So here's my first post and my first shot at the start of a PICO-8 game. I had run through an adventure game tutorial with 8x8 pixel sprites a while back, but never went further with it. Recently, I was buying game assets that I'll never use, and I saw a neat 4x4 pixel set of assets (by an artist called Vexed). Intrigued, I started on a wee framework for it. You don't get actual 4x4 pixel tiles, but each 8x8 tile has 4 collision quadrants that you mark with the first 4 flags for each tile. So you can kinda fake it.
What I want is a mellow little adventure game with low stakes and low stress.
It's just a testbed right now. You can move the player around. There are 3 enemies that will come after you if you get too close. They're easily evaded and easily killed. You can draw your sword with the X button, but if you run into an obstacle, it'll sheath itself. If they hit you, you'll lose a heart. Lose all 5 hearts and you'll die and need to reset the cart. Wee first aid packs will each gain you a heart up to 5.
There are gems and wee piles of gold to collect. There's a key in the NW corner that'll open a door to a tiny graveyard off-screen to the SE. There's some space off-screen to the east and south to test screen scrolling.
There are a couple test signs you can read. Either X or O will dismiss them.
Sounds are extremely rudimentary, and there are only 2 of them.
While I'm writing this mainly to play myself, comments and suggestions are welcome, keeping in mind that this is literally my first PICO-8 game, beyond some minor modifications to a tutorial a year or so ago.
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