Phluxel

Phluxel is a pixel art editor for Windows built around a different idea: the artwork itself is the simulation.

Every R/G/B/A channel of every pixel is simulation state, so there is no separate effect layer and no particle system. A fire rule reads the orange pixels you actually painted; a snow rule falls across your scene without erasing it. Rules are short, readable one-liners in a small language called Phlux, and they compile to GLSL and run live on the GPU, with a CPU interpreter for anything shaders cannot express.

Most of the app needs no code at all. Underneath the rule engine is a full pixel editor - pen, fills, shapes, magic wand, symmetry, crop, tilt, resize, deep undo history - plus an image converter that turns an illustration or photo into pixel art with smooth downscaling and palette locking. It reads Lospec .hex palettes directly, along with .gpl and .pal, and can lock any export to a chosen palette using one shared palette across animation frames so they do not shimmer.

A keyframe timeline can ramp a rule parameter while the simulation plays, so effects can build over time - rain that grows heavier, a fire that dies down.

Export as an animated GIF or APNG, an MP4, a PNG sequence, or a game-ready sprite sheet.

The free edition includes every feature, with a watermark on exports and caps on canvas size, resolution and frame count. Pro is a one-time purchase that removes the watermark and caps, adds MP4, APNG and sprite sheet export, and grants commercial rights.