About Game VFX Database
A free, non-commercial reference library of real-time visual effects from games — built so VFX artists, technical artists and students can find, study and break down effects frame by frame instead of hunting through hours of gameplay footage.
What this is
The short version
Game VFX Database is a curated gallery of short clips showing real-time effects — hits, explosions, trails, magic, weather, UI feedback — each one tagged with the game it came from, the effect elements it uses, the technique behind it, the engine, the rendering style and its dominant colours.
It exists for study and critique. Nothing here is sold, licensed or monetised, there is no advertising, and the site does not claim ownership of any game footage.
How it works
From browsing to breaking down an effect
- 1Browse the gallery and narrow it down with the sidebar filters, or hit Surprise Me for something random.
- 2Open a clip to get the large player: step frames, loop a section between A and B, drop to grayscale to read value, and sample colours with the picker.
- 3Read the metadata and any timestamped breakdown notes left by the uploader or moderators.
- 4Like it, save it, or drop it into one of your collections to build a moodboard for a project.
- 5Missing something? Post it on the requests board and let the community fill the gap.
Adding clips the right way
Short, credited, non-commercial reference only
Please do
- Keep clips short — a few seconds of the effect itself, not whole scenes or cutscenes.
- Name the game, and the creator or channel if the footage is not yours.
- Prefer a link to the original video (YouTube, Vimeo, a direct file) over re-uploading.
- Use the trim controls so only the relevant moment is shown.
- Add a descriptive title and tags so others can actually find it.
Please don't
- Upload full videos, trailers, cinematics, music or entire gameplay sessions.
- Post leaked, unreleased or NDA-covered material from a studio.
- Strip watermarks or credit, or claim someone else's work as your own.
- Use anything here commercially, resell it or redistribute it.
Short, transformative excerpts shared for education and critique are treated as fair use / fair dealing, and all trademarks and footage remain the property of their developers and publishers. If you own material published here and want it removed, use the requests board or the contact section below and it will be taken down promptly. Clips from new members are reviewed before they appear publicly.
Everything in the app
Feature by feature
Deep filtering
Filter the gallery by game, VFX element, technique, engine, rendering style, context tag and dominant colour, then sort by newest, most liked, most discussed or shuffle.
Study-grade player
Large player with frame-by-frame stepping, A/B loop, grayscale toggle, next/previous clip jumping and a colour picker that samples any pixel as hex or RGB.
Timestamped breakdowns
Pin notes to exact seconds of a clip. Markers appear on the scrub bar and the notes panel follows playback.
Game, character and boss pages
Every clip links back to its game, with genre tags, a studio website link, and separate character and boss pages inside each game.
Collections and dashboard
Like, save and organise clips into private or public collections, and manage everything you posted from your dashboard, including a 7-day trash.
Colour and auto-tagging
Uploads are auto-tagged from the file name and analysed for their dominant colour palette, so you can search references by colour.
Browser clipper extension
A Chrome and Firefox extension that grabs a clip or frame from a page you are watching and sends it straight into the upload window.
Installable and offline
Install the site like an app on desktop or phone, and browse recently viewed clips even without a connection.
Agent integrations
An MCP endpoint lets AI assistants search the library and save clips to your collections on your behalf.
Requests board
Cannot find a reference? Post a request, and the community votes and comments until someone adds it.
Recent changes
What shipped lately
September 2026
- • New About page with features, changelog, donation and contact sections.
- • Browser clipper extension v1.2 — sends captured clips straight into the upload window.
- • Duplicate detection warns you when a similar link or title already exists.
- • Timestamped breakdown notes on the clip player.
- • Installable app with offline access to recently viewed clips.
August 2026
- • Technique pages with example clips for each real-time VFX method.
- • Reference requests board with voting and comments.
- • Still-image thumbnails instead of hover video, for much faster page loads.
- • Collapsible sidebar, day/night theme and Surprise Me discovery.
About me
Founder
Abel Sayadi
Founder & maintainer
Since I was a kid I've been obsessed with collecting things and organizing information all in one place, When I entered the game industry as a Real-time VFX Artist I had this ambition to gather and collecting visual effects references, Over the years, I realized how common the struggle is for VFX artists to find high-quality, reference material., so I decided to build this platform to bridge that gap. a library to help people for finding an industry-standard, production ready references in games alongside studying them with professional breakdowns and insights.
Want a different bio, photo or links here? Send me the text and I'll swap it in.
Support the project
Optional, never required
The site is free, ad-free and non-commercial. Hosting, storage and bandwidth are paid out of pocket. If it has saved you time, a small contribution helps keep it online and growing.
Get in touch
Takedowns, feedback, collaborations
No address is published yet — send me the one you want listed and it will appear here.
On the site
Post on the requests board for anything public — missing references, bugs, or removal requests.