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left_whale


Cart #roadrunner-0 | 2024-06-21 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
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This is my first PICO-8 game! It's an endless runner. I hope you enjoy it.

Controls:

  • Up and down arrow keys to hop
  • Buttons to speed up

Rescue eggs, and don't crash into anything.

Developer notes

My original idea was to create a one-button game, but it ultimately evolved into three buttons. I also originally intended to make a cowboy-themed game, but it was too difficult to animate horses so I went in a different direction.

Originally the game had a more elaborate design with "bosses" that needed to be chased or outrun, and some more complex rules around generating obstacles. In the end it felt clunky -- it made the code a lot messier but didn't make it more fun. In the end I stripped that stuff out and stuck with the simple plan of going fast and avoiding obstacles.

Reflections on using pico-8

  • Overall it has been a ton of fun! I am excited to make another pico-8 game (after some other projects)
  • This community is a great motivator. Seeing all of the cool games people make helped me get this to the finish line.
  • I really like that pico-8 provides self-contained tools for code, graphics, music, etc. It takes me back to developing games in Macromedia Director and Flash in the early 00s.
  • The platform limitations are mostly fine and definitely help to keep things in scope. The most frustrating limitation was the color palette - the game features a lot of earth tones which was sometimes hard to work out given the limited palette. Conversely, I like that the limited color palette means that it is easy to spot a p8 game.
  • Using an external code editor helped me a lot - largely because of better typography, as well as making it easier to divide the code into modules.
  • I never ran into the token limit, but it was a psychological barrier. I did some premature optimization early on to avoid it, which wasn't necessary.
  • I did very little on the sfx and music side. It seemed difficult to make subtle sounds like bird footsteps on sand. I would like to go back and explore these features more, though I'm not musically inclined.
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