Song of Larithea: 88 Sprite Animations, Two Art Styles, One Solo Developer

Song of Larithea is a cute anime team RPG with spell crafting, adapted from a fantasy novel its developer, Inga Pflaumer, published in 2008. You lead five young mages from the magic school of Ormron through a story about friendship, trust, revenge, and finding your way back from the darkness. Fights are turn-based on a grid: you take two or three heroes in, plan where each one moves and which spell they cast, then watch the round play out. Cast on one enemy in the right elemental order and the spells chain into a combo. The spells themselves are yours too, crafted from gathered materials across seven schools of magic. And every hero has to move twice, at full size in the story and as a chibi on the fight grid: all 88 of those animations so far were made with Ludo.

Inga builds the game alone at Dropbear Labs in Sydney. It is in alpha, with a free demo on Steam for Windows and macOS that also plays in the browser on itch.io, testers already playing on iPhone and Android, three languages (English, Russian and Simplified Chinese), and Early Access planned for the first quarter of 2027. It is part of Steam Next Fest, from 19 to 26 October 2026.

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One cast, two styles

The game shows the same characters at two scales. In story scenes, and in the places you explore between fights, the heroes are drawn at full size. On the fight grid they become chibi. So every hero has to move well twice, in two different styles, and still read as the same person in both.

That nearly doubles the animation work: 50 animations for the fight grid so far, and 38 more for the story scenes. Inga tried several AI animation tools before Ludo. None of them got her art style right, and with Kling she could not keep the animations consistent.

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The workflow: line the poses up first, then animate

Every hero and NPC animation in the game is made with Animate in Ludo's Sprite Generator, and she plans to make every new one there too. The interesting part is what happens before she presses the button. Inga first generates a set of starting references and poses for the characters, built so that they all align and overlap correctly. Every animation then starts from a frame that already fits the rest of the cast, which is what keeps five heroes consistent with each other and not just with themselves.

The one setting she cares about most is the frame count. Animate lets you choose how many frames an animation has, from 4 up to 64, so a simple moment can stay simple.

Nothing goes into the game unreviewed. Inga checks each animation and fixes it by hand, and the fixes she describes are small.

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Prototype on GIFs, ship on sprite sheets

The finished game runs on sprite sheets, but the prototype did not have to. Ludo exports an animation as a GIF as well as a sheet, and that let Inga see the game move long before the engine could.

The sprite sheet system is built now. The game is made in Expo, so the same sheets run everywhere it does: on Steam, in the browser, on iPhone and on Android.

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A chain of states, not a pile of clips

On the grid, a hero is never just standing there. Each one idles, gets selected, attacks, gets hit, is knocked out, or celebrates a win, and the moves between those states are animated as well, so a hero flows from one to the next instead of snapping. That is what turns ten clips per hero into a character, and it is why the chibis feel alive on the grid rather than like static pieces.

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The numbers so far

The game is in alpha, so these are counts from the middle of production, not the end:

• Fight style (chibi): 5 heroes with 10 animations each, 50 animations and 713 frames.
• Story style (full size): 7 characters (the five heroes and two more), 38 animations of idles, walks and runs, 899 frames.
• Altogether: 88 animations and about 1,600 frames.
• Time per animation: 30 to 60 minutes, including her fixes.

At her estimate of 30 to 60 minutes per animation, the 88 animations so far add up to roughly 44 to 88 hours of work across both styles. And the cast is about to grow: the enemies are next, and she plans to animate all of them in Ludo too.

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Her novel, her game

Inga is clear about where the tools stop. The story and the characters come from her novel, and the game design is hers. She uses AI tools for most of the art, effects, music and voices, reviews and finishes all of it by hand, and the Steam page discloses the AI use.

Ludo's part is the one that grows with every new character: making each member of the cast move, in two styles, and stay recognisably themselves across 88 animations and counting.

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Where to find Song of Larithea

A cute anime team RPG about friendship, trust, revenge, and finding your way back from the darkness, with spells you craft yourself and turn-based fights on a grid. The free demo is on Steam for Windows and macOS, and it also plays in your browser on itch.io. It is part of Steam Next Fest from 19 to 26 October. Early Access on Steam is planned for the first quarter of 2027.

Song of Larithea on Steam
Play the demo in your browser on itch.io
larithea.com

Every hero and NPC animation in Song of Larithea, in both the fight and story styles, was made with Ludo.ai's Sprite Generator and finished by hand by the developer. Most of the other art, effects and music, and the voices, were made with other AI tools and finished by hand. The story and characters come from the developer's own novel, and the game design is hers.