01
The hero
The name in pink over a plum outline with a pink shadow, above rolling pixel hills and a spring sky.
A round, chunky pixel font for cozy games · v1.000
PuffbitPuffbit
Puffbit is a soft, heavy pixel font for games that should feel friendly: farm days, café menus, pet names and puzzle scores. Two-pixel strokes with rounded corners keep it bold, and an Outline font underneath gives it the thick border cozy titles are known for.
Type tester
Try it with your own words
Fill is stacked over Outline in the hero's pink, with the one-pixel shadow. Every row is a whole multiple of 10 px. Try the other colours, switch Effects off to drop the shadow, or the layers off for Fill alone.
20 px 2×
Good morning! The berries are readyGood morning! The berries are ready
30 px 3×
Good morning! The berries are readyGood morning! The berries are ready
40 px 4×
Good morning! The berries are readyGood morning! The berries are ready
60 px 6×
Good morning! The berries are readyGood morning! The berries are ready
This preview covers Basic Latin and the icons. The full font adds every accented letter and symbol.
Features
Made for game interfaces
A round, chunky pixel font for cozy farming, café and life-sim games: Fill and Outline layers that stack into outlined text, plus 26 typeable cozy icons.
01
Fill and Outline
Two fonts with the same spacing: Fill draws the letter, Outline is the same letter one pixel bigger all round. Stack them for a thick border in any two colours.
02
A shadow from the same file
Set a third copy of Outline one pixel down and to the right and the text sits on a soft drop shadow, the look of the hero and the title screen.
03
Round and heavy
Strokes are two pixels wide and the corners are clipped, so letters read as soft and chunky rather than sharp, even in a small dialogue box.
04
26 cozy icons
Hearts, coin, gem, weather, crops, fruit, fish, milk, a house, a cup, a gift and a key, typed like letters and outlined like them too.
05
Pixel-perfect at 10, 20, 30, 40 px…
Every point sits on a grid of a tenth of an em, so at any multiple of 10 px each font pixel lands on whole screen pixels.
06
407 characters
Upper and lowercase, figures, punctuation and the accented letters of Western and Central European languages, in both fonts.
Built-in icons
26 icons you can type
Each icon is a character in the font. Click one to copy it, then paste it into anything set in Puffbit.
Hearts & rewards
Weather & sky
Garden & harvest
Home & pantry
Case study
How Puffbit was designed
Why I made it
Cozy games have a look of their own: soft colours, rounded shapes and text with a thick, dark border, like stickers on a seed packet. Most pixel fonts are drawn thin and square for retro action, and they feel cold next to a farm or a café.
I wanted a pixel font that already felt soft, one that could carry a title, a dialogue box and an inventory count in the same voice, and that came with the little crops and coins those games always need.
Two fonts that line up
Puffbit is drawn twice. Fill is the letter, with two-pixel strokes and clipped corners. Outline is that same letter grown by one pixel in every direction. Both fonts share their spacing and kerning, so a word typed in each sits exactly on top of the other.
Putting the outline in its own font means its colour is yours. Plum under pink, forest green under mint, navy under white: the five colour pairs in the marketing art are just two text layers each. A third Outline copy, nudged one pixel down and right, makes the shadow.
Built for the screen it ends up on
The grid is a tenth of an em and capitals are eight pixels tall, so the font is pixel-perfect at 10, 20, 30, 40 px and every other multiple of 10. The game engine pack has the bitmap fonts at 1×, 2× and 4× for every layer.
The 26 icons live at U+E000 to U+E019 and carry the same outline as the letters, so a line like a heart, a coin and a price stays one piece of text. A few also answer to their usual symbols, such as ♥, ★, ☀ and ❄.
In use
02
The Photoshop template
The editable hero layout from the download, recoloured in cream and brown with live type layers.
03
As a title screen
A farm game title, Berry Hollow, with a New Game, Continue and Options menu and a heart as the cursor.
04
Character set
Upper and lowercase, figures, punctuation, currency and the accented letters of Western and Central Europe.
05
In the interface
A day and time panel, a coin counter with hearts, a dialogue box and an inventory bar of crops, all in Puffbit.
06
26 icons
Every icon with its name: hearts, star, coin, gem, weather, plants, food, a house, a cup, a gift and a key.
07
Layers and colours
Outline plus Fill makes the stacked word, and five recoloured examples show the one-pixel shadow.
What you get
Everything in the download
- Desktop fontsOTF for design apps, TTF for game engines and Windows, every layer.
- Web fontsWOFF2 for every layer, with unlimited web use.
- Game engine packBMFont bitmap fonts (.fnt, .xml and .png atlas) at 1×, 2× and 4×, for Godot, Unity, GameMaker, LibGDX, Phaser, MonoGame and Love2D.
- Photoshop templateAn editable hero layout with live type layers, layer effects and textures.
- README and licenseSetup tips for design apps, websites and game engines, and the full license.
License
Included with every purchase
- Games and apps, embedded for unlimited copies sold
- Logos, merch, videos, streams and print, with no limit on sales
- Installed on unlimited computers: yours, your team's and your company's
- Websites, with unlimited page views and traffic
Ask me first
- Products where customers type their own text in the font
- Resale in asset packs, templates or font collections
Please don't share or resell the font files. For anything the license doesn't cover, email me. idris.hadjoudj@gmail.com
FAQ
Before you buy
How do the two layers work?
Puffbit comes as two fonts, Fill and Outline, with the same spacing and kerning. Type the same text in both, put Outline underneath in a darker colour and Fill on top, aligned exactly. Fill also works alone when you don't need a border.
How do I get the drop shadow from the pictures?
Add a third copy of the text in Puffbit Outline, under the other two, moved one font pixel down and one to the right (2 px at 20 px, 4 px at 40 px), and colour it a shade between the outline and the fill.
How do I get perfectly crisp pixels?
Use sizes that are multiples of 10 px, turn anti-aliasing off where your app or engine allows it, and place text on whole pixels. The bitmap fonts in the engine pack are pixel-exact at 1×, 2× and 4×.
How do I type the icons?
They sit in the Private Use Area from U+E000 to U+E019, so in code you write them as an escape such as \uE000. You can also copy any icon from the grid on this page. They only show as icons while Puffbit is the active font.
Can I use Puffbit in a game I sell, or for its logo?
Yes. Commercial use is included for games, apps, logos, merch, videos, streams and print, with no limit on sales, and you can embed the fonts and bitmap fonts in games and apps for unlimited copies. Products where your customers type their own text, and resale in asset packs, need an extended license: just ask.
Does Puffbit work in Unity, Godot and GameMaker?
Yes. Use the TTF files in any engine that imports fonts, or the included game engine pack: BMFont bitmap fonts at 1×, 2× and 4× for Godot, Unity, GameMaker, LibGDX, Phaser, MonoGame and Love2D.
Can I use Puffbit on my website?
Yes. WOFF2 web fonts are included, and web use is unlimited, with no cap on page views or traffic.
Which languages does it support?
Each font has 407 characters, covering Western and Central European languages.
Is Puffbit part of a bundle?
Yes. Puffbit is in The Complete Font Collection, every font I've made in one download.
Give your game a voice in Puffbit.
Related reading
The thinking behind this
Longer write-ups on the craft this font draws on.
Typography for game UI: the part players read under pressure
Interface type is read in half a second, at speed, over moving artwork, by somebody who did not come to your game to read. Almost every rule that applies to a book works against you here, and the fixes are specific.
Read the article
Icon design for games: sets that still work at 32 pixels
An icon has about a fifth of a second and a few hundred pixels to say what a thing is. Most game icon sets fail not because the drawings are bad, but because they were drawn large, one at a time, by different rules.
Read the articleMore fonts
Other typefaces for games
Font · $6.99
HotcornerHotcornerHotcornerHotcornerHotcornerHotcorner, A connected jersey script in team-colour layers
A joined sports script with a brush-pen swing, in five layers that stack into jersey lettering with a block shadow, two outlines and a shine, plus tail swashes.
Font · $6.99
Inkdash, Chisel-marker hand lettering for dialogue, comics and notes
Chisel-marker hand lettering for game dialogue, comics and quest logs, in Regular and Bold, with three drawings of every letter that rotate as you type.