plushie [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

C.R.E.W. - an action platformer

Thu, 03 Jul 2025 21:14:49 UTC

Fight your way through hoards of sleepwalkers, exorcise a swirling succession of spectacles erupting from TV screens, and destroy the beast at the heart of this hyperreal hellscape.

C.R.E.W. is a short but challenging 2D action platformer game. You have one simple goal: make it through four monster-packed levels, and defeat the boss.

Controls

Tap O Button to jump;
Tap X Button to attack with your pipe wrench;
Hold X Button to prepare for a charged attack. You will hear a sound and see your character flashing once you finish charging. Then, release the button to perform a charged attack. Monsters killed by a charged attack will be sent flying, dealing damage to other monsters in its way.

Remarks

We told ourselves "let's make a little game quick and simple" after spending a month on our previous game. Although we ended up finishing C.R.E.W. relatively quickly, it was anything but "little": we had to cut around half of C.R.E.W.'s planned content because we did not have space, and we still ended up using over 99% of the compressed code capacity, largely because we have to fit four full sized game maps in code.

We did briefly consider doing a multi-cart, but decided against it because we did not want to drag the development of C.R.E.W. on and on.

C.R.E.W. is also the first time we made an actual soundtrack for a game. A rather crude one, but we still hope it helps enhance the game's atmosphere.

Radiance Apparatus

Sat, 14 Jun 2025 00:52:30 UTC

radiance_apparatus

by plushie

[Click to Play]

"Scientifically measure the power of vibrating crystals."

You are tasked to measure the power output of vibrating crystals. Choose your crystals and equipment wisely, and carefully arrange them on your machine to maximize their power.

You, too, can harness the power of crystals!

Radiance Apparatus is a deck-building puzzle game where you place stones on a five-by-five board to reach the power output target. Each stone has a power output that can be increased or even multiplied by interaction with other stones or equipment. In addition, slots on the board may become "electrified" or "resonant": Some stones have properties only applicable when electrified, and each resonant slot on the board add one to the power multiplier.

You must place one to three stones before measuring the power output. If the measured output is below the target, then some slots on the board will become inactivated before you can place more stones and try again. Each time you place a stone, the number of slots that will get inactivated goes up, so choose your stones carefully and don't prematurely inactivate too many slots.

After reaching the target, you are given the chance to add more stones or pieces of equipment to your experiment. Adding stones costs energy which is accumulated when you clear a cycle, and every piece of equipment increases the power target by 20% (additive). Be aware that neither stones nor equipment can be removed once added.

The experiment is considered a success once you clear the tenth cycle. but you can keep going after that to see how far you can go!

Some Hints:

When calculating numbers, additions always come before multiplications. For example, if a stone's power output is increased by 4w and doubled, the doubling will happen after the increase, resulting in a total increase of 8w.
Always keep an eye on number of slots to be inactivated! Sometimes you can get an extra measurement at the end of a cycle if you do not place too many stones at once.
You accumulate more energy after each cycle if your power output is at least two times the target. You can get more energy if you delay "winning" each cycle to build up a bigger number.
You can check the stones yet to be drawn, as well as the catalogue of all stones and equipment, from the pause menu.

My fourth PICO-8 game, hope you enjoy!

Juggle-8 (for TweetTweetJam 10)

Mon, 12 May 2025 23:57:57 UTC

juggle_8

by plushie

[Click to Play]

This is my submission to the TweetTweetJam 10 (itch.io link), a game jam where every game has to be written in no more than 500 characters of code.

To play, press left and right arrow keys or buttons to activate the Bounce Pads and catch the falling ball. The ball becomes faster and faster as the game goes on. If the ball falls, it's game over and you need to reset the cart to restart.

PicoMayor - a city builder game

Sat, 10 May 2025 02:46:45 UTC

PicoMayor

"Be the mayor of a tiny city and carefully plan your way to glory!"

PicoMayor 0.9

by plushie

[Click to Play]

PicoMayor is a city builder game where you have to balance seven Resources (Wealth, Labour, Professionalism, Science, Art and Culture, Logistics, and Happiness) while trying to grow your city. Each building can either consume or produce one or more resources, in addition to either requiring a yearly upkeep or generating a yearly income. Many buildings also interact with each other in ways that may or may not be beneficial, so planning is crucial for your success.

(hint: when inspecting your city, you can move your cursor left to inspect the resource production and usage, or down to view the income and spending.)

There are in total 42 buildings in PicoMayor, but only low density residences and farms are available when the game starts. Additional buildings will become available once you meet their unlock conditions. There is no final goal, but there are eight achievements you can unlock.

You can view the full list of buildings, including their unlock conditions, as well as the list of achievements, from the pause menu.

If your city runs out of money or lacks any one of the seven Resources, it enters a Crisis. You must resolve a Crisis within three years or it is game over.

There are three save slots and you can save your city from the pause menu. By default the game also autosaves every five years, but you can change the autosave frequency or turn it off entirely. Be warned that you cannot save the game (nor will it autosave) when there is an ongoing crisis.

Remarks

The core idea of this game where you balance abstract resources comes from SimCity: Societies, that one cursed and forgotten SimCity installation. The more modern games Block'hood and Urbek City Builder are similar, but they also let you accumulate resources over time.

If you enjoy PicoMayor, you will probably also like Mare Mercatus, my earlier turn-based simulation / strategy game about maritime trade: not-articulated.itch.io/mare-mercatus.

A Coroutine-based Particle System

Sat, 12 Apr 2025 07:52:21 UTC

coroutine_particle_demo

by plushie

[Click to Play]

This is a particle system implemented using coroutines. The demo comes with a commented implementation of the system plus two example particle effects. The particle system itself takes 55 tokens, the two example particles take 63 tokens each.

In this system a particle is defined as a function, and its states are stored in local variables inside the function. Creating a particles means creating a coroutine using the particle's function and saving the coroutine to a table. The coroutine is resumed during every _draw callback where it draws the particle on the screen and updates its state, and yields once it is done for the frame. The particle is considered "dead" and removed from the memory once the function in the coroutine finishes running.

This is the particle system I first developed for an unfinished game and subsequently used in my first finished PICO-8 game. I have not seen anything similar to it, and people on the PICO-8 Discord server seem interested, so I made a demo to showcase it.

Geoillogical (Ludum Dare 57)

Mon, 07 Apr 2025 17:53:32 UTC

plush_girls_ld57

by plushie

[Click to Play]

"Power your drill and get to the very bottom of the world."

This is my first (finished) PICO-8 game, and my entry to Ludum Dare 57. The theme is "depths". Hope you enjoy it.

Controls

Arrow Keys: Control drill direction (cannot go up or go back!)
Z: Confirm / Continue
X: Randomize items during item selection

plushie [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

C.R.E.W. - an action platformer

Controls

Remarks

Radiance Apparatus

Juggle-8 (for TweetTweetJam 10)

PicoMayor - a city builder game

PicoMayor

Remarks

A Coroutine-based Particle System

Geoillogical (Ludum Dare 57)

Controls

Screenshots