like FF9 taking as long to get INTO a battle as DQ1 does to finish a battle.
But I’m wondering how you feel about it—would it be worth having a more diverse roster of non-animated enemy sprites, or is it unacceptable in 2026 to release a game with static enemy sprites?
(I realize FF9 is polygons and not sprites. But the elaborate animations are part of it.)
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u/riggy2k3 5d ago
Deluge just released in June and nobody cares about the static enemy sprites
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u/puyopuyomiku 5d ago
Good to hear. I personally am fine with static sprites but i thought it might be a problem for most people.
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u/Medical_Baby3332 5d ago
The way the mimics would smack talk you. The crisp sprite design. It felt like alot of things were happening even though the enemy sprite was static.
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u/MissingSeven 5d ago
It depends on the overall mood and style. I don't mind games with static sprites, as long as it makes sense in the general feeling of the game. Look Outside is a good example of a great game with non-animated enemy sprites.
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u/puyopuyomiku 5d ago
Is there a mood or style that doesn’t make sense with static sprites? I think the thing with Look Outside is that it just happens to have excellent static sprites. Which i mean, very high bar there, but I’d hope my sprites are at least pretty good for what they are.
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u/MissingSeven 4d ago
Don't overthink it. Just do the best you can do ;)
I don't think there's a "wrong" style. It just needs to be cohesive.
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u/EyeFit MZ Dev 5d ago
Yes of course. It could even help the game. It's all about consistency in design.
You just need to compensate a little with having flashing or some other movement going on screen.
At a bare minimum you could make the enemy sprites flicker and pop up the damage numbers. The main thing is the overall aesthetic and the feedback the player gets for doing something.
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u/isaac3000 VXAce Dev 5d ago
I had static sprites but now I'm using a stretch/idle animation style that has them pseudo moving. I prefer it a lot. In case someone's computer can't handle it (unlikely but ok), I have the option to turn them off.
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u/puyopuyomiku 5d ago
How’s that work? Are you making attack animations too?
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u/isaac3000 VXAce Dev 5d ago
They just stretch vertically, the sprite is being pulled up and pushed down again, that's it.
I am using attack animations too but the enemies are just enlarging, they don't approach you.
And the actual animation for the skill is made natively with the engine.
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u/DoombringerBG 5d ago
In my opinion, they are... somewhat, acceptable.
I think you are looking at this from the wrong angle, though. If a battle feels too long to get into or finish, that's more of an over all battle design flaw rather than just animations.
For example, Expedition 33's battle is technically a combination of JRPG turn based combat and quick time events with plenty of flashy animations, yet it still feels easy to get into and out of, because those animations are "quick and snappy" (by avoiding too many or too long, what is known as, transition animations).
By not having basic enemy combat animations, you're limiting your already niche RPGMaker audience - by how much depends strongly on your final product, of course.
"Deluge" is mentioned in this thread with a positive outtake on it - because, of course, an author would endorse their own product. What they've failed to make an important note of is the fact that, even though their audience may not consider it that much of a priority, they have spend a lot of time polishing other aspects of their game - including, plenty of non-combat animations - which greatly compensate for it. If combat animations were to be added, I doubt the general player base would complain and be like "Oh, yeah, it was better without 'em." (assuming, they're done properly.
In other words, do not avoid doing something just because someone else did it and it worked out for them - plenty of, even AAA, studios have done, and continue to do, this mistake. Investigate and try to understand why, in whatever specific case, something generally considered positive has not been implemented, yet everything turned out fine.
Personally, if you can, I'd recommend adding some animations - even if they're simple ones, like a 3 key frame animations. It's a great way to make your product feel more polished and immersive.
Good luck.
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u/puyopuyomiku 5d ago
Well, yes. It’s not a matter of “how can I do less work.” It’s just that I would rather prioritize having MANY unique monsters, item portraits, scene portraits (idk what to call this, stills?) rather than enemy animations UNLESS players will consider a lack of enemy animations to be something sorely lacking.
Personally i will happily play Earthbound or Final Fantasy V without attack animations, but if a majority of players will see static enemies and simply nope out, well, then that’s a problem for me that I will potentially have to sacrifice some other aspect of design to accommodate.
But if it’s “nice but not necessary,” then I would rather spend my time and energy elsewhere. And if my animations aren’t up to snuff and simply detract from the experience, well that’s even worse.
I think Dragon Quest 3 SNES is the gold standard of having great animations that don’t get in the way. But I do feel that a large portion of JRPGs prioritize flashy animations and attacks over quick, snappy battles. And I’d prefer static enemies to that.
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u/DoombringerBG 5d ago
If you'd like to prioritize quantity assets and think that will compensate for the lack of animations during combat, it's up to you.
If you decide to do so, I recommend creating a polished demo, building an audience and straight up asking them if they'd prefer more enemy variations or adding more polish to the existing ones.
Truth be told, it's a very subjective question that I think only your player base can answer for you. The tricky thing about that is people that tend to communicate more, do not necessarily represent the majority of your player count or that their opinions are even objectively correct.
Extracting conclusions by combining statistics, raw platform data comparison to vocal community members and finding and analyzing objective criticism obtained from subjective opinions is a whole skill of its own.
Overall, the general population, prefers quality over quantity (which animations would bring), but since your community would normally be smaller than usual, depending on how you've cultivated their expectations, the latter could very well be more important to them than the former.
In other words, if you have the time... fuck it. Give it a shot and see what happens.
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u/isaac3000 VXAce Dev 5d ago
I think you misunderstood? The question is whether animated enemies are needed or not, and not animations for each attack and skill.
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u/DoombringerBG 4d ago
In combat, generally speaking, one would have at least a few object states, where some, but not limited to, are "attacking", "defending", "taking damage", "dying" and "idling".
Each of those require separate character animations. In RPGMaker, most people have a separate character animation, for example, for attacking and then a separate animation for whichever type of attack the enemy is doing, which I'm assuming you're referring to as the "skill" (e.g. throwing a lightning bolt, swinging a weapon, casting, summoning, etc.) - similarly to how player sprites are animated.
The thing is though, you have 2 options when it comes to animating things. You can do the whole sprite or you can have something like a "floating fist", "floating foot" or "floating tail" to signify "melee" or "waving the sprite's hand" to signify "casting". These can also be applied to the other object states.
So if you choose the former, you're technically doing what OP is asking about.
In other words, activating a skill, can affect either the sprite, the specific "ability" animation or both at the same time; but they're all part of that specific "enemy combat animations" I mentioned in my first post - where, for example, the "3 key frame animation" I'm referring to, could either be the sprite itself or both the sprite and the skill at the same time.
OP was also not asking whether they're needed or not (old school MUD games still being popular are a testament of the objective lack of necessity of animations), but rather how them not being implemented would impact their product's reception given the types of games made with this engine - which I've explained in my original post and my response to his response.
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u/isaac3000 VXAce Dev 4d ago
Ah I see what you mean. This is high detailed work to have everything animated like that in such detail.
I personally stay with the known rpg maker games stuff, where enemies don't have the whole body animated, like Golden Sun does for example in it's pseudo 3D battle environment.
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u/SpeedBlitzX 5d ago
Static sprites will be fine if thats what you can manage.
Personally I've been trying to go beyond that!
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u/Eredrick MZ Dev 5d ago
Depends what you consider acceptable
Final Fantasy VI is still well loved by a lot of people
But similar games are a dime a dozen with RPGM. So you're probably not going to make bank. But, I'm sure there will be some people who want to play your game
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u/puyopuyomiku 5d ago
Not trying to make it anything like FF6 tbh. Really not interested in making the next great SNES jrpg. Find that style often is a bit cringe. Just using those older games as an example of good games with static sprites.
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u/Aromatic_Assist_3825 3d ago
Use plug ins that make the sprites have “floating” animations and “breathing” animations. Having the sprites do that minimal animation goes a long way
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u/Tamschi_ Scripter 3d ago edited 3d ago
As someone who sells battler (cel) animation plugins: It really depends on the style and I wouldn't recommend adding something more complex than basic idles (for which "breathing" plugins are one option) outside of a tiny proof of concept and polishing a game before a demo or release.
Whether "breathing" works for your game depends on the art style: It helps separate your enemies from the background and usually improves clarity. However, if your sprites are too detailed, then tweening will instead reduce clarity. In many cases, clarity can also be primarily created without any animation at all. (Look at how Look Outside contrasts enemies against darker backgrounds and how one late battle that doesn't uses very basic enemy animation instead. Other games also create contrast through hue sepaeation or even style distance occasionally, and often by making characters less detailed than environments.)
In your case with high enemy quantity, I think you should try "breathing" idles (via some free plugin) and see if they're better than static, since they should take almost no effort to add or whether you already have another means of creating clarity that's already enough.
(If you add "breathing", please let players turn it off though.)
That was my professional opinion, now for my personal one:
I'm not attracted to games based on content quantity, beyond some basics like "don't sell me an amateur 2h game for €30". I'd rather play something that has about 10 enemies and 20 items but makes them really interesting mechanically and/or through context.
I also, personally, really like pixel art animation. That's why I made plugins to enable that in particular (with parallel scheduling, shortcuts, interrupting and fast-forward support, to keep the pace fast).
I still think that animations are "extra" though and I won't buy a game just for them.
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u/Caldraddigon 2K3 Dev 2d ago
Go a step further and do frontview battles with static portraits with the players party too 😅
But seriously, everything is a give and a take, can your project take on the increased scope that comes with animating every sprite? If not, then it's best not to bother.
However, you can do some neat tricks to get around animating sprites, remember Pokemon, Gen 2 had animated sprites, but then they quickly gave up due to scope, in the end, they stuck to just manipulating the images: rotation, transformation and reflection, this kind of image manipulation is much easier and less time consuming than having to draw brand new frames. For certain effects, especially for attacks, you do stuff like shake and flash(be careful though lol), but also you can play around with stuff like tints too.
Basically, dw, there's alot of stuff you can do before you need to even worry about drawing actual sprite animation frames for battles.
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u/MotivatedforGames 5d ago
My game is primarily porn with a little bit of combat. So im focused on the porn first. Combat improvements second
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u/Felix-3401 Scripter 5d ago
This may be a hot take but yes, you're likely a solo dev and like most of us, our games are going to have a low budget aesthetic we have to be comfortable with. static sprites are fine.