01
The hero
The name in cream on a hanging wooden sign with a dark shadow, over a desert sunset with mesas and cacti.
A Tuscan slab pixel font for western games · v1.000
SPURLINESPURLINE
Spurline is wanted-poster lettering on a pixel grid: heavy slab serifs and the little Tuscan spur halfway up every stem, for saloon signs, bounty boards, card tables and frontier towns. A Shadow font sits under it for that printed, slightly off-register look.
Type tester
Try it with your own words
Regular is stacked over Shadow in the cream and brown of the hero's sign. Lowercase keys type small capitals, and every row is a whole multiple of 10 px. Try the other colours, or switch the layers off for Regular alone.
20 px 2×
☛ Wanted: Black Bart $500☛ Wanted: Black Bart $500
30 px 3×
☛ Wanted: Black Bart $500☛ Wanted: Black Bart $500
40 px 4×
☛ Wanted: Black Bart $500☛ Wanted: Black Bart $500
60 px 6×
☛ Wanted: Black Bart $500☛ Wanted: Black Bart $500
This preview covers Basic Latin, the icons and the ornaments. The full font adds every accented letter.
Features
Made for game interfaces
A Tuscan slab western pixel font with small caps, a Shadow layer for printed drop shadows, 20 frontier icons and wanted-poster ornaments that link up.
01
Tuscan slab on a pixel grid
Capitals nine pixels tall with two-pixel stems, square slab serifs and the small Tuscan spur sitting halfway up each stem.
02
Small caps on the lowercase keys
Type in lowercase and you get capitals seven pixels tall, so a headline mixes big and small capitals the way a printed poster does.
03
A Shadow layer
Spurline Shadow is the same text shifted one pixel right and one down. Stack it underneath in a second colour for a hard, printed drop shadow.
04
20 western icons
Badge, horseshoe, cactus, hat, boot, cattle skull, money bag, bottle, lantern, wheel, revolver, bullet, coin, nugget, dynamite, lasso, tumbleweed, sun, mesa and heart.
05
Poster ornaments
Pointing hands, feathered arrows, stars and a diamond, plus rules and frame corners that join up when typed next to each other.
06
Pixel-perfect at 10, 20, 30, 40 px…
The grid is a tenth of an em, so at every multiple of 10 px each font pixel lands on whole screen pixels, in both layers.
Built-in icons
34 icons you can type
Each icon is a character in the font. Click one to copy it, then paste it into anything set in Spurline.
Frontier
Saloon & loot
Outlaw kit
Poster ornaments
Rules & corners
Case study
How Spurline was designed
Why I made it
Westerns have one lettering everybody recognises: the Tuscan wood type of wanted posters and saloon fronts, with forked serifs and a spur on every stem. In pixel art it usually turns into a plain slab, since a spur needs room that a few pixels rarely give.
I wanted that poster voice on a real pixel grid, readable in a dialogue box and still unmistakably frontier on a title sign.
Spurs in nine pixels
Capitals are nine pixels tall with two-pixel stems, which leaves just enough room for a slab at each end and a one-pixel spur in the middle. The lowercase keys type small capitals seven pixels tall, so a line like a name over a reward sets as big and small caps, the way old posters were printed.
The Shadow font is every glyph moved one pixel right and one pixel down. It shares the spacing and kerning of Regular, so the two always line up; cream over dark brown gives the hanging sign of the hero, dark brown over red gives the wanted poster.
Ornaments for the whole poster
The 20 icons live at U+E000 to U+E013 and cover the frontier from the sheriff's badge to the tumbleweed. Around them are the pieces a poster is laid out with: pointing hands, feathered arrows, stars, and rules and frame corners on the box-drawing codes that connect into borders.
Every point sits on a grid of a tenth of an em, so the font is pixel-perfect at 10, 20, 30, 40 px and up, and the engine pack has the bitmap fonts at 1×, 2× and 4× for both layers.
In use
02
The Photoshop template
The editable hero layout from the download, with a sunlit cream title and a brown plaque on an orange sky.
03
A wanted poster
A $500 reward for Black Bart, framed by feathered arrows and rules, with a saloon card and a notice beside it.
04
Character set
Capitals, the small caps on the lowercase keys, figures, punctuation and the accented letters.
05
In the interface
A day and money HUD, saloon and bank signs, a dialogue from Sheriff Kate and an inventory bar of icons.
06
Icons and ornaments
The 20 western icons with their names, and the poster ornaments, frames, rules and corners with their codes.
07
Layers and colours
Regular plus Shadow makes the stacked word, then Saloon, Gold, Sheriff, Bounty and Desert in their own colours.
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?
Spurline comes as two fonts, Regular and Shadow, with the same spacing and kerning. Type the same text in both, put Shadow underneath in a second colour and Regular on top, aligned exactly: the shadow is already offset inside the font. Regular also works alone.
Does it have a lowercase?
The lowercase keys type small capitals, seven pixels tall against nine for the capitals, so mixed-case text sets like a printed poster.
Why do the cactus and money bag show as emoji?
Besides U+E002 and U+E006, they also sit on the emoji code points 🌵 and 💰, and some apps always swap those for colour emoji. Type the U+E000 range instead, or insert the icons from your app's glyphs panel.
Can I use Spurline 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 Spurline 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 Spurline 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 426 characters, covering Western and Central European languages.
Is Spurline part of a bundle?
Yes. Spurline is in The Complete Font Collection, every font I've made in one download.
Give your game a voice in Spurline.
Related reading
The thinking behind this
Longer write-ups on the craft this font draws on.
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