This is my first ever game made inside Pico-8!
How To Play
Controls: Up/Down/Left/Right to move.
You play as the Yellow Square. Earn score by collecting Orbs. For every 5 score, A red square will spawn in the middle and bounce off the borders of the screen. The goal of the game is to collect as many Orbs as you can without touching the red squares.
Some Development Backstory
I originally wanted my first Pico-8 game to be a basic platformer. I then proceeded to find out the hard way just how difficult that was for someone just starting out and learning the ropes of the engine. I had to make something a bit simpler.
I wanted to create a small arcade-styled game where your only limiter is your own skill. This game ended up being finished in just 2 days, which even for a small for-fun project is quite quick.
I've always used GameMaker when making games, but I've been wanting to learn Pico-8 for a while as making tiny little arcade games as a hobby is something that's been a huge interest to me. I'm a sucker for simplicity, so an engine like this is exactly what I've been looking for.
My initial point of inspiration for this game was Snake, where you eat apples and avoid bumping into walls or your tail. I really liked the simple objective and the gradual difficulty curve of the game, but I wanted to add a new way of challenging the player as it can get sort of mundane if you know what you're doing.
I remember when I was playing Terraria's Calamity Mod, and something that I found really fun was dodging projectiles when fighting bosses. I thought it'd be an interesting idea to make a game where the whole focus is dodging things. So, I combined that with a similar game loop to Snake to make Dodger!
Credits
I made Dodger entirely by myself. (Discord ".shirtman") I only used the tools built into Pico-8 when making the game, no VS Code or anything of the sort.
Hey @shirtman, this a great little gem! I have added it to my RG CubeXX and it plays well.
I don’t know if you’ve already looked into this, but NerdyTeachers has a great platformer YouTube series. Maybe you can use it as a starting point.
This is a very nice twist on snake and the gameplay feels juicy! I think we all have these projects on our backlog that we just have started too soon don’t worry about it.
Hey @shirtman, this is really good! Wanted to let you know I have made a mod based off this game, which adds some stuff I wanted to have in it. I linked back to this because I think it's really cool, but if you want me to take it down, I can! I think you should keep making stuff, and I also think you can totally make a platformer if you try hard enough! Just keep working at it and use tutorials and wikis if you need them, and you'll make something amazing.
@bbsamurai thanks! I plan on getting a Miyoo Mini Plus soon, I currently don't have a portable console to play Dodger on, so it's a relief to hear its functional on that side of things too!
Also I know exactly what tutorial you're on about, I actually used that for my initial platforming project, funnily enough! Where it all sort of fell apart was trying to expand on it after I was done with that tutorial (Moving Obstacles left-right, Clear Conditions, that kinda thing).
@TRUL0U tysm! Yeah, I wanted to make a platformer since I love them to bits and they're not too hard to make on Gamemaker. I'll probably make a platformer well into the future once I'm more confident and familiar. For now though, I wanna continue making tiny little arcade games like this. They're too fun to make lol!
@Axolotyl8Bit WOAH! That's so awesome! I'll be sure to check it out soon! Sorry if my code was a little bit, yknow... beginnerish.
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