Scythifuge made a statement earlier this month, on the Facebook page of his Exult-based remake of Savage Empire. The basic gist of his message was that he was suspending work on the project’s art for a short spell:

No more Savage Empire sprites or experiments until I finish the graves for Agentorangeguy’s Ultima VI project.

The graves may prove useful for Savage Empire & other projects as well since the graves can be made smaller for, say, buried artifacts or treasure. Or a crime game where there could be a buried victim. The possibilities…

With that said, the grave shapes are almost done. I have the shapes but they aren’t snapping together the way that I want so tweaking ensues. This is why I wish I had someone who just played with sprites in Exult Studio; tweaking offsets, x/y/z values, determining options, etc.

The graves will come together, probably within the next couple of days, as long as I don’t get distracted with other sprites (this happens often.)

Now, I don’t know whether he finished the sprites or got distracted, but today he posted another update revealing a new piece of art for The Savage Empire Remake: Chac-Mools.

The base will probably be tweaked. However, here is a Chac-Mool. Chac-Mool statues appear throughout Mesoamerica. At least one will appear in Eodon.

You can read up on Chac-Mools at Wikipedia and elsewhere. Here’s what Scythifuge’s take on them looks like:

Pretty impressive, no? In another era of gaming, the man could have been a pixel artist at Origin Systems itself.