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2D point lights

Free packv3.0.0-72DLook

Coloured light for top-down and side-on 2D games: point lights and spot cones over an ambient tint, with candle flicker and hard or soft shadows thrown by the level's walls. Lights are ordinary objects in the game, and layers such as fog of war can stay dark under a torch.

This is a Free pack. Every phaser.io account can use it in their games.

Released October 14, 2026 · updated October 20, 2026

2D point lights: a screenshot of its demo
A note about these graphics

Expansion packs don't come with graphics. This screenshot is one way of drawing what the pack does, made for its demo: none of the sprites, tiles or backgrounds in it are in the pack.

That's by design. A pack is a game's logic, mechanics and effects, and it works with whatever art you give it. Some packs draw effects, backdrops or 3D scenes of their own, but none carries a game's sprites.

So the look is yours. Make the art on phaser.io, bring your own, or let your agent draw it in code: the same pack can look like anything.

What it does

You set an ambient colour, and the lit part of the world is multiplied down to it, so unlit places go dim rather than black. Each light then brightens what it reaches, with a falloff you choose and a colour that mixes where lights overlap, and an intensity above one over-brightens for a torch or a muzzle flash. A spot light adds a direction and a cone. A flicker made of two layered waves on the game's clock makes flames waver, and pauses and replays with the game. The HUD and anything drawn in screen space are never lit or darkened.

A light is a roster object with a light sub-object, so it has an id, it can follow a sprite, be tweened or killed, and it shows up in the snapshot and the editor like anything else. Shadows are opt-in per light: a shadowed light casts against the walls you add to occluders, hard-edged or with a soft penumbra. A plain glow costs two triangles, so thousands are affordable; shadowed lights are kept to dozens.

The default look is a glow, each light adding its colour on top of the dimmed scene. modulate switches to lamp light: the lights multiply the scene through a light map, so stone stays stone under a torch and only the warmth of the light is added on top. Lights can also be drawn under the sprites, lighting the floor beneath them, which is how a ball keeps a glow underneath it in a dark room. Naming the last lit layer in unlitAbove draws every layer above it after the lighting, exactly as authored, so a fog-of-war or darkness overlay stays dark under a torch.

Features

  • Point and spot lights — radius, colour, intensity, falloff, and a direction and cone for spots, all live.
  • Ambient tint — the scene sinks to a colour of your choosing, scoped to the scene that set it.
  • Flicker — strength, speed and a per-light phase so a row of torches does not pulse together.
  • Shadows — hard or soft shadows from walls added to occluders, opt-in per light.
  • Lamp light — modulate lights surfaces in their own colour and texture, with a tint for warmth on top.
  • Under lights — a glow on the floor beneath the sprites, undimmed by the ambient, with floor for floors made of sprites.
  • Unlit layers — unlitAbove keeps fog of war, darkness overlays and anything above it out of the lighting.
  • Lights as objects — follow a sprite, tween, kill, snapshot and edit a light like any other object.
  • Counts for the profiler — count, visible and visibleShadow report what was drawn.

Good for

  • Dungeon crawlers and roguelikes — torches with flicker and shadows off the walls.
  • Stealth games — a guard's lantern or a searchlight cone, with fog of war above the lighting.
  • Night and rain scenes — street lamps and headlights over a dark ambient.
  • Caves and mines — a lamp on the player that lights stone in its own colour.
  • Arcade games with a glow — a lit ball in a dark breakout, a muzzle flash in a shooter.
  • Horror games — a flashlight cone and almost everything else in the dark.

Make it yours

Each light's radius, colour, intensity, falloff, flicker, layer, shadows and softness are options when it is made and live after. The pack's options set the starting ambient, start in lamp light at a tint, name the last lit layer in unlitAbove, and name the last floor layer for under lights. ambient and modulate can also be changed per scene, and the previous value returns when the scene exits.

Two very different scenes: a stealth level in an additive glow, with a near-black ambient, a soft-shadowed lantern following each guard, the walls as occluders and a fog-of-war layer above the lighting; and a castle keep in lamp light at a warm tint, where flickering torches show the flagstones in their own colour and texture, and a glowing title card in the next scene switches back to the glow.

A quick look

A dark ambient, a flickering torch with soft shadows, a spot lamp and a glow under the ball:

game.lights.ambient('#1a1a2a');
const torch = game.lights.point({ follow: player, radius: 220, color: '#ffb060', intensity: 1.2, flicker: 0.35,
    shadows: true, softness: 8 });
game.lights.spot({ x: 90, y: 60, radius: 380, dir: 0.8, cone: 0.7, color: '#7ab0ff', shadows: true, softness: 0 });
game.lights.point({ follow: ball, radius: 90, color: '#ff6a3d', layer: 'under', falloff: 1.2 });
game.lights.occluders.addRect(x - 16, y - 16, 32, 32);

Works with

  • world-topdown and world-side — the 2D worlds and their layers that the lighting dims and lights.
  • visibility-2d — its class is the occluder set shadows are cast against, imported for you rather than composed.
  • fog — the fog-of-war state, drawn in a layer above unlitAbove.
  • lighting-3d — lights for 3D worlds.

Good to know

  • Shadows come only from the walls you add to occluders, never from sprites, and the pack has one occluder set for every light.
  • Soft shadows cost twelve visibility fans per light per frame, and a hard one costs one, so keep shadowed lights to dozens.
  • In the glow mode a light adds colour even to black, so a dark overlay in a lit layer glows; put it above unlitAbove or use lamp light.
  • Under lights need an opaque background to work as intended.
  • The ambient can only darken: for a lit floor use an under light or a backdrop.

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