Hammerwatch 2

My Contributions to Hammerwatch 2

After working on Hammerwatch Anniversary Edition, I transitioned to Hammerwatch 2, where my primary responsibility shifted toward asset creation and world updates. My main task was to create new, updated, and more modern pixel-art assets tailored specifically for Hammerwatch 2. All visual assets were created using Aseprite.

Initially, I focused on environment assets such as stone, brick, and wooden wall sets. From there, I expanded my work to include stairs, entrances, and exits across multiple material variants, enabling vertical traversal between floors and levels. I also created smaller environmental assets such as grass, ferns, and other vegetation to improve world detail and visual variety.

One of the main challenges in this role was learning pixel art from scratch. Prior to this project, I had no hands-on experience with pixel-art production. Through mentorship and guidance from the lead artist at Crackshell, I rapidly developed the necessary skills and workflows. A particularly challenging aspect was creating curved wall assets that matched the game’s established visual quality. Achieving clean curves and consistent shading at the required standard took significant iteration, but ultimately resulted in assets that met the visual expectations of the project.

Once the asset production phase was largely complete, I moved on to creating sprite tilemaps so the assets could be placed in the game world via the editor. This process involved defining assets in XML files using pixel coordinates within a 1024×1024 tilemap grid. Each asset was assigned as a placeable doodad, allowing designers to efficiently use them within levels and prefabs.

Following this, I worked on updating existing Hammerwatch 2 levels, world areas, and prefabs particularly smaller rooms and puzzle spaces to integrate the new assets. These updates also required adjusting layouts to accommodate the increased asset scale, as Hammerwatch 2 assets were approximately 33% larger than those used in Hammerwatch 1.

A later and technically important phase of my work involved converting all assets to grayscale. Each distinct color value within an asset was mapped to a specific grayscale tone. This allowed colors to be dynamically reassigned using hex color values, enabling the creation of multiple visual variants from a single base asset. These mappings were defined in the same XML files used for the tilemaps. This system helped ensure visual variety across different areas of the game while minimizing asset duplication.

I applied this grayscale-based variant system not only to environment assets, but also to enemies and player characters. This enabled enemy variants and allowed players to customize character elements such as helmets, capes, pants, and other gear using color selection.

All assets I created for Hammerwatch 2 were also reused across other titles within the franchise. This includes Hammerwatch Anniversary Edition as well as Heroes of Hammerwatch 2. While I did not directly participate in the development of Heroes of Hammerwatch 2, the assets I produced for Hammerwatch 2 were integrated into that project, demonstrating their flexibility and long-term value within the shared asset pipeline.

In addition to asset and world work, I participated in near daily playtesting sessions. This included identifying visual bugs, placement issues, level design inconsistencies, and other problems related to asset integration and gameplay readability.

As with Hammerwatch Anniversary Edition, I no longer have access to the original asset files due to company property restrictions. However, I have included as many in-game screenshots as possible to showcase the assets, environments, and systems I contributed to.

-Jamie

Check out Hammerwatch 2 Here HW2 on Steam!