Tilemaps & Level Art Lesson 1 of 4
What a tilemap is
A grid of reusable tiles — the efficient way to build 2D worlds.
A tileset is a small collection of square images (tiles); a tilemap is a grid where each cell references one of those tiles. Instead of drawing an entire level as one giant image, you paint it from a handful of reusable tiles — a grass tile, a dirt tile, a wall tile — repeated across the grid.
- Tiles are usually 16×16 or 32×32 pixels and line up on a grid
- One small tileset can build an enormous level by reuse
- Levels are cheap to edit and cheap in memory — you store grid indices, not pixels
Tip Keep your tile size consistent across a project. Mixing 16px and 32px tiles in one map is the fastest way to make a level look broken.
Quick check
A tilemap builds a level by: