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Cart #pico_ball-5 | 2025-08-05 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
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A PICO-8 sports game starring Jelpi!
[8x8]

Play solo or together in a mashup of tennis, volleyball, squash, and wallball where the only rule is:

two bounces on one side is a point for the other.

Controls

The controls should all be in the game, but for those who aren't familiar with PICO-8: ESDF is used for player 2 instead of WASD so it works on many international keyboards as well as QWERTY.

I recommend that those playing with controller or you PICO-8 veterans go to 'game settings' from the pause menu to make the controls work better for controllers and z/x keys. The game is playable with just arrow keys for each player, but it may make things a little harder for some if the settings aren't changed.

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Gamemodes

Solo

  • 🏆Campaign: Help Jelpi ascend the ranks and meet an old comrade...

  • 🧱Wall: Play a solo match against the wall (The Unbeatable Opponent) to see how long you last (powerups come in handy here)

  • 👁️Spectate: Watch opponents you have unlocked in campaign play against each other, can help you figure out how to beat a tough opponent (could be together...)
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Together

  • 👊💥Versus: Face each other in a PICO-BALL match, powerups add a lot of depth, craziness and sillyness

  • 🤝💖Co-op: Work together to keep the ball(s) in the air (the powerups both aid and hinder your juggling ability)

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Campaign Opponents 💥🏆

  • Strider
    [8x8]
    Newcomer to the game, has a hard time getting shots that go way over their head

  • Heli
    [8x8]
    There isn't a rule against flying, but luckily this helicoper-creature isn't too good at catching up to a quick-moving ball

  • Frog
    [8x8]
    [8x8]
    A dapper frog that uses his tongue for some crazy trick shots (which work about half of the time)

  • Bird
    [8x8]
    This opponent is actually good at flying and is not afraid to come over to your side, so well-placed aggressive shots are the way to go here

  • Mimo
    [8x8]
    Jelpi's old friend and comrade with the same moves, gets more aggressive as the game goes on, which can be taken advantage of...
    ‎‎

You can wear hats that you unlock from beating each opponent!
[40x8]

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So,
[56x16]
Have fun!
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Development Notes


I had the idea for this game in the shower somewhere around three months ago from today. A simple multiplayer tennis-like that would be a fun, small little project. As you can probably see, this game didn't quite live up to that second adjective, but I'd say it has successfully fulfilled the first one (which is the more important one).

First I made a prototype with boxes and a non-functional net and the game proved to be fun! I had yet to fine tune the physics though, so it was a pretty chaotic and janky (even moreso than it is now :). Then I decided I needed to replace the boxes with characters. I had a hard time coming up with any humanoids within such small pixel counts...
[40x16]

Then, I had the idea of using Jelpi! (Jelpi is PICO-8's demo/example mascot for those who don't know) I'm so glad this bolt of inspiration struck me because it drastically changed the way the game was shaping up for the better. It gave me so many ideas for stories, situations, opponents, modes, and also gave the game a good artstyle (sorry old doodles of mine still at the back of the match-cart sprite-sheet...)
[8x8]
[8x8]

What's funny is that the menu cart's file size is bigger than the game cart's (this is a multi-cart game with two game files, one for the menus and cutscenes and another for the gameplay). I've also spent about the same amount of time working on both, which is rather ironic. I had to do a lot of token-saving on the menu cart, because the cutscenes take a lot of data, or at least they do in the way I programmed them. This was also my first time putting a lot of effort into a somewhat complex menu, leading to the increased time and spaghetti code invested there. If I were to do it again, I would probably do it quite differently.

I had a lot of fun conjuring up the story and making those cutscenes along with remixing the Jelpi music! I've remixed the main song for the title screen and one of the match themes, and the jungle and dragon theme for the other two match songs. The first half of jungle themed one ended up being based off of a song I made for fun a couple of months ago, unrelated to the game, the baseline/intro-melody being stolen directly from that. The dragon one is pretty untouched from me compared to the other tracks. My main addition of the raspy melody is supposed to be like the dragon's roar (it's based off the sound effect used in the intro cutscene), but I don't think that's very obvious.

Intro -> Menu Theme (starts at pattern 10):
[sfx]
The Three Match Tracks (patters 0, 16, and 32):
[sfx]
These tracks take three channels sometimes, and due to all the rapid sounds in-game they occasionally cut out, but I've tried to make it not too noticeable and I think it's worth it.

Balancing the opponents was tough because their difficulty changes a lot based on your playstyle. It's normal if you find the Bird or the Frog harder than Mimo, but hopefully you find Mimo a bit tougher than the Strider!

Over the first two months I was pretty inconsistent with my work on the game (I was also busy in those months), but in the last month I've done a ton of work which has brought me to finally complete the project! I'm really happy I used Jelpi for the project, not only because the project was positively affected, but because I feel like there aren't enough Jelpi based games. The only complete Jelpi game I can think of is Pico-Ware, so being able to add to the Jelpi universe is great. We've got to thank Zep for making these adorable characters.

If you want to try making a custom opponent it should be somewhat doable, I've put some simple instructions in the match-cart files. First use load #pico_ball_match and then follow what's in the top of that part. Be warned that a lot of my code in all of this project is a rather messy and uncommented.

Thanks for reading all these development notes! I'm glad someone's interested in them!

version history

By the way, the current version is visible in the in-game credits, it's currently 1.1.2.
The numbers go, gameNumber.featureUpdate.patchNumber.
It's quite likely that I'll have to fix a bug, and I might add some extra hats in the future (I didn't have time to rework the code to allow extra hats from co-op and wall high scores if I wanted to get the game out in July) so the latter two numbers may change, but I don't plan to make a sequel, so the first one probably never will!

  • 1.0.0: original release, 7/29/2025​
  • 1.0.1: patch, 7/30/2025; ​tweaked strider speed range, slowed the bird slightly to make the match a little easier, fixed the "rewatch intro" pause menu option from replaying the intro incorrectly when chosen while in a submenu, allowed spectate to let you see matches with the next opponent you have to beat in the campaign, removed arrows/esdf text from this Lexaloffle version (for console authenticity and because the people here are already familiar with PICO-8)
  • 1.1.2: features+patch, 7/31/2025; reduced bird force slowed the bird slightly to make the match a little easier, fixed hollow particles showing up as filled in cutscenes, fixed bug where replaying an opponent would reset your save data to as if you had just beaten them for the first time, added ability to see your best match scores against each opponent, added a star on the campaign and home screen if you've beaten the game (or gotten the secret hat), added a secret hat for completionists!
  • 1.1.3: patch, 8/5/2025; fixed crash that occurs when completing matches with a double-digit score, fixed unnecessary double loading on menu when winning a campaign match, made transition peephole cover the winner card when a new match is quickly chosen

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‎Here's the game's itch.io page: https://void-gamesplay.itch.io/pico-ball
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Credits

Game (Code/Music/Sound/Story/Art) by @Munchkin (Lexaloffle BBS), a.k.a. PlayerTheMaker (itch.io)

Original Jelpi characters/themes/sound-effects/art and PICO-8 itself, @zep/Lexaloffle

Special Thanks

  • Friends and Family for playtesting the game and giving feedback (and being a great motivation for me to make the game!)
  • The PICO-8 community (yes you here on this BBS, and those in the Discord, and those who came from the subreddit), for contributing to this fun little gem of a community!
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2

😮 This is great! Can't wait to show this to others
1

So well made! I love this
3

This is sooooooo good, but I need to come back when I have a controller handy because Strider keeps beating me when I use my laptop keyboard to play, haha.

Thank you all!
@2bitchuck when you use controller I recommend that you go to the pause menu and then 'game settings' to change things to feel better on controller.
Also, hint for the strider,

it often can't move quickly enough if you send shots over its head!
1

that was awesome, I played for 25 minutes lol

the animations for the story are awesome
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This is excellent! Great idea and awesome game feel! This one is definitely going directly to my favorite collection.
1

Quality music. Quality on the polish too. Thanks for sharing!
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I could stream this anytime ngl. 11/10 game - excellent job guys ;)!
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Great game ! Just a suggestion: I think it would be cool if we could play other characters besides Jelpi.
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this game is so awesome
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lol the minor version of the jelpi music

very good
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Please don't make the bird any easier than it is now! I played the latest version, and the difficulty curve felt good to me. The bird was no problem. If anything, Mimo seemed like a difficulty spike, but that felt fitting enough.

Anyway, this game? Incredible. You did such a good job on the game-feel, and the presentation, and all that. Even though I know nothing about Mimo or the dragon or any of that stuff, I felt weirdly captivated by this little story. I could definitely see this game becoming one of those iconic PICO-8 must-plays.
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Thanks to everyone again! I'm glad this game has been so positively received!

@Mighty_Pirate / @kittenm4ster : I had a lotta fun remixing the original Jelpi themes, and yes, that involved a lot of switching major to minor >:). Some of the songs (like the Jungle track) had a lot of my work+ideas and some (like the Dragon one) are really similar to the original theme.

@Xavier64 Woah broke the scale, it's just me btw :)

@mikamembert I was considering doing something like that, but some minor complications came up with that idea. You kinda can play as the frog in versus mode if you get the magnet powerup though. (and I was thinking about adding wing powerups one day... [I need to update the game again at some point to fix a couple of bugs, I was thinking of adding some more hats and an extra powerup or two along with that, but it might be a while before I get around to that])

@Semudara I'm glad the bird is balanced now! People were getting really stuck there, and it's hard to tell how difficult to make it as the creator. Finding Mimo and the Dragon stage in the Jelpi demo takes a tiny bit of tinkering to access, so I think that that stuff may be new to many pico8ers. I tried to present everything so that no outside context would be needed. The idea of someone playing this game in the future and thinking of it like I did when I first played some other PICO-8 must-plays years, when I first discovered PICO-8, is an honor!
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THIS IS SO AMAZING!!!!
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Fun! Glad to see Jelpi again. Landing overtop of the ball is killer ☠️.

REMAKE THIS IN A GAME ENGINE THAT CAN PUT GAMES ON STEAM! CUZ HOLY F### THIS IS F###ING AWSOME I EVEN HAD TO BLUR OUT SWEAR WORDS, THE MUSIC IS SICK THE GAME IS FUN AND IT SEEMS LIKE THIS COULD WINN GAME OF THE YEAR. You wanted to make a simple sports game, and then you made it SO GOOD THAT I WILL SELL MY KIDNEY JUST TO PLAY THIS GAME

but if there could be online... well, lets just say, it would look like you went in creative mode irl and got all the diamonds in the world

sorry if i went overboard, i liked this game alot. i may try to put it on cool math games because at my school, pico 8 games get more popular if they are on cool math games

however, you can say no if u want to, and i will wait for your responce to these messages before putting it on a different website. but i will say that you made it tho ;)

@Fclefkid lol glad you like the game that much! You can already put pico8 games on steam actually, it's just hard to make them big and polished enough to ask money for. Maybe one day I'll put this up on steam for free.
Also, I'll look into putting the game on cool math games (I didn't even know you could submit games there, thanks for letting me know), but I'd prefer to do it myself at some point.
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Incredible game! Also would die for a playable frog
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Got 8-0 on all opponents!

And it comes with a fancy new crown, too!

@Kaius Congrats! That's a pretty tough challenge, and as far I know you are the second person to ever accomplish that! The first was @kaimonkey, which means, yes, I have still to get around to actually doing it myself...


(I just need to 8-0 Mimo, I got to 7-0 once then failed xp)
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@Munchkin @Kaius clearly us Kai's have a special touch!
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just did the 8-0 :o

(username chosen entirely for the memes, naturally)
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"GAME OVER?"
"the GAME's never OVER."
i said before i lost 8-10
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yay I'm win!!!
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@kaipybara I love the name solidarity, the 8-0ers keep rolling in!

@pico14 Whew, that was an intense final match with Mimo, 12-10, nice!
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A really well developed time into making this masterpiece!

I'm quite impressed with the intro (my favorites) and the transitions, it's made me excited to make something like this in the future with its simple gameplay yet challenging opponents.
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this isnt working on my miyoo mini plus that i put pico8 on. the inputs arent working even though for the rest of pico8 it works
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@hasoon4321 Good luck, I hope you make something cool!

@Unknowen Yeah that's a known issue, sorry about that. The fault is seems to be that I was dumb and put all the input checks in the draw function, meaning that if the game runs consistently below 60fps it misses many/most inputs. It seems like the Miyoo isn't able to run the game at 60fps so it suffers from that problem. I might fix it when I have time in the future, my apologies!
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I gotta try this with my friends when i set up steam remote play.

Suggestion: can you add a 4 player mode with 2 people on each team?

(I just realized i was only thinking about vs mode but this could work for co-op as well)
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@qwertyad1 I actually playtested this game with some friends using steam remote play! I was considering adding 4-player at some points, but it would've been hard to test and I didn't think many would end up playing with that many players.
I don't think I'm going to update the game for a while (if ever) now, and probably not with features like 4-player that shake up UI and logistics a lot, buuuuuutt....

if you use load #pico_ball_match in the pico8 terminal and then paste this code snippet in at line 328 before pressing ctrl-R to run the game...

 
players[1].name = "team 1"

add(players,p1:new({
player=2,
x=8,
team=-1,
hat = -1,--hat
doubleinterval=leftinterval,
uptojump=leftupjump,
name = "team 2"
}))

add(players,p1:new({
player=3,
x=120,
team=1,
hat = -1,--hat
doubleinterval=rightinterval,
uptojump=rightupjump
}))

...it should work! (I'm not 100% sure because I don't have enough controllers to test if input actually works for players 3 and 4 lol)
Powerups will be buggy/limited, but otherwise I believe it works pretty well! If you change gamemode = 0 at line 41 to gamemode = 1 you'll get co-op. I recommend you have fun messing with the code and random settings while you're at it to induce extra chaos :)
(be warned that the code is messy)

Let me know if you try out that trick and how it went!
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this is amazing
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@Munchkin, the missed inputs also happen on my original RG35XX with the MyMinUI CFW. I guess my handheld also can't run the game at 60fps, so it suffers from the same problem the Miyoo Mini Plus does.

Anyway, great game! Congrats on it being seleted to appear in the Featured Carts!

@andrejtrindade Sorry about that! And thanks! Getting on the featured page was kinda surreal :)
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@Munchkin Don't mention it, I'm playing on PC and phone.

Again, great game!
2

the best my record Please add team mode



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