Pixel art backgrounds
718 spritesPixel art backgrounds and scenery for 2D games. Forests, skies, dungeons, and parallax layers, free to download as PNG.
718 sprites
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Pixel art backgrounds for 2D games
Forests, skies, dungeons, caves, city streets, and interiors. These are the scenes that sit behind your sprites, and they download as PNGs ready to drop into Unity, Godot, or GameMaker.
A background does a different job from a sprite, and the difference matters when you pick one. Sprites need a readable silhouette because the player watches them. Backgrounds need the opposite. Low contrast, muted colors, nothing that competes with the character in front of it. A gorgeous background that makes your player hard to see is a broken background.
Resolution, and the integer-scale rule
Pick a base resolution and scale it by whole numbers only.
320x180 is the common choice because it multiplies to 1920x1080 at exactly 6x. 384x216 hits the same target at 5x. Any fractional scale, 2.5x or 3.7x, resamples the image and turns crisp pixel edges into soft ones. This is the single most common way a pixel art game ends up looking blurry despite having good art.
Parallax layers
Depth in a 2D scene comes from layers moving at different speeds, not from perspective drawing.
Three is usually enough. A far layer of sky or distant hills that barely moves, a mid layer of trees or buildings, and a near layer that scrolls with or slightly faster than the camera. Keep the far layer low contrast and desaturated. Distance washes color out, and faking that with a lighter palette costs nothing.
Looping a side-scroller background
A scrolling background needs its left edge to continue into its right. Only that one seam matters for a side-scroller, since the background never wraps vertically.
The Seamless tile editor shows the junction zoomed in so you can confirm the wrap rather than guess at it. Worth doing before you build the scroll logic, because a seam that only appears once per screen-width is genuinely hard to spot in motion.
FAQ
Match your game resolution, then scale by a whole number. A 320x180 background scales to 1920x1080 at exactly 6x with no blurring, which is why low base resolutions are standard in pixel art games.
Yes. Every background downloads as a PNG at no cost and no account is required.
Parallax is several background layers scrolling at different speeds to fake depth. The far layer moves slowest, the near layer fastest, and the effect is what makes a flat 2D scene feel like it has distance.
The left edge has to continue into the right edge. Run the image through the Seamless tile editor and check the vertical seam, which is the only edge a side-scrolling background needs to wrap.
The wide ones work well. Browse pixel art wallpapers for the landscape scenes at 256px and up, which are the ones shaped for a screen rather than a game camera.