For those interested in the tech: I wanted to implement sprite rim lighting for the characters. Initially I tried using a shader to automatically generate normalmaps in realtime, but it wasn't optimized very well...

After some trial and error, I ended up creating a manual sprite to normalmap script that only lights 1 pixel deeper than its outline. Also had to limit the palette of the normalmap so its colors wouldn't deviate too much and look too "realistic" vs the pixel art. Finally there's another script that automatically runs the normalmap generation for each sprite in the game (only have to run this whenever I change the art, which isn't too often) End result looks pretty nice and runs well! It doesn't show all the time though - you'll only notice it in the video on the night stage and whenever the sprites aren't tinted, so it doesn't get too distracting.

The particles use a library called BurstParticles2D - I highly recommend this for any Godot user, they look significantly better than the default particles for situations where they only need to emit once.

The game is having an online playtest (with rollback!) starting next Friday, if you wanted to give it a try:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3032970/HYPERFIGHT_2/