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gfcarstensen

Software developer by trade. Indie game hobbiest- especially enjoy retro games dating back to VIC-20 and C64, which were my first computers.


A quick experimental pixel based platformer. I was inspired by some interesting ascii / 8 bit retro art and thought it would make an interesting game. This is purposefully simple, 2 screens, strange behaviors, and no explanation! The thinking is for the player to figure out the rules (and bend them) of the weird looking 'world' and experiment to figure it out. It does track time, collectibles, and deaths.

I don't think I quite captured the artistic merit of its source inspiration, ended up looking a little more like a platformer level than I wanted, but it was fun trying!

Checkout the original art that led me to create this here: https://twitter.com/LootBndt

Cart #abst_pixl_platform_fm-0 | 2023-03-08 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
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Good luck!

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Arena Shooter

Cart #bosihewisi-1 | 2021-09-29 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
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Destroy the spawning enemies and defeat the boss at the end of each wave. This is an endless top down arena shooter. It features:

  1. Four enemy types and a boss. Each with unique attacks.
  2. Bullet lock controls (hold fire to keep shooting in current direction)
  3. Ghost control - press the other button to ghost through enemies and walls and get a speed boost. Ghosting also reloads.
  4. Defeat the boss at the end of each wave for big scores.
  5. Bottom left shows you wave, and countdown to the boss appearing.
  6. High scores.

Good luck! This started as a bit of an experiment for some control schemes for a platformer...and ended up this. It could use a bit more polish- but for this project, I'm moving on. I might come back to it one day and add a few more boss types and polish.

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Cart #bufaghyu-2 | 2021-09-11 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
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Figured Pico-8 needed a Burgertime! This is a Burgertime demake, it uses about half the resolution of the original. I tried to make it as true to the arcade version as possible. Includes all 6 levels, as well as the level 28 kill screen.

Did my best on the AI for the enemies and speeds, but with the size differences, and a few other things, probably plays slightly different than the bigger arcade version- but pretty close! I also tried to reproduce some of the bugs- for example it only shows up to level 18 in the HUD (3 times through the levels), as well as 9 lives, even though you can get more lives and keep going- just like the original.

This was one of my favourites on the Intellivision back in the day, so enjoy!

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Cart #hanranddoroido_gunv2-1 | 2021-05-22 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
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Hanran Doroido-Gun

Fight the Rebel Droid Army and free humanity in this bullet hell vertical shooter.

Defeat the 5 waves to achieve victory and end the war.

Do not fail...

Quick Guide

  • Unlimited mode plays the same as arcade but with unlimited lives. Smart mode to play in to win the game the first time.
  • Both Arcade and Unlimited mode allow for taking multiple hits before dying. In these modes your power bar (top left) serves as both your health and your weapon power up. Collect blue crystals to power up your weapon and replenish health.
  • In Hard mode and Championship mode, all hits to the player from either ships or bullets are instant death. Recommended only for those seeking a punishing challenge and high scores of note!
  • Each of the 5 levels includes a mini boss around half way (which is also the one checkpoint in the level) and a final boss.
  • If you're playing for high score- play on Championship, and get the level bonuses- those are where big scores are earned.

Updates

  • Version 2: Some game play improvements after more play testing. Specifically: Increased invincibility frames from 30 ticks to 70 ticks to make slightly easier on Unlimited and Normal modes. Made blue bullets in Wave 4 not single hit death on Unlimited and Normal modes. Tweaked HP on Wave 3 bosses down slightly. Increased gap slightly on Wave 4 enemy waves to make not so punishing.
  • Version 3: Fixed starfield bug- where every time you started a new level or died, more and more stores appeared.

Credits and Shout Outs

In doing research on the bullet hell genre, I found this site especially invaluable in building the bullet engine. https://sparen.github.io/ph3tutorials/danmakudesign.html Big thanks to the author and their work on this page. Also for those who have played Ikaruga - you'll notice a few ideas from that one.

I created this game over a couple of weeks. It started out as an experiment to learn more about making shooters fun and challenging for the player for a larger project I'm working on called Kip and Odosan. In that game we are including a couple run n gun and scrolling shooter levels. This turned into a fun project and I'll be incorporating a lot of what I learned here into it. The bigger project details are:

web: http://strayvoltagegames.com
twitter: @strayvoltageca (https://twitter.com/strayvoltageca)

Have fun, if you achieve victory, post a screenshot of the victory page with your score!

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Cart #escape_the_dungeon-0 | 2021-04-12 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
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Escape the Dungeon is a turn based dungeon crawler featuring a party of 4 characters, a randomly generated set of levels for each run, 40 monsters, many items and spells.

The goal is to escape the dungeon alive by descending through each of the 4 levels and defeating the boss at each set of stairs.

Escape the Dungeon is a tribute to the Bard's Tale Series, and really is a mashup of this game with attributes from the rogue like genre such as random generation of the levels, and resource management and choices along the way. I drew inspiration from my love of FTL and Bards Tale hoping to create a repeatable experience similar to those first few hours of playing Bards Tale where you level up heavily, improve your characters, and face tougher tactical battles.

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Pico 8 needed a mini version of this classic!

Levels/Waves are generated procedurally- see how long you can last and how high you score.

Use the keyboard or joystick, move the cursor to collect sun and plant your plants.

Includes a seed system, so if you enjoyed a particular game, note the seed down and share it. You can also replay it easily if you wanted to try to get further.

Beware while it's endless, and you don't restart each level, your plants remain, there are acts of nature that hit your garden keeping you on your toes.

V1.2:

  • Added a 35 second timer after level 2 when only a few zombies left before next level starts.

V1.1:

  • Updated controls, see below.

Instructions:

  1. Plant a few sun flower plants early. Move the cursor to collect sun. Sun is used to grow plants and fight the zombies.

  2. New plants introduced as you advance. To plant press the Z on the keyboard or A button on the controller. This will allow you to select the plan you'd like to plant there. Press Z again to plant. To exit without planting, press X or B button, or move down off the plant selection bar.

  3. Hit the B button or X on the keyboard to pause/resume or quit at any time.

  4. A few hints - get lots of sun early and build your defences strong early while you can, after about level 5 to 6, the waves start getting pretty big with new zombies appearing such as the Football Zombie, Miner, Newspaper Zombie, Trash can, and the Pole Vaulter.

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Cart #51609 | 2018-04-14 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | No License
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A Zelda like adventure. Defeat the wizard Kildren and release the kingdom from his wintery curse.

Features an Overworld and 6 dungeons to explore. Includes 6 bosses, and many different enemies, weapons and items.

New in V1.4:

A few changes to make the game easier, especially early in the game.

  • Added an additional, easy to find chest with a heart in it early in the game.
  • Made max health be 9, not 8.
  • After dying you now start with 4 health if you have it, not 3.
  • Added one more red potion in the first container.

New in V1.3:

  • Made shield block standard glowing bullets (does not block fireballs). You must be facing the bullet and not be moving or attacking.
  • Changed static trap that shoots in 4 discrete directions to use fireball (so can't block) - the trap that targets you still uses the standard bullet
  • Made you start the game after death assuming you have found some heart containers with 3 hearts, not 2.

New in V1.2:

  • Added some acceleration when first start moving.

New in V1.1:

  • Yellow Moles (pop up and down) - only hurt you when fully extended now- gives you a bit of warning

Hints:

  • You can have health up to 9. Hearts are found in chests in both the Overworld and in 4 of the 6 dungeons. Find the Overworld hearts early as your first priority.

  • There are several important items in stores - find them early.

  • Defeating all enemies in a room increases chances of more gold being dropped by the last enemy.

  • There are exactly the right amount of keys in the Overworld and Dungeon - no extras- so keep looking if you're stuck!

  • Most containers are gone once destroyed and their items found- a few respawn after death- very helpful to regain health after death.

  • The game tracks number of deaths and time and displays this once you win. Good luck!

  • For further hints and an Overworld map, see further below.

Music originally composed by Koji Kondo, (C) Nintendo.

Note, if anyone would like to contribute music, let me know. I put the a Zelda song for the Dungeons in as a place holder for those that have played the original Legend of Zelda on NES. It would be great to have an Overworld song, and a dungeon song.

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A prototype puzzle platformer with 13 levels. It explores the use of alternate worlds/views on the same level as the main game play mechanic.

It's a complete game, but with the limited space, difficulty ramps up pretty quickly to try out different puzzle ideas and game mechanics.

Arrow keys to move, up or C to jump.

The X key (or other button) comes into play a bit into the game, I won't give it all away.

Cart #44710 | 2017-09-28 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | No License
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Your mission is to penetrate the enemies secret lair buried fathoms deep inside an active volcano and retrieve the stolen plans. Collect USB drives of enemy secrets for bonus points on each level.

Your agent is armed with only his glide suit and his wits in this hardcore platformer.

Arrow Keys or D-PAD to move.
Z or B button to Jump - press again to glide slowly.
While gliding, press X/A button or press Up to boost briefly upwards.

Get to the bottom of each level to get to the next.

Good luck! Feedback welcome.

A game save and resume/continue feature has been added. It now saves after every death and every level you pass, so it allows you to resume from right where you left off.

. .

Cart #39603 | 2017-04-13 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | No License
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Escape 2099 is a procedurally generated twin stick arena shooter for one or two players.

The year is 2099, and humans have begun settling the stars with the use of generation ships and autonomous robot crews. It seems however your robot crew has other ideas...

Controls:

Standard D-PAD/direction keys to move, and the two buttons to change shooting direction. Hold them both to shoot down, and a single one to shoot left or right. It includes a control screen where you can easily invert the shooting buttons to avoid remapping with SDL on game pads and joysticks.

Survive and escape Deck 5 to win the game.

Cart #39526 | 2017-04-11 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | No License
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In Fathom your mission is to penetrate the enemies secret lair buried deep inside a volcano and retrieve the stolen plans. Collect USB drives of enemy plans for bonus points on each level.

Your agent is armed with only his glide suit and his wits in this hardcore platformer.

Arrow Keys or D-PAD to move.
Z or B button to Jump - press again to glide slowly.
While gliding, press X or the A button to boost briefly upwards.

Get to the bottom of each level to get to the next.

Good luck! Feedback welcome.

Cart #38953 | 2017-04-01 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | No License
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Robot Uprising is a Tower Defense style strategy game. Protect the last human base from the attacking robots by placing ground traps or weapon towers.

Accrue metal by destroying robots, or using Metal ground traps. Metal is precious, spend it wisely on your defences... or be personally responsible for the extinction of the human race.

This is a work in progress. Currently the first 8 levels are designed. Another enemy robot type, and hopefully a few

Update:

  • when you die, you continue from the current level rather than having to restart from the beginning.

Cart #51087 | 2018-03-31 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | No License
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Here is a short implementation of a pathfinding algorithm (a*) in pico 8.

Your press Z (A button) and the S moves to the T. Press again once it reaches it's destination and it randomly picks two more locations and does it again.

Not necessarily the most performant- but works well enough at small scale.

Cart #34709 | 2017-01-02 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | No License
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Battle your computer opponent to the death. Build and upgrade your defences, attack enemy towers and explore the procedurally generated world. Win by defeating all enemy towers.

Your minions harvest wood. Use this to build new towers or upgrade existing ones.
Select your tower once warriors are present and target an enemy tower to attack.

A button/Z key - build or select
B button/X key - cancel command, or if on your own tower upgrade it.
A button - double click on tower - transfer warriors from one tower to another

Note once you've selected towers the cursor goes red, this means you must select either enemy towers to attack or your own towers to get more warriors involved or to transfer. Click the X key (B button) to cancel out, and be able to build again (notice cursor goes yellow).

Instructions:

To build a new tower - move the cursor using the D-Pad or arrow keys to the location you like- ideally near a forest and press the A button (z key). You can only build bases on green grass land. Note the grey fog of war will disappear revealing more of the map as you build out towers and as your minions roam further.

Two minions spawn per base and will chop down trees and bring it back to it's home tower. If this tower is destroyed, the minions die as well.

Each tower will produce 1 warrior per wood contained directly in the tower. Move your cursor over your tower to see it's statistics. When you first build a tower, it starts at level 1 and can house only 4 warriors. You can upgrade a tower (if you have enough wood - 4 to get to level 2, and then 8 to get to level 3) by moving the cursor to the tower and pressing the B button (X key). While upgrading you can't attack from the base and new warriors won't spawn. However upgraded towers can hold more wood, and spawn more warriors.

To attack the enemy, select a tower with the cursor and press the A button (Z key). The cursor will turn red. You may now select an enemy tower to send half your warriors. Press the button repeatedly to send more warriors - it will always leave 1 back at the home tower. Note you can select multiple towers to send minions from. So select your source towers first (where the warriors will come from), then select the single enemy target.

Also you can transfer warriors from one tower to another. To transfer, select one of your bases with lots of warriors then select a tower with room to spare for more warriors, and double click the A button (Z key) on the destination tower. This will transfer half- double click again to transfer more.

You win by defeating all enemy towers.

Updates Jan 5-2017

  1. Changed computer/AI opponent to also use fog of war rules.
  2. Adjusted AI logic to not build it's own towers so close together
  3. Adjusted AI to attack from multiple towers more often when it outnumbers you substantially. Less stalemate outcomes arise then.
  4. Made it visible which towers had been selected when transferring warriors or attacking.

Updates Jan 4-2017

  1. Fixed fog bug (was off by 4 pixels)

Updates Jan 2-2017

  1. Path finding (uses A* algorithm, so no more lost minions)
  2. Improved fog/visuals - thanks to Offler for the pretty fog
  3. Hard mode is much harder now
  4. Computer will attack in a wider radius if there is not activity for extended periods

Cart #35038 | 2017-01-06 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | No License
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Tuned difficulty slightly- added a short stinger at level start. Start with an extra life, and quicker to get free lives.


Add two new enemies. Tentacle enemy shows up in level 6 and above. And a new boss in level 10. Also now up arrow works for jump as well as Z.


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Improved collision detection with enemies- now uses standard bounding rect (as opposed to a single pixel check)

Super PICO Runner Brothers allows you to play as four familiar characters and complete a single stage runner competing for a high score. Complete the level, gain points, and repeat at faster speeds.

This started as a quick experiment with PICO-8, thanks to the fanzine, second edition where you'll see the art I used for the game characters.

Press left and right arrows to select your character, and Z or the fire button to start. Then when playing using left and run to speed up and slow down, and either up or fire to jump. Hold for longer jumps.

Good luck, I've only made it half-way through level 2 myself, but I expect it should be reasonable to make it through well into level 3 or 4 where the speeds probably become prohibitive beyond that.

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