Satan has taken over Santa's house! Luckily, Rudolph (that's you) has escaped from the cage he found himself in. Rescue Santa! Rescue reindeer! Stop Satan! Collect Christmas things! Save Christmas!
I thought I'd try my hand at the proud, proud tradition of making a lazy asset swap Christmas game. Turns out this was vastly more work than I anticipated but also a lot more fun. Trying to make sense of my own code from two years ago was not fun though.
This started out life as Banana Chase, one of my first games. All the sprites needed Christmasing up, I heavily remixed the map and also jammed in some Christmas jingles. What was not fun was trying to make sense of the absolute nonsense that passed as the level sequence code, this is not a place of honour etc.
Happy Christmas :)
Version History
1.01
-Added saved best times using cartdata.
-Changed the layout on a couple of levels to open things up a bit more
-Fixed lots of weird behaviour when starting a new game
-Game logo now displays properly on the win screen.
Old versions


It has been many years since the end of the War. As you step off the small boat that carried you to this place you feel like a stranger. Is this home any more?
Uncover the secrets of the past in this short #horror adventure game for Pico8.
Enjoy! :)
Dev notes
Version history
Take command of a regiment of 18th Century line infantry in this short action strategy game.
•Train and manage your soldiers and then march them into battle.
•Fight in ten battles against Emperor Camembert and his cronies.
•Seven different tactics to use from co-ordinated volley fire, to a fierce bayonet charge, or a cowardly tactical retreat!
•Strike a balance between training your soldiers and giving them enough rest so they are fresh for the next battle.
•Extremely historically accurate retelling of the Duke of Wensleydale's Parmesan Campaign against Emperor Camembert during the War of the 8 and Two-Thirds Coalition.
•Originally made for ToyBoxJam 3 2022 2nd - 22nd February 2022
v1.1
v1.01
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Journey into the Temple
Frozen Helm is a retro Metroidvania. It was made for RNDGAME JAM II from 16/07/2021 to 01/08/2021.
Guide Tulok through the Temple of the Ancestors, fighting malevolent skeletons and exploring the icy ruins.
Harness the power of ice

Tap Z to create a blast of frost that freezes nearby enemies
Hold Z to hurl ice spears
Master your powers
Experience Story Mode to learn the secrets of the temple and blast through the game in Speedrun mode.
Version History
1.1
-more enemies
-more pickups
-tweaked level layout and enemy placement in a couple of places
-fixed crash when player is killed by skeletons
-repeatedly pressing action buttons during fadeouts no longer resets the transition
-added coyote time
-added other trendy platformer mechanics
-added player/enemy collision
-particle movement is now smoother
-added a simple death animation
-fixed missing sound and particle effects on being hit
-added two secret items
-lots of other stuff I probably forgot
1.0 - Initial (jam) version
Old (jam) version
I was playing around in the sound editor again, playing with the new filters, and found a pretty cool distorted guitar sound. So naturally, the metal soon followed.
The songs in order are Judas Priest - Painkiller, Slayer - Angel of Death, Megadeth - Holy Wars... The Punishment Due, Alice In Chains - Them Bones, Entombed - Left Hand Path, Metallica - Battery
[sfx]



Here's my Etch-A-Sketch simulator. All the basics were set up very quickly in a couple of hours at most and all of the rest of the time was spent trying to get the shake-to-clear-the-screen effect to work without being really laggy.

Controls:
Arrow keys to move the cursor
X to shake/clear the screen
Z (hold) to move one pixel at a time (for great justice detail)


There's also a few options on the pause menu (P/Enter) if you want to make your art look really janky.

Please share your horrifying art. :)
I've finished the post-jam version of my LD48 entry, Sub-Uber-Marine. Pilot a submarine taxi and deliver deep-sea divers to their destinations. Drive quickly and smoothly to earn more money!
In Sub-Uber-Marine you are a sub-aquatic taxi driver. Deep-sea divers need your help getting around the ocean!
Standard Pico-8 controls: Arrow keys for movement, X key to read messages, Z key to check money/account information
•Deliver divers to various locations in the ocean

•Repair any damage to your sub at the dock

•Follow the sonar pings so you don’t get lost

•Three different game modes: Arcade, Day Shift and Night Shift. In Arcade mode, complete as many fares as you can, each fare adds more time, like a certain taxi-based game by a very litigious company. In Day Shift, complete as many fares as you can in 8 minutes. In Night Shift, there are 20 divers scattered about the ocean, complete the fares as fast as possible.
Jam version made in Pico-8 in 48 hours for LD-48 Compo. Full version made in considerably more hours :)
I uploaded the jam version back in April.
Changelog:
v1.02
Fixed a crash presumably introduced by some change in the API in v0.2.5.
v1.01
I made some changes and increased the version number but never uploaded it and can't remember what changes or fixes were included.
V1.0: Many additions:
Rev 1: Fixed typo on title screen, fixed a bug that made the Evil Base location inaccessible.
Jam version: Initial version
How do you edit the space on your user profile underneath your name and social links? I obviously managed to change this when I first signed up to the forum, but I can't find how to edit it now.
Here's my demake/port/adaptation/whatever of Columns!
I wanted to make a falling-block puzzle game, but seemingly every gamedev and their dog has made Tetris so instead I went to my favourite Megadrive/Genesis puzzle game: Columns.
- Line up three or more jewels of the same colour, chain together combos for massive points
- Multi-gems, wildcards and obstacle blocks to spice up the game
- Remix of the classic Megadrive/Genesis music
- Customisable game options
- 5 tilesets including colour-blind-friendly 'Symbols' mode
1.02
- Made fall speed increase more smoothly
- Music: Off actually disables all the music in the game now
Old versions/development:
Welcome to TOYROGUE. Fight your way through an endless dungeon of horrors in this turn-based rogue-like.
ATTACK randomised enemies in turn-based combat
EQUIP randomised items to power-up your murder hobo
THROW bad items at the enemies to lower their stats!
EAT fortune cookies
CHOOSE to be a dragnet of death and entropy or skillfully navigate your way through the dungeon
Made in Pico-8 for ToyBoxJam2020
Known issues
The game can sometimes crash after the victory/defeat screen. (Thanks @maskedluka for spotting this!)
Version history
1.05 - Fixed a bug where an infinite combat loop could start when running away from enemies into a wall. (Thanks @Mumuko!)
1.04 - Added enemy scaling, the more game hours pass, the stronger the enemies get.
1.03 - Fixed a bug where HP wasn't being reset after game over
1.02 - Squashed lots of text display bugs
1.01 - Fixed a crash when trying to sell items when inventory is empty
1.0 - Initial release
Tips and Tricks
Stuck? This might help:
Development:
Old versions
In Super Mumtaz Bros. you join the titular plumbing brothers on their mission to rescue Princess Sana from... chickens?
•Hunt down radioactive chickens by using the Geiger counter!
•Break pipes!
•Repair pipes!
•Run around!
•Climb!
•Platform action!
•Discover secrets!
•Collect trophies!
•No jumping!*
Super Mumtaz Bros. is a highly realistic plumbing simulator that was made in Pico-8 for Toy Box Jam 2 from 18th December 2020 to 3rd January 2020.
Tips

Ali can find chickens stuck in pipes using his Geiger counter. He can then stomp on pipes to get the chickens out.

Bilal can spend money to place new pipes. You'll need to find money to pay for pipes.

The Geiger counter clicks more the closer you are to a chicken. The rings turn orange when you're really close. Stomp the pipe when you're in the right spot!

You can't jump*. So use the terrain to your advantage!
Development
I worked on this steadily over the (initial) two weeks of the jam. Sticking to daily updates on Twitter forced me to stick to developing it on time. The initial mechanics and mechanics were based on Nerdy Teachers' excellent platformer tutorial series on YouTube.
My airy fairy arty farty Peter-Molydeux-style idea/gimmick for this game was 'a platformer game where you can't jump'. Well, turns out you can (sort of) jump, but it's about as useful as jumping is in real life. Also, I thought it would be funny to make a Mario game where you actually have to do some plumbing.
Trivia
Mumtaz Brother is a real shop in the town where I grew up. The shop owners are a little eccentric; besides plumbing and D.I.Y. supplies they have at various times also sold groceries, rented out Bollywood videos, you name it. They expanded their business by opening a second plumbers merchants... next door to their original shop. If you can't find something in one shop, 'try next next door.'
Version history
1.04 Fixed another version of the character swap/wall collision bug from 1.03, added sound effects to tutorial objectives, changed the size of tutorial objective boxes and changed the size of Bilal's target box
1.03 Fixed a bug that let players move through walls by holding the character swap button
1.02 Fixed a bug when climbing, improved the tutorial
1.01 Fixed a typo, adjusted ending requirements
1.0 Initial release
Hola! I thought it would be cool try making a Christmas-themed game, so here it is. Ola! Tannenbaum is a quick arcade game where you're going to need good timing, lightning reflexes, and absolutely no sense of colour-coordination to create the most chaotically decorated Christmas tree ever. Start by placing baubles, tinsel and fairy lights and top everything off with a star on top. Will you be a bauble boffin or a yuletide liability?
Ola! Tannenbaum is an accurate simulation of what it is like to decorate a tree after too many glasses of sherry and with your eyes closed.
I tried to make an in-game tutorial that explains everything reasonably well but here's what you need to do in more detail if you're planning on min-maxing this.
- The closer you are to a target the more points you will get. Miss the target and you drop the decoration.
- Baubles only need one target. Accurately place two in a row and you'll gain a bonus bauble that's worth double points.
- Tinsel needs to be draped across two targets, one at a time. The longer and closer to horizontal it is, the more points you'll get.
- Fairy lights are similar to tinsel but don't need to be placed horizontally.
- Once all your decorations are gone or you have filled up the tree, you can place the star on top.
Top tips for a truly terrific tree:
- If two targets are next to each other, place a bauble so one target will move somewhere else (hopefully further away so you can place a long piece of tinsel)
- The longer you take to aim a decoration, the faster it will move, making it much harder to place accurately.
-
The star is worth the most points, don't drop it!
- A well-placed decoration is worth double points, a well-placed bonus bauble is worth quadruple points.
Patch Notes
1.03 - Fixed a couple of bugs during the tutorial and made the start of the game much easier.
1.02 - Fixed a different crash when placing tinsel/fairy lights on the last three targets. You no longer get bonus points when you miss the second stage of tinsel/fairy lights. Also removed some debug crap I'd left visible.
1.01 - Fixed a crash when placing tinsel/fairy lights on the last three targets (Thanks @2bitchuck for spotting this!)
1.0 - Initial release
Development
Cheats
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Take control of a single pixel and venture into a strange , abstract world to rescue all the pixels. Brave Pixel is an action-puzzle game where you must collect all the pixels in each zone to advance across the world. Battle the greedy red worms and unlock new powers.
Controls
X (hold) - Creep (i.e. move one pixel at a time)
Z - Special Power
Development:
I started making this in July and I brought lots of ideas for it into my game Clever Pixel, which was my submission to LOWREZJAM2020. I've always loved the idea of a game where you start off with just a single pixel however, whilst Clever Pixel was a sort of dungeon-crawler/Metroidvania, Brave Pixel is much more... erm... arcadey? I had a hard time picking a genre for this game as you can probably guess.
Seriously, any suggestions for what would be a more helpful genre tag would be greatly appreciated.
It's quite a fast-paced game, most levels can easily be cleared in a couple of minutes; the level select screen ended up working like a very simple overworld with multiple routes and a couple of unlockables--which is not something I've attempted before. Turns out I find coding menus really difficult.
The game started off as an exercise in making some good collision code and just practising that skill a bit more but pretty soon I realised I wasn't making any use of the sprite sheet so I thought, 'hey, I'll make this a 'no-sprite-sheet' game'--this in particular forced me to get more creative to try and make the graphics as appealing as possible.
When I added some music I thought I'd try and come up with something that didn't rely so heavily on percussion--so 'no drums' became another restriction I placed on myself. As things went on, more of these kinds of restrictions were imposed, and this was even before I even hit the token limit, which I spent about a week scraping up against.
Anyway, well done for making it this far, I hope you enjoy my game! :)
Patch Notes
1.1 - Fixed a couple of couple of display errors on the level select screen as well as an issue with calculating complete times for some levels.
Here's my submission to LD47. I'll add more to this later. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!
The game had absolutely no balancing prior to submission (I was ten minutes away from the deadline and had yet to implement enemy projectile collision) so if things are horribly broken, there is a boss skip:
Here is my entry to LOWREZJAM 2020. There's the version I submitted onto Itch to meet the deadline yesterday, but I found a couple more bugs that really needed addressing, so here's 1.1 for your consideration.
Clever Pixel is an abstract dungeon crawler with Metroidvania elements. You start off in control of a single pixel and explore a large maze-like world battling other creatures. Collect red pixels to unlock new areas, search for the Mega Key, collect upgrades, and uncover secrets.
Controls:
Arrow keys, X - drop/shoot pixels, Z- upgrade menu.
The only requirements of the jam were for the game to run at 64x64, so I used Pico's mode 3 so everything would be rendered at the lower resolution. It was interesting working at this resolution, it gave much more space for a sprawling game world, 16x8 screens rather than the usual 8x4 on the map. I was able to recycle a little bit of code from some of my previous projects and some bits of code for what's probably going to end up as some sequel/prequel to the game with some similar mechanics, which helped move things along. Other than that, it was 16 days of pretty frantic work. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, it was a lot of fun to code :)
1.0 - The version submitted to the game jam
1.1 - Fixed some bugs. I d wish I'd wrote down which ones
1.2 - Fixed some other bugs/issues: boss/player-projectile collision, widened some areas of the game world, added a few more power-ups and collectibles to make the East side of the world map less empty/frustrating.
1.3 - Fixed a few more missing map tiles that were screwing up the camera, added a respawn option on the pause menu in case you still manage to get stuck or just want to go back to the last checkpoint for... reasons ;)
Here is the game 'Dragon's Playground' made for Tom Hall's #RNDGAME2020. I had so much fun coding this, it was good to work under the requirements of a game jam, it really tested my programming ability--working to a deadline. Anyway, great fun, Dragon's Playground is a top-down, free-roaming shoot'em-up where you control Azron, scourge of the realms. You must incinerate the realm, defeat wizards, elves and knights to assert true dominance over the kingdom.
There are still a few lingering bugs that I would like to fix, but I am happy to share this game as part of a game jam, my first. Great fun!
Controls:
X - Breathe fire
Z - Charge breath
v1.0 - Jam version
v1.1 - Added a fillp effect to make smoke less overwhelming, fixed a bug that ended game prematurely after first game was over.
Banana Chase is a fast-paced arcade maze game or 'collect'em up' where you are Monty, a very hungry monkey. Eat your way through 28 levels of fruit-based action as you uncover the mystery of the magical forest.

•Chain together combos of fruit to get the most points.
•Don't eat mushrooms!
•Two difficulties, Easy and Hard.
•Five different types of fruit to eat.
•Three different enemies, learn the tricks and tactics to circumvent them.
•28 levels, explore the magic forest and complete the wizard's quest.
•Complete the game in the fastest time.
X - Advance chat, hide UI
Z - Level skip
This started off life as a very simple demo, and my first attempt at making a Pico-8 game. I didn't like leaving it unfinished, so I've been steadily adding to it on and off over the last few months.
I really admire speedrunning, so I tried to make this game as speedrun friendly as possible.
I didn't really have any particular inspiration in mind when making the game. I teach programming in schools with Scratch and it was kind of based on one of the games I make in that. It ended up kind of Pac-Man-esque, in that you collect things and are in a kind of maze, but that's a bit of a stretch.
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Old Versions
Version History
v3.01 - Fixed an issue with best times not being carried between games, added cartdata functionality to save best times between sessions.
v3.0 - It's four years later and I'm still fiddling around with this: Added a tutorial to explain how the hell scoring works; a sprite outline effect to make objects stand out better; particle effects because particle effects. This was all made possible by streamlining much of the code, no more tables as containers for variables. Probably some other changes I forgot about.
v2.1 - After some great feedback (thanks @jeb!) I've made some changes I was kicking myself for not thinking of.
•Added a walking animation for the monkey
•Added a third difficulty, so now there's Easy - 125pts per level, Normal - 250pts and Hard - 500pts. You can easily get through easy (pun intended) in under fifteen minutes.
•Made a bunch of minor adjustments to map layouts, there shouldn't be such a big difficulty spike in the mid-game now.
•Fruit should no longer appear directly adjacent to or on top of the monkey. Less broken streaks!
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Dominion Ex is a vertical-scrolling shoot'em up. Fight 14 different enemies with 4 weapons over 3 levels of space action. (That's 168 pieces of fun!)
It features two difficulties and a ship upgrade system to allow for different play-styles and strategies.
Tips
Some enemies are immune to certain weapons. Look out for blue forcefields!

Collect coins to pay for ship upgrades.

If things are getting too intense you can use the FTL drive to escape to the hangar and make some upgrades to your ship.

This was a lot of fun to code and a big learning experience. So let me know how you find the game!
Version history
v1.11 - Fixed an issue where game would hang in the hangar (haha.) Particles now clear properly when visiting the hangar. Added a hint for how to get to the hangar for people who don't read the description on Newgrounds.
1.1 - Added many particle effects. Overhauled and simplified title screen menu. Added more feedback and info on the HUD. Added level names. Brightened up blue enemy projectiles. Adjust orange enemy projectile spread. Added overheat sound. Added some simple tutorial text. Added a highlight effect to life and coin power-ups.
1.01 (unreleased) - Fixed a bug where high scores were not recorded properly. Fixed a music bug after fighting a boss.
1.0 - Initial version