Hi PICO-8 community!

A couple of years ago, I found a puzzle game called "Star" in Rockbox - an open source media player firmware. It was a simple puzzle game in a 16x9 grid and re-creating it has been on my TODO list for about as many years as it seemed like it should be easy, plus I really enjoyed it (it's a bit like Sokoban).

Some reading revealed that it was already a remake, the manual said the following:
> It is actually a rewrite of Star, a game written by CDK designed for the hp48 calculator

Looking for the original got me to a Java (in the browser) version of the game, which didn't work because it's 2020 and... well, Java in the browser. A 5 minute attempt to get this running outside of the browser on MacOS was fruitless and I abandoned it because meh.

I've decided that I'd like to give this a go in PICO-8, which I bought for this purpose. I'm okay (not my day job) with writing code, but have zero experience with game development. The source for Star on Rockbox is here so I have the levels and the mechanics are very simple. This thread is intended as a dev-log/journal as I figure this out.

Feel free to comment, this is on a public forum for a reason. All I ask is that you be kind - when I say I'm a noob, I'm not a "oh I just threw together game of life on 2 shift registers" noob, I'm a real, actual noob who is here to have fun and learn things and do stuff the wrong way and then hopefully the right way :)
To be clear, I'm not asking for help (yet) or for someone to do this for me - I'm here to learn and have fun like all the other cool kids.

Let's see what we can make of this!

First off, the rules/mechanics:

• Every level is a 16x9 bounded grid, nothing can move outside of this. Movement does not wrap
• Levels consist of 2 actors (a circle and a square), multiple stars (number varies per level), empty space which you can move through and blocks which restrict you
• You can control either the circle or the square, toggling between them as necessary
• Actors can move up, down, left or right. When moving in a direction, the actor will continue to move in that direction until a block or the edge of the level is encountered (this is the crucial mechanic of the game)
• Movement is in increments of full grid squares
• The goal of the game is to collect all of the stars. They are collected by simply passing through the grid containing the star
• There is no limit on time or moves, the puzzle is to figure out how to move your actors in order to fetch all the stars

Here's a mock-up of one of the levels to give you an idea. Still figuring out the art of sprite design, clearly. Levels don't necessarily have boxes forming a perimeter, but some of them do:
https://i.imgur.com/BN9rcno.png

Something I've already figured out is that I'm going to have to draw my levels dynamically. The map is not big enough for 20 levels of 16x9, as far as I can tell.