My game Firefrost just released on steam and itch.io! It's a Pico-8 cartridge, plain and simple.

Background

In December 2023 I was sick, only had access to a Raspberry Pi and was restless. The reasonable response? Make a game. So I started working on Firefrost, quickly putting it together after in a week or two. I had been thinking about putting a game on Steam for quite a while, so one thing leads to another and soon I was working on Firefrost to be ready to release it on steam.

Why it's a bad idea

Steam has specific requirements for how a game on Steam should be. It should be 16:9 (ouch), preferably deep with hours of content (8012 token limit, yikes) and implement the Steam api (no webcalls or anything ;w; (can be solved with an html release + electron, but that's 300 mb of bloat and to me that is unacceptable)). So many things just turn into massive headached, and I'm not a fan of headaches.

I also don't think it's entirely in the Pico-8 vibe to make a commercial Steam game with it. The culture around Pico is that you make schmol things just for the enjoyment of it and just show that to the world. It's very much a tool for devs to fool around in, and I like that feeling. So many things that I do in my life are already extremely commercialized. Music, drawing, game development. I feel a need to make money of my hobbies, and that's been terrible for my mental well being. When I charge for something, I want that to be something good for the audience, and then I have to perform well and yea you see how it spirals from there? I need something that I don't monetize, and I think Pico-8 is good for that.

Now what?

I don't recommend Pico-8 for Steam. It's a poor fit for the platform and goes against the vibe that I personally want Pico-8 to give off. When I see the Pico boot I want to feel like I'm entering my safe zone. It's just me and my cart, everything else is irrelevant, and I can just poke around my code without a care in the world. I think commercializing that space is a terrible idea, and not something I'll do ever again.

However, I still want to develop games that I feel like I can charge money for. Pico-8 is not my tool for that. Another engine I've been using is Defold, which is what I'll be using going forward. However, I realized that some of Pico-8's limitations were fantastic for making me actually finish games, so I'll be implementing some of the into Defold, and some of them into my workflow. I wrote about using limitations to get stuff done over on itch.

Limits breed creativity or whatever. At least it makes things a lot more fun. And I like having fun. Thanks for listening to my ramblings.

Cheers <3
Issie

Thanks for sharing! I can absolutely relate to what you've described! Thanks for sharing :)
I do not judge creators who decide to monetize their pico8 games, itch.io sure isn't a place where people are compelled to spend money and we work hard on our games. But yes, it does feel weird given the limited amount of content that we can generally cram into the tiny carts.
I'm working on a yet another project that i intend to sell on Steam in another engine and i absolutely miss the safe space of Pico8.

sa

Wait, you never explained how you actually put your cartridge on Steam?

@Rascal I mean the practical part is super simple, you just export the cart binaries and then upload that. It’s everything else that’s a pain. Achievements, screenshots, trailer, controller support.

What about the 16:9 requirement you talked about?

(Why is Steam dictating the aspect ratio of videogames again?)

I think it’s because steam is not meant for consoles but computers which are tipically used with 16:9 displays
I think tic80 has a 16:9 screen but it doesn’t have pico’s community

@thisismypassword just like @396369369 said, steam is a pc platform, pc is mostly 16:9, steam likes 16:9.

@Wistpotion - so how did you bypass it?