Procedurally animated characters

[erlend-sh]

Since this is already a very mathy, physics-driven game, maybe the characters themselves could lean into that as well. The animation system that comes to mind is that of Rain World:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVntwsrjNe4

This style of procedural animation lends itself very well to a falling-sand environment, since it’s designed to flow along uneven terrain rather than getting easily blocked by unevenness the way standard character controllers do.

It’s a more advanced method, but art-wise it’s probably cheaper because it relies far less on custom character animations for various actions. They could still be quite humanoid as well, just a bit more stretchy/squishy. Basically a pixelated version of Gang Beasts / Party Animals.

This approach can also have implications on the AI of NPCs, as explained in Rain World’s notion of AI behavior (locomotion) == animation.

[erlend-sh]

Some prior art by @angrycompany16 :

https://github.com/angrycompany16/procedural_animations

Also https://github.com/darthdeus/procedural-spider