P.Craft is a crafting game. You wake up on a deserted island, and you have to survive. Gather materials and build your tools. Explore the area and find a cave. Will you find a way to escape the island ?
Update : A new version, P.Craft Deluxe Edition has been released on Itch.io :
https://nusan.itch.io/pcraft
With a saving system, a boss and a few new items to discover.
This new version use the multicartridge system in a complex way that is not yet compatible with the BBS, so I can't upload it here. You can however find the source .p8 files on the Itch.io page as well as binaries for windows, linux and mac.
Controls :
Button 1 (C/Z/N) : open inventory / cancel menu
Button 2 (V/X/M) : use equiped item / valid menu

The game is heavily inspired by Notch's Ludum Dare entry "Minicraft" witch seemed a perfect idea for pico 8
Quick start if needed :
- Start by punching one or two trees.
- Avoid zombies (water is you friend)
- Open your inventory and select the workbench
- Place the workbench on the ground
- Use the workbench to craft a wood haxe
- Select the wood haxe in your inventory
- Cut trees until you can craft a sword on the workbench
- Search the island until you find a cave opening
- You can pickup your workbench again to move it near the cave
- Your goal now is to craft a boat
- Be carefull
Old version :


Amazing game! It is very addictive, I played it like 1 hour. I never thought that a pico 8 game could do that :).
I manage to build the boat and escape the island, but i didn't find any gold. I wanted to make the gold tools.
Impressive work!


You can, in fact, place sand over water. You can also dig sand to reveal water using a gold/gem shovel. So you can already kinda shape your base. Placing brick walls could be very nice.
Here is a base I build for fun, even if it's prety useless to finish the game :



great work! i played all the way through it. Completely balanced, nice graphics, and simple controls!


Wow very nice game, I played this game for 2 and a half hours on my Pi. This is the first pico-8 game i've played for 2 and a half hours
Very good port of Minicraft


I like this game so much I used a spreadsheet to figure out a speedrun. All you need to beat the game is the following raw materials:
72 wood
45 stone
24 iron
10 gems
36 sand
12 fabric
27 ichor
The only tool you have to build is the shovel, which I recommend a wooden one. The other materials you can get with your bare hands, though it would take a lot of time. To speed things up, you can collect 17 extra stone to build the haxe, pick, and sword. Iron or better equipment is not worth it due to the cost of an anvil and three times the material.
Once you have what you need, simply build the stone bench if you haven't already and use it to build the furnace. smelt 8 iron bars and 9 pieces of glass with it. Then build the chem lab and factory with the workbench. Create 9 bottles of glue, 4 sails, and finally your boat.


It's realy cool to see you interested in Speedrun, Jryvn. I wonder if it's faster or not to skip the anvil.
I also tryed to speedrun the game many times during development, here is a start I found fast :
Cut tree until 5 wood, drop the workbench, craft a haxe, cut tree until 12 wood, craft wood pick and sword (you can skip the sword but its more risky) and pick up the workbench. Explore and find the cave entrance (its near the center of the islands). I build my base inside the cave for easy access to ore and sand (you can dig sand in cave and it's realy fast). I mine enough iron for the anvil and an iron pick, then mine enough gem for a gem pick. This will make mining stone and iron faster. I often craft a gem sword, as it's realy good at getting ichor (you can enter/exit cave to make zombie reappear). Crafting an iron axe can be good for all the wood needed.
If you never played Minicraft, the 2D game from Notch, it's the main inspiration of this game, it's prety good and there is mods that make it more complete.


This game didn't take very long to make, I had the idea for some times and a great example from Minicraft to help design. It took like 3 weeks, spending about 40 hours. I needed to optimize tokens 3 times, removing some contents and factorising. I notably gain ~300 tokens just by removing useless parenthesis in if statements and replacing some by ternary operators (a<b and c or d).


This game is excellent! I just spent like an hour or so figuring it all out and having a blast. I'm just discovering all these great P8 games and so far PCraft has kept be entertained the longest.
It's also quite inspiring. I'm starting to play around to make my own game and this one is a real showcase when it comes to just being a fun, engaging game. Well done.
PS...when is Chapter 2 coming out?! I mean, there's no reason his escape boat can't crash on another island ;P
Cheers.


I would like to do a sequel, probably more focused on farming, having to provide water to grow plants, maybe automation like in factorio. The player would not be able to fight but only building traps to protect the farm.
But first I have another Pico8 project that took a long time and is finaly nearly finished ...


I'm digging the idea (pun INTENTDED) of a Minecraft style game that can be beat in maybe 20 minutes... I think if it had skillful and/or tactical combat it would be a really great game. As-is, it was a fun time waster but I don't feel like playing it through twice.
Basically, if you make a sequel, consider the oh-so-unorthodox idea of a Minecraft clone that doesn't take forever and doesn't focus on farming and whacking resources with tools.
Sorry if I sound cynical, I really do like this game. The graphics are genius. THE ORES ARE TREES, DUDE.


Since you have posted this game I decided to re-code my future game map generated dynamically.
I take weeks investigating how it works your function Noise and looking for information online about SimpleXNoise and Perlin noise.
I'm still investigating ...
Your game is an incredible piece of well-written code.
Congratulations


Very fun game, I noticed the Minicraft inspiration right away (shame we will never get to see minitale). I really should finish a game of Minicraft some time.
Anywho your game is very nice, I liked the amount of content, it made the game last about a good 30 minutes for me. Also the character movement was impressive, it felt very fluid.
A factorio-like farm and defend might be interesting to see. Best of luck on that and your other project. And thanks for making this fun cart.


I didnt even now about Minitale, now I'm sad it doesnt exist, but there is several mod of Minicraft, like Minicraft plus or delux. But as all of them are in java, it's prety anoying to launch.
@ruanova : be carefull with the noise code, it has been implemented fast and tweaked to get cool result, but it's probably not a good general perlin noise. But I'm glad you liked the game.


@NuSan: Yeah now that java by default does not run any website embedded applets without configuration it is a lot harder then it used to be. Also, Yeah the minicraft mods are awesome (just a bit sad i think last time i was there it was still kinda stalled in terms of new mods) and we have games like yours and tile miner that continue on it's legacy.


@NuSan: Thank you for your code, it is inspiring. I've used it as the basis of study, but of course will not use it as it is yours and I have not asked permission;-)
I'm reading a lot of information about creating maps and islands using Perlin Noise and Diamond-Square to get my own algorithm that is fast, simple and with a good result. (I'll get it? ... :-()


Uploaded a new version, as version 0.1.8 was breaking death/win screens.
To be precise : I was using the fact that map2 memory location was not correctly updated when using pset/pget (to create the procedural map). The goal was to avoid reloading the cart when I needed death/win screen.


About the only things I would add/change to it:
Spiders, that drop string. String can make bows to "shoot wood" and slingshots to "shoot stone."
Some kind of unkillable bogeyman in the mine/cave to periodically chase the player out.
Maybe crabs, that drop "crab cake" to eat, for temporarily buffed stamina (IE: drains half as quickly for about 10 seconds - mostly handy for mining).


Thanks for the kind words. This project was very fun to do and using LUA made the crafting system interesting to design. Keeping tokens low while having a great number of items was a good challenge. Also, procedural map generation is fun too.


Update : A new version, P.Craft Deluxe Edition has been released on Itch.io :
https://nusan.itch.io/pcraft
With a saving system, a boss and a few new items to discover.
This new version use the multicartridge system in a complex way that is not yet compatible with the BBS, so I can't upload it here. You can however find the source .p8 files on the Itch.io page as well as binaries for windows, linux and mac.


Pretty fun, but I how do you even damage the boss?
I first played this on CoolmathGames, but I think it was the deluxe thing because this version doesn't have a map.


Damage the boss? It requires some additional searching. Couple of spoiler tags for you.


also there should be something for if you swim out too far, like if the boss ate you or something. Like in GTA V your stuff breaks down and sharks attack you, or like in GTA Vice City where you just get back to the island when you go off the map.


is this the same game?
https://www.coolmathgames.com/0-stranded-isle
if so, why the different name


Stranded Isle and P.Craft are one and the same, the name change was most likely Coolmath wanting a different name than P.Craft for the game, so NuSan changed it just for them.
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