I’ve always loved games with large characters made of multiple sprites, as they made SNES and Sega Genesis titles look more impressive. Fighting a boss made up of several assets after battling regular enemies felt like a real accomplishment.

The boss from Castlevania: Bloodlines is a great example of skeletal animation with a 3D effect.

While common today, these effects once relied on custom solutions or game engine features, making such games rare.

(Above) Odin Sphere showcases the beauty of 2D skeletal animation.

Today, I recommend Spine 2D by esoteric software, which offers features like Inverse Kinematics, Meshes, Weights, and skins. It supports major game engines like Unity, GameMaker, and Godot, with runtimes available for download. Esoteric software has made runtime builds for Godot that are available on their website. You can download them now and see how all the features are used (available here ).

Bullet Age by Halfbot, makes extensive use of Spine for animations. You can check out some of the animations on their tumblr site as they look really impressive. I’m excited to potentially use it for the next version of Squarebugs.