2D stories and sprites
Build a story adventure with cleaned-up pixel-art characters, props and tilesets, or your own sprites.
Choose 2D Story Adventure in Chapters to make a sprite-based game. The guided path covers your story, a playable scene, objectives and saves, connected scenes, characters, dialogue and menus, art, the opening, pacing, testing and packaging. You agree the viewpoint and scope first. A small first version is easier to finish.
Layered 2.5D scenes
Tell Ryuo whether you want flat 2D or layered 2.5D, and share reference images. For layered 2.5D, the guided path uses separate background, midground and foreground images arranged at different depths, with the agreed camera and parallax. It does not default to generating 3D buildings or terrain. Background images can be larger than character sprites, and a scene made from image layers does not require a tileset. Collision stays independent of decorative artwork.
You can reuse existing art or explicitly choose placeholders and defer final art while building the first playable scene. A failed art request is not a reason to generate everything again: ask Ryuo to inspect saved work and recover accepted jobs first. After changes to the guided path, some steps may need checking again; your game files are not deleted.
Create a character or prop
Open Generations → Create sprite and choose Character or Prop. Describe it, then choose the camera (side, front, three-quarter or top-down), its height in pixels (16, 24, 32, 48, 64, 96 or 128; 48 by default) and the most colours it may use (4 to 32; 16 by default). You can also give it an image to turn into pixel art or to take the design from. To make a set match, ask in chat to reuse the colours of a sprite you already made; the new sprite then uses exactly that palette instead of a colour limit.
The request opens in chat; review the approval before it runs. Drawing a sprite always asks, even in Auto mode. It is one image request using your Ryuo credits, and Account shows your usage; it counts toward Images per task in Settings → Creation → Task limits.
Ryuo draws the sprite with your image model (GPT Image 2.5 Sunburst by default) on a plain flat colour, then cleans it for free: it finds the pixel grid, snaps every pixel to a fixed palette, removes stray marks and off-palette specks, makes the edges hard and the background transparent. The result is saved in Generations for you to review, with the original drawing kept beside it. Ryuo tells you the colours used and how sure it was about the pixel grid. If the first cleanup looks uncertain, Ryuo tries once more automatically, at no cost, and tells you plainly if something still looks off. It never draws a second picture without asking.
Clean up pixel art
Ask Ryuo to clean any image into real pixel art, such as an earlier drawing, your own art or a screenshot. This is free and runs on your computer. Choose how many colours to keep and, optionally, the final height in pixels. A painting, photo or screenshot has no pixel grid of its own, so give it a height; otherwise it is only recoloured at its full size, which can be at most 1024 pixels across. If the picture has a busy background, ask for the background to be removed first (see Remove a background for free). The cleaned picture is saved as a new version; your original is never changed. It also lets you redo the cleanup of a drawing with different settings without paying for another picture.
Animate a sprite
Open a sprite in Generations, type a motion (for example walking, idle breathing or swinging a weapon) and select Animate with Ryuo, or ask in chat. Ryuo turns the sprite into a short video clip of that motion with your video model, takes evenly spaced frames from it and cleans all of them together to one pixel grid and the sprite's own palette, so the colours do not flicker between frames. The animation is saved as a looping sheet.
By default you get 8 frames. Ask for more or fewer frames (up to 32), a different size or speed, or only part of the clip. A clip lasts several seconds, so a walk cycle is best taken from one cycle of it. The clip is kept in Generations, so Ryuo can take frames from it again, in another count, size, speed or time range, without paying for a new video. Video frames are redrawn by the model, so expect a little more noise than in a still sprite: check each loop for outfit, face, foot placement and stray pixels.
Each clip is one paid video request at the model's shortest length and lowest resolution, counts toward Videos per task, and always asks for approval first, even in Auto. If a clip is interrupted after it started, check Account → Usage before trying again.
Open a result to review it. Animations play straight away: press Space to pause, use the arrow keys or the frame strip to step through frames, and drag the speed slider. Scroll to zoom toward the cursor, drag to move around, and double-click to zoom in or fit the whole sprite again; pixel art always zooms in whole steps so pixels stay sharp. The side panel shows the sprite's size, frames and colour palette. Fix frame with Ryuo starts a conversation about replacing the frame you're looking at while keeping the others; a replacement is matched to the sprite's palette. A still sprite also has an Animate box: type a motion such as "walking" to animate it.
Tilesets for your levels
Choose Tileset. Platforms makes side-view platform tiles on a transparent background, for example mossy stone bricks with grass on top. Top-down terrain makes two terrains that blend into each other, for example water and sand. You get 16 tiles that fit together in every combination, 16 or 32 pixels each, as one paid request, made by PixelLab, a service built for tilesets, rather than your image model, and it counts toward Pixel-art requests per task. Ryuo also saves which tile goes where, so it can build levels from them. If a tileset request is stopped or interrupted after the service accepted it, ask Ryuo in chat to recover it; the finished tiles are saved to Generations without paying again.
Keep the art consistent
Pick one camera view, one size and one palette for the whole game and keep them for every character, prop and tileset. When you ask for a new sprite, say it should reuse another sprite's colours and Ryuo matches that palette exactly. Animations keep the palette of the sprite they start from. Tilesets take no palette, so describe a tileset's colours in its platform or terrain description.
Remove a background for free
Ryuo can cut the subject out of an image, such as a photo, a piece of imported art or AI art on a busy background. This runs on your own computer, so it is free, uses no credits and never uploads the image. The first time you use it Ryuo downloads the background remover once (about 90 MB on a computer with a capable graphics card, about 46 MB otherwise) and shows the progress. After that a cut-out takes a couple of seconds at most.
The result is a PNG the same size as the original with a soft, smooth edge. For pixel art Ryuo can use a hard edge instead, which also clears stray specks and tiny holes. Flat, dark areas inside a character can occasionally come out see-through; check the result and ask Ryuo to try again or fill the area if that happens.
Use your own artwork
Artwork made outside Ryuo is supported. Put source images in your project (for example,
an Art folder), choose My artwork → Find project artwork, then select a found
image. You can narrow the project folder and scan again if the results are limited.
This is an on-demand scan, not automatic monitoring. Files elsewhere on your computer
can be uploaded with the file picker. Scanning does not charge credits or import assets.
An image filename does not tell Ryuo its frame layout: confirm its role, grid and frame order. Already imported Unreal sprites and Flipbooks can also be reused—ask Ryuo to inspect the project's assets. Existing animation sheets need no new animation generation. Static art can be cleaned up, redrawn from its reference as a new sprite, or animated directly.
Choose My artwork, or open an image and select Prepare as sprite. Set the sheet's columns, rows, frame count, output frame size and animation speed. Frames are read left to right, then top to bottom. The source dimensions must divide evenly into your grid. Keep the same canvas and ground position in every source frame.
Existing transparency is kept by default. You can remove a flat magenta, green or white background connected to the edges of each cell. This does not remove complex scenery or automatically repair animation alignment. Check both light and dark backgrounds for leftover color. Preparation saves a new PNG and keeps your original. It does not charge for image generation; normal chat usage may still apply.
Uploads can be up to 25 MB. Preparation supports images up to 16 megapixels, grids up to 8 × 8, and up to 32 frames. Output frame dimensions range from 16 to 1024 pixels, with a total output limit of 16 megapixels.
Optional independent art review
Open an image, sprite or concept preview and choose Independent art review. Provide a reference image and describe the intended result, then choose one, two or three reviewer models. Each gets a separate context with the same image comparison. Reviewers can flag composition, palette, scale and layering mismatches without editing your game. Model availability and image support vary; a failed review is not approval.
These are optional cloud requests using Ryuo credits, even in a Codex or Claude Code chat. Review the image-sharing and model approval before they run. Finished reviews are kept if a later one fails. Decide which suggestions to apply; more paid reviews or artwork revisions are not started automatically. A still-image review cannot prove animation quality, performance or working gameplay, and you still approve the art.
Add it to your game
After reviewing the result, choose Add to game and confirm in chat. Connect the Unreal project first. Project setup enables Paper 2D; an already open editor may need restarting through Ryuo before it can import sprites.
The import creates normal Unreal textures and sprites, plus a Flipbook for animations, under
/Game/Ryuo/Sprites. Existing assets are not overwritten. Ask Ryuo to connect the
animation to the intended player or character, then test movement and scene layering.
Gameplay collision stays separate from the sprite artwork.
Preview speed is temporary. To change the saved import speed, prepare a new version. If preparation fails, the original remains in Completed. Open it and choose Prepare as sprite to retry preparation without paying to generate again. If an import is interrupted, inspect the created assets before retrying.