Hi everyone,
Pico Lake is a small Walk & Click adventure game in a single PICO-8 cart.
Instructions
- Walk around using the arrow keys / d-pad.
- Press z for an action menu. Select a verb to see available items you can interact with. Note that these options depend on your current position, actions performed and inventory.
- You can save and restore your progress in the pause menu (press Enter)
Thanks
Thanks @zep for creating such a wonderful digital environment! Shoutouts to the PICO-8 community for all the helpful tutorials and inspirational work. Hi to all the nice Point & Click Devlog discord people. Special thanks to Adam Bradley and Charles DeCarlo for their help and "Jimmy" for coining the term "Walk & Click".
Have a good day!


Hahaha thats pretty funny. I was stuck quite a few times, but well done.
Nice scenes and sense of humor.


Yay, congrats on finishing it! 🥳
That was a fun pico-adventure 😁👍
#FoundItInTheEnd 📱


Thanks for the kind words people, it's my first Pico-8 game and it's really cool that you all played it till the end! I was actually hoping people would get stuck every now and then, but not for too long so you won't give up.
@freds72 the engine could have been more generic for sure, but I also like that Pico-8 development allows for some hacky / to the point solutions and still keep my sanity when creating and debugging :)


I loved this. I usually am terrible at this style of adventure game (the larger, longer classic ones from the past...), but I managed to persevere and finish this smaller scope one in this style. Very charming!! I loved the ending. Won't spoil it for anyone.


@gradualgames Good to hear! And yep, playing adventure games can get quite frustrating. But it can also be rewarding when you finally solve a puzzle after getting stuck for a while.
@packbat yes, that's true and it can also be beneficial for a multi-cart adventure game in the future.


@JimB007 Thanks! On tools and setting up a scene:
I use Aseprite to draw a scene and convert it using a hacky javascript tool into a data string containing 16 bit segments. First 4 bits for the color and the next 12 bits for how long this color repeats horizontally. The engine can draw multiple layers on top of each other to let the player move behind objects.

Then I make another layer in Asesprite with hotspots. That layer defines the walkable area and color-coded objects (door, table, etc) and also whether specific layers need to be drawn in front or behind the player.

Hope this makes some sense!


@RyanPlugs Great choice! It's fun to just play around with Pico-8, you get instant results.


@Thunder1000 If you're stuck at the park at 56 points, you can:
You can also check the source code in the start_state function, where all steps are listed!


I finally got to the end. I really enjoyed it. It reminded me of those classic Sierra and LucasArts games. I only wish it was longer!
You’ve created a really good adventure game engine that works so well with the constraints of Pico-8. I hope we’ll see some more adventure games in the future.


@MegaDeuce Glad, you enjoyed it! I wanted the main character to end up in situations that at first felt like drifting away from a simple goal (finding your phone), but then in the end everything happened for a reason and was apparently needed to find what you were looking for.
I didn't draw an actual puzzle dependency chart. But for the script, I drew a map of the environment first and wrote the puzzles by joining some smaller separate scenarios together. And then iterate until it had no dead ends. In the final stage, I added hints and signposting to guide the player.


@JKNman @the_cooties Look in the trunk again. ;-)


I beat it
I used help from youtube because i couldnt manage to beat it myself
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