Submitted to #LOWREZJAM: https://program_ix.itch.io/mslcom64
In MISSLCOM64, you control the missile defence system for a small town that's under attack. Move the cursor with the arrows and send bullets up to destroy the missiles with Z.
Made in about two and a half hours. Hinged on the realisation late the night before submission that I could hack my own sprite function to make PICO-8 effectively 64x64 (by stretching EVERY sprite*2). Unfortunately this meant to stay within the 64x64 grid, I had to do a lot of manual drawing of text and write a custom function to draw numbers based on sprites too. Still, I think it came out pretty well. If I'd come up with a way to do text without drawing it in the spritesheet, I would have had an easier time I think. (And given how quickly I did the numbers rendering function, it would have been well worth the time invested.) But it would've meant either custom sprite sizes for text, or having a lot less text onscreen. So whatever.
For those interested, the function to 'convert' PICO-8 to 64x64 is this:
FUNCTION SPR64(S,X,Y) SSPR((S%16)*8,(S/16)*8,8,8,X*2,Y*2,16,16) END |
If you replace all your SPR() calls with that, and keep your coordinates inside (64, 64), it should 'just work'. Problem is that now you have half as many sprites' worth of space. I didn't want to get into half-size sprites, but you definitely could change this function a little to get that if you are confident in how the sprite numbering works (since e.g., 4x4 sprites will mean you cannot rely on the numbers in the UI).
EDIT: You can also just do POKE(0x5F2C,3) to achieve the same effect without all the messing about. >.< Oh well. It was a fun hack.
Anyway, enjoy!
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This game's really simple and pretty silly. A cowboy is assailed on all sides by tumbleweeds. Endless, rolling tumbleweeds. The cowboy must use their comically oversized bullets to destroy the tumbleweeds before they are overwhelmed.
Arrows move, Z fires.
In a shocking display of modesty, this game was inspired by my own tweet: https://twitter.com/PROGRAM_IX/status/706624643826847744
Like TRAIN, I started this game with the misguided idea that PICO-8 could do more things than it actually can. In this case, I was sure I'd read somewhere the console could allow text input if you did some weird mode thing. No idea where this idea came from.
In any case, I'd already written some of the room logic by the time I realised, so I figured a very basic exploration thing would be easier to play with just four directions and Z anyway.
Explore this weird building you're in, and try to find a way out. Arrows are North, East, South, West. Z is your action button although the only actions are starting or restarting the game.
Hope you enjoy! (Use this code and make your own adventure games!!!)
I'm very pleased to finally release TRAIN, a game I've been messing about with for months and months. It started out as an attempt to build a nice interface that would look right in a very old point-and-click simulation game, and grew a lot from that aesthetic. It's definitely one of the things I've made that I'm proudest of with PICO-8, as minimal as it seems.
You have a large control panel for a very small toy train. The controls are supposed to be something of a puzzle. There are no instructions, only hints, but suffice it to say that you can make the train move. Fuel is limited, so the goal is to maximise your distance. Ideally, you won't go hunting in the source to figure out what the buttons do, but the buttons used are these:
Left Shift
Z
X
S
D
F
UP
DOWN
You should see a definite effect from most button presses, so most of it will be fairly simple after an initial trial/error period.
It's a weird little game, but I hope you enjoy it.
As usual, the end of #1GAM crept up on me and I had plenty of things in progress but nothing really done enough to call done. So it's become my habit to burst out a game in an hour or two and see how it goes. Here's another of these, '4WAY'. Collect the green crosses to increase your score, and don't get hit by the red circles. Your only defence against the red circles is shooting with Z, but the bullets will also destroy any crosses they encounter. Move with arrows. And of course, the core thing, you can only shoot in all four directions at once.
Have fun!
A silly game based on the 3D 'CAST' demo where you navigate a maze to try to find your way to a garden. Arrows to move. Hold Z to cheat.
(old tag: 16090)
I thought I wanted to make a game about launching missiles, but then I thought about it some more. All I really wanted was to make a game about moving an unwieldy cursor over a radar screen and pressing a button to do something.
So here we have SUPPLYDROP, in which you control a crosshair over a busy radar screen. Distant and imperilled groups of people have pooled their scant resources to send a distress signal, in the hope of reaching you and calling down desperately-needed supplies. You can help them, but their signals are terribly brief. Moreover, you only have ten supply drops to use. One supply drop can feed many people, but do you want to hold it back, in hopes of two beacons near each other? Or will you respond immediately to each call?
Watch for the signal beacons (orange squares). Move the crosshair with the arrow keys and use Z to place supplies near or on them to help those people. At the end of the game, you'll see your score and how many groups you saved. Any groups you missed will lower your score.
(Press Z on the score screen to restart.)
I had a lot of fun making this one over the last few days. I hope you enjoy playing it!
Made in about half an hour for August's #1GAM, since I have approximately 30,000 other projects on the go right now. Keeping to the theme of the most recent Ludum Dare, control the mower with the cursor keys and take down all those terrible terrible flowers, messing up your patch.
I'm rather pleased with the speed I put this together, simple as it is.
Super simple example cart I made for the PICO-8 ZINE by arnaud_debock. Press Z to make the train start moving, and Z again to make it stop.
Local multiplayer! Two cowboy dudes are shuffling around the saloon and get into a tense situation somehow. What should they do? Shoot? Hide? Nothing?
Button 1 (P1: Z, P2: Tab) fires, button 2 (P1: X, P2: Q) hides. Make your decision quickly, because doing nothing is very risky!
I'm calling this finished because I mayyyy at some point want to spruce it up, but I don't want to get anyone's hopes up, least of all my own.
Wanted to see how little I could add to the game beyond a tiny animation to indicate movement up or down. Think it came out playable at least.
Button 1 to fire/start/restart, up/down to move.
Shoot dudes!
Either P1 button (X/Z by default) will start/restart the game, arrows move. You'll see that the circles follow you in a very predictable pattern. All you have to do is use that pattern to your advantage by making them overlap. Enjoy!
In 2011 I threw together a silly game called Just Evasion using OpenGL and some dodgy C while waiting for a flight. It was my first proper game, in that it was the first game I'd ever felt was remotely finished. Later that summer I made a Flash version of it using Adam Saltsman's Flixel library. Since I've started messing about with PICO-8 I have had many vague game ideas that didn't go anywhere, but one night I thought of trying to remake this old thing again and so here we are. It doesn't ramp up in difficulty the way the original did, but the core stuff is the same. And it was my first attempt at spriting up some letters, which was great fun and brought me back to the old days designing typefaces on copybooks at school. Vibrant times.
(Again the music is silly and you should probably just mute it. I'm going to try to improve my use of the tracker but at the moment I can't seem to coax anything good out of it.)
This is my first PICO-8 game, the one I have been working on in a sideways sort of way ever since trying out the thing for the first time a week and a bit ago. You play as a transforming beach ball person, who must rid their beach of pesky sunbathers to properly enjoy the glorious island day. Cursors move, Z/X will start the game or restart after the end.
It's super silly and I won't be at all upset if you mute the music.
