donswelt [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

Tiny Rain (wallpaper/screensaver)

Sat, 13 Apr 2024 22:11:11 UTC

A simple wallpaper with the rain effect and animations I made for Tiny Ronin (PICO-8).

Make sure you have already created your personal system folder inside Picotron and copy tiny-rain.p64.png to appdata/system/wallpapers/ and/or appdata/system/screensavers/

Go to the system settings inside Picotron and select "tiny rain" as wallpaper or screensaver.

Enjoy.

Jawpaper (animated wallpaper)

Mon, 08 Apr 2024 20:13:10 UTC

jawpaper

by donswelt

[Click to Play]

Want to get seasick while coding in Picotron? I got you covered! I made a Picotron wallpaper based on my latest PICO-8 game Jaw.

Make sure you have already created your personal system folder inside Picotron and copy jawpaper.p64.png to appdata/system/wallpapers/ and/or appdata/system/screensavers/

Go to the system settings inside Picotron and select "jawpaper" as wallpaper or screensaver.

Enjoy.

Update 2024-04-09: Added Icon and metadata.

Jaw

Sun, 07 Apr 2024 13:26:59 UTC

jaw

by donswelt

[Click to Play]

Jaw

> The year is 1974. You just got out of the theater and saw that scary shark flick. As you walk home thinking about the movie, you pass an arcade and there it is: A brand-new game based on the movie you just saw. You check your pockets for quarters. Let's do this.

This is my entry for the 2024 FishFest Game Jam. Help Kalea the shark get her dinner. But beware! Barrels of gunpowder, harpoons, and a guy named Quint are out to hurt you. Try to string fish bites together for more points.

How to play

Hold Z or X and release to jump out of the water and eat fish.
Avoid barrels, harpoons and oxygen tanks!
You can recharge your next jump while still in the air. Time it right to make another high jump immediately. You can chain high jumps for faster gameplay.

Tiny Ronin (Update 1)

Mon, 01 Apr 2024 10:32:42 UTC

tiny ronin

by donswelt

[Click to Play]

Tiny Ronin 🎋

You are a tiny ronin cursed with immortality for the crime of killing 100 samurai. To regain mortality and escape the endless grind, you have sworn to kill 10,000 bandits. This is your story. It will never end.

Hold X to charge your sword and release to slash. Press Z to roll backwards and avoid incoming attacks. You can cancel your attacks with the roll or another attack.

To start a new run after death, you must clean your sword (hold X or Z).

There are now eight achievements to unlock. Three of them will change the look of the game.

Update 1

Rewind Selector!
With the first update you can now toggle the rewind feature in the PICO-8 pause menu. Turn it on to make enemies back off after a successful kill.

Mifune Mode!
You can now play the game in classic Chambara black and white. Just pause the game and activate “Mifune Mode” to turn it on or off. As intended, as they say :)

Cheat menu
There is now a semi-hidden cheat menu for more options like invincibility, slow mode or hardcore mode. Access it by tapping the D-pad down during the splash screen.

I also added two new environmental unlocks. Keep playing to unlock them.

ENJOY!

Calcifer

Sat, 23 Mar 2024 19:14:01 UTC

Calcifer

by donswelt

[Click to Play]

Just a calculator, but with a fiery twist. My wife came up with the name, so I had to add a little mascot :) It's a fully functional calculator. At least I hope it is. Better not do your homework or taxes with it ^^;

Update: Fixed some odd behaviour and added a button to make numbers negative or positive.
Update 2: Fixed the behaviour of the % key, added partial keyboard support (at least the numbers are working), a custom icon and meta date.

Things to do:

Button feedback

144 Floors

Fri, 09 Feb 2024 21:13:28 UTC

144 Floors

by donswelt

[Click to Play]

144 Floors

Welcome to the Silo. You are a porter and you have to deliver your parcels to the recipients who live and work on 144 floors. Start your shift and work 24 floors or take on the big challenge from floor 1 to floor 144. But beware! Competing porters will try to steal your parcels and keep the tips for themselves. Good thing you are prepared for the Law of the Stairs: Battle by dice! Every confrontation is decided by a round of High Low. That's how the ancestors of the Silo declared it, and that's how it must be done.

How?

D-pad or arrow keys to go up and down the stairs.
D-Pad or arrow keys to place your bet (up: higher or down: lower)
Buttons or z, x to use a smartbomb (auto-win)
A low chance of winning will result in a higher score.
Special dice combinations result in special bonuses at payout.

There two game modes:

Early shift
Your daily bread. Deliver parcels up and down the stairs.

Floor 144!
Deliver parcels from the bottom to the top floor. Only up. This could be a tough challenge and you may need some luck to complete this mode.

Why?

The moment I saw the first porter of the show on the stairwell I knew I wanted to do something like that. I also knew that a pseudo 3D effect like Nebulus did back in the Commodore 64 days would be exactly what I wanted to use. To be honest, this simple effect was the hardest part of this project. Yes, I am not good when it comes to coding. But I am really happy with the result and the way it looks in the game.

As for the strange choice of an elderly person as the hero of this game, well. I try to make my games as diverse as possible because I want the real world to be as diverse as possible. Like any sane person should. My heroes are POC, genderfluid, a blank slate for you to fill in, and sometimes even lizard girls or Shiba Inu. And now that I am an older person myself, I thought it was time to put one in my game.

Enjoy!

Trick or Three

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 20:08:15 UTC

Trick or Three

by donswelt

[Click to Play]

Trick or Three

I made this for Halloween 2022 and missed the deadline. Picked it up again a few weeks ago and found a nasty bug. It turned out to be bad code, which I am really good at. I rewrote most of the routines and now it seems to work 😅.

Update #2

Minor overhaul: I updated the cart with some minor fixes:

new SFX
new title screen
deleted some unused stuff
minor optimization

Update

Added a routine to detect proper gaps all over the cauldron. Apparently I needed a shitty day at work to come up with this.

How to play

Use the arrow keys or d-pad to move around the cauldron. Hold down x, z or any controller button on a tile and move it around the cauldron with the arrow keys or d-pad. Match at least three tiles of the same type to remove them from the cauldron. But beware: Don"t create gaps in the cauldron! They prevent you from moving tiles around the cauldron and will cost you a life. Try to match as many tiles as possible to refill the cauldron.

Enjoy!

Thanks to ArtVBurry for the nice Halloween sprites ❤️

Mono Cho-Han

Thu, 28 Sep 2023 17:47:33 UTC

Mono Cho-Han

by donswelt

[Click to Play]

Mono Cho-Han 🎲🎲

Night has fallen and it has begun to rain as you enter the inn. Two people and the dealer are sitting on the tatami floor. they kindly ask you to join their game of Cho-Han.

You agree.

The Rules

The rules are simple. The dealer shakes two six-sided dice in a bamboo cup. The cup is then tipped onto the floor. Players then place their bets (1, 3 or 6 mon) on whether the sum of the numbers on the two dice will be "Cho" (even) or "Han" (odd). The dealer then removes the cup and reveals the dice. Winners receive double their bet.

If any player runs out of money, the game is over. If the bank runs out of money, the game is also over. The bank runs out of money when a player reaches over 99 Mon.

How to play

press up or down to raise or lower your bet.
press left or right to select "Cho" (even) or "Han" (odd).

Bonus

Press up or down on the title screen to see Pawchievements to collect.
Press left or right on the title screen to change the color of the game.

The Yokohama Coffee Shop

Sat, 16 Sep 2023 21:22:40 UTC

yokohama

by donswelt

[Click to Play]

The Yokohama Coffee Shop ☕️

Welcome to Yokohama! The year is 2121. Mankind is dead. Robots still work in certain facilities to maintain the power supply. Between shifts, they visit coffee shops to experience what humans called a 'coffee break'. You are an android barista and your job is to serve your customers quickly.

This is my entry for the Cre8 Jam. I struggled for a few days after the theme was announced, but luckily I was reading Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou at the time, and this really beautiful solar punk manga is about a robot barista in a post-apocalyptic world serving coffee to the few humans (and robots) left in the area. It seemed like a good fit, so I decided to make a Tapper-like game with robots and coffee, and added some flickering neon signs for good measure.

How to play

Wait for a customer to come in and order a drink (or food).
Go to the top end of your bar and get the right drink.
Serve the drink to the customer.

HINT: Press any action button while moving to double your move speed!

In the bottom right corner is a bomb icon that shows the number of lives you have left. You will lose a life if you take too long to serve a customer and they leave. If you lose all your lives, the game is over.

Game modes

Happy hour

Regular mode, with more and more customers coming in and patience wearing thin.

Rush hour

Like regular mode but starting in round 5.

Casual

Regular mode, but with all the patience of the robot world. However, you only get one point for each customer. It's only fair!

Four Fingers of Death

Sat, 17 Sep 2022 07:41:36 UTC

Four Fingers of Death

by donswelt

[Click to Play]

Four Fingers of Death 👊✋✌️

A rock-paper-scissors video game in a street fighter like evoirment? Yes, that is a stupid idea and I love stupid ideas. I made this little game in one day so no damage is done and not much energy was wasted.

It turns out it is very accessible since you only need one finger to play it and you got all the time in the world to decide what you want to do next.

It's further accessible even without the need to press any keys at all: If you find someone to start the game and activate auto-battle for you.

How to play

Press C to start game.

Press left arrow, down arrow or right arrow to choose your weapon: rock, paper, scissors respectively.

Press C while in an active game to turn auto-battle on/off.

It's High Noon

Mon, 08 Aug 2022 17:33:18 UTC

It's High Noon

by donswelt

[Click to Play]

It's High Noon

This is my PICO-8 remake of Ocean Soft's Highnoon, originally made for the C64 by Andrew Spencer and Steve Wiggins.

There are a lot more bullets on screen in my version and the gameplay is much faster. Also there are no abducted saloon girls in my game since they are all pretty much capable of defending themselves.

How to play: Waves

Use the D-pad or arrow keys to move around.
Shoot by tapping or holding the primary button or x.
Hold down the secondary button or c to keep firing in the same direction.

How to play: Duels

Wait for the games title plate to vanish and the "Draw!" text to appear on screen and shoot quickly using the primary or secondary button. Shoot too early and you will lose a life.

Hints

Shoot outlaws early during the levels to get a higher bonus at the end of a wave in duels.
Keep moving around since outlaws will always shoot in your general direction.
You can exit the screen to the left and right to reappear on the opposite side. Use this to your advantage to avoid bullets.
From wave three onwards outlaws will throw dynamite sticks at you. Shoot the dynamite to kill outlaws.
Horses (wave 4 onwards) can't kill you but the riders might.

The Bountydex

In duels you will fight a variety of outlaws with randomly generated names and titles. There are ten special titles that can be collected in your Bountydex by shooting them in duels. Since it is a chance of like 1000:1 to meet one of these titles exactly there are two ways of unlocking these titles.

Let's take a look at the second item, the Blind Barber.

Now let's say you meet a Furious Barber in a duel and you shoot them. Justice in the Wild West was just a word and since you shot a barber, the item will be crossed off your Bountydex with one stroke even if it was not a blind barber. After all how many wanted barbers can there be?

Now let's say you got really lucky and you meet the Blind Barber against all the odds. You shoot them and their title will be crossed off the Bountydex with two strokes. It might be not possible to meet the exact titles for the entire Bountydex but you are welcome to try.

And yes: many innocent barbers were shot in the Wild West.

To access the Bountydex press down on the title screen. Press up to get back to the title.

Bonus game: High-Low

There is also a hidden bonus game of dice. To access it, press right on the title screen.

You can bet on how you think the numbers of the next roll of dice turn out compared to the displayed pair of dice: higher or lower. Bet your money accordingly to raise your high score.

By the way: The more entries you got collected in your Bountydex the more money you start out with.

I actually researched dice games of the old west and it appears that back in the days people really played this game besides poker.

Update v1.1 Hotfix

Fixed a bug where you lost all lives when you got shot after earning an extra life.

Update v1.2

Added a money cap for the High-Low mini game to prevent PICO-8 from going nuts.
Added a few more outlaw names for good measure.

Vampachi

Sat, 30 Jul 2022 07:23:46 UTC

Vampachi

by donswelt

[Click to Play]

Vampachi v1.1

Dodge, evolve, survive! This is my PICO-8 take on Vampire Survivors. As a vertical shmup. It started out way more Vampire Survivors-like and turned out way more shmup-like. At least it's not just a clone.

Story

Yeah, sure. Okay, well: Help vampire hunter Liz Belmont to survive until dawn. Except dawn will never come. Sorry.

Features

Endless survival shmup gameplay
15 types of enemies
4 types of bosses
10 upgradable abilities and weapons including:

A god-worthy hammer
An adorable bee
A Pac-Man
A fluffy sheep
A Croissant
Melee damage
up to 8-way shooting (completely automated)

How to play

Just dodge everything on screen but the blue gems. Those will level up your abilities and give you bonus weapons.
Shooting is completely automated. You don't need to press any buttons.
Fly near enemies to kill them with your melee claws.

Press C to start the game.
Use the arrow keys to move and dodge.
Or use a game controller.

To-do

More overall balancing.
Maybe a score system overhaul.

Update v1.1

further balanced gameplay and difficulty (I hope so)
added new dynamic explosion effects
bosses now appear in random order for more diversity

Arkamoin

Sat, 25 Jun 2022 20:23:42 UTC

Arkamoin

by donswelt

[Click to Play]

This is just another block breaker. I wanted to make one for a long time now. This one is tiny, fast-paced and unforgiven.

The first three stages are always static. After that you get randomized levels. The blocks with the exclamation marks need two hits and are shooting at you when you remove them. Every few levels there is a boss block to defeat.

There are four different extras to pick up:

Red pill: laser (destroy bricks in front of the bat)
Blue pill: Super ball (moves through bricks)
Yellow pill: Closes the wall at the bottom of the screen for a short time so it's save for the ball to hit the bottom edge.
Green pill: Glue that glues the ball on your bat for two times.

UPDATE V1.1:

added empty space to high score routine
new cart images

Have fun!

Escape from Höll

Tue, 19 Apr 2022 15:01:08 UTC

Escape from Holl

by donswelt

[Click to Play]

Finished my new game: Escape from Höll. It's about a demon from Höll who wants to escape it. Shoot other demons and their blood will move the elevator upwards. You can shoot in five different directions and there are five types of enemies. There are twelve different bonus items to help you along the way like bullet time oder smart bombs.

Hint: If you got hit, you need to pick up your gold again or your score resets to zero! Blame Elden Ring.

UPDATE #1: Fixed a few issues with the music, i.e. I learned about reserving channels :P I will add better music in a future update.

Overcast and Light Rain

Mon, 26 Apr 2021 16:46:17 UTC

Overcast and Light Rain

by donswelt

[Click to Play]

A single screen farming game made with PICO-8.

Update v1.3b

removed a small bug.

Update v1.3:

added Pawchievements. You now have six more reasons to play this little game. At the sign get additional information about pawchievements by pressing the right arrow key.
added a workout mini-game as idle animation.
fixed and refined a few little things

Update v1.2b:

Just a hot fix for watering the crops. Sometimes not all crops in a row would have been watered. They do now.

Original post:

Feed the chicken, water the crops, fish in the lake, cook stuff, hang out in the sun or in the rain or just pet the cat. In Overcast you can farm at your own preferred pace. There are no seasons and winter is never coming. It rains a lot, though.

Things you can do:

Fish in the lake and try to catch all of the 16 different types of fish.
Feed the chicken to make them lay some eggs.
Water the crops to make them grow.
Collect eggs and harvest the crops to cook stuff.
Try to prepare all of the 16 different types of food including the notorious Fugu Sashimi!
Hang out in your chair and just doze off.
Pet the cat to keep it happy <3
Read the sign to see this list and see some statistics.

That's it for now.

Crazy Samurai Musashi

Mon, 05 Apr 2021 12:17:53 UTC

Crazy Samurai Musashi

by donswelt

[Click to Play]

Valentine's Update v1.2 ❤️

I updated most of the visuals of Crazy Samurai Musashi and you now have an additional heart/life. Love is in the air. And blood. Here's what else is new:

More detailed sprites
Added heat effect to sun
Added stars to the night sky
Reworked the blood splatters
Added dirt splatters to running swordsmen
Added a skull to appear when you slay an enemy
New sound effects
Fixed the flipping of the moth animation
Added the moth to the title screen because why not?
Added Pliso Miso splash screen

Quick Fix v1.3

Added an option to skip the slow beginning for experienced players (suggested by @baker 👍)

Original Post

A.k.a. Miyamoto Musashi versus 400 Yoshioka swordsmen. This is a tiny game I made after watching the movie of the same name.

You are Miyamoto Musashi and you have to duel 12 year old Yoshioka Matashichiro. Since he is only 12 years old you don't really have to fight him but you did. History said so. So here are 399 more of Yoshioka's swordsmen who all want you dead. Try to defeat them all! I don't think it's possible.

Attack upper stance swordsmen with a low attack and lower stance swordsmen with a high attack. Good luck.

I also added a little achievement system (I call it pawchievement xD ). Press the down arrow key in the title screen to check achievements.

Debris: A Shmup Short Story

Sat, 20 Mar 2021 14:31:16 UTC

Debris

by donswelt

[Click to Play]

Update 2.0: Debrix, a Debris Remix

A complete overhaul of all sprites and special effects.
added the Pliso Miso splash screen.

Enjoy!

Update v1.2:

added Achievements (press down arrow on title screen to check)

Update v1.1:

(hopefully) fixed a bug that displayed 0 seconds instead of 120 seconds after time out.

Original Post

This one is just a small shoot'em-up (shmup) with a little twist or as I like to call it: A Shmup Short Story.

The rules are simple:

Try to survive 120 seconds.
Shoot debris to raise bonus.
Beat the hi-score.

That's all.

Shoot enemies, juggle debris, collect coins, survive. Juggling debris will raise the bonus you get for destroying enemies. Every time your bonus is raised by 50 points all bullets on the screen will turn into gold items. Collect those for additional 75 points each.

Thanks for playing.

Hutton Minimal 3.0

Sat, 06 Mar 2021 12:53:44 UTC

Hutton Minimal

by donswelt

[Click to Play]

This is a Pico-8 demake of the infamous flight to Hutton Orbital in Elite Dangerous. Originally, it is a space station 0,22 lightyears away from its star. It takes over one and a half hour in-game time to reach it. Players either hate or love it. I for myself love it and decided to make this little game about it. But don't worry:

You don't have to fly over an hour. The T-5 hauler featured in this demake is fitted with the lates in thruster technology. This baby will take you to Hutton Minimal in about 15 minutes!

The Rogue like Update 3.0 (new!)

I have further refined the game in this updated version. Here are some significant changes:

You can now see the value of your opponent's dice roll. You can also see the probability of winning.
Removed all "detour" events from the game.
Added a scoring system. Nothing fancy. The sum of your hull and payload is your score by the time you get to Hutton.
A terminal message system at the top of the screen now shows the results of all events.
Overall balance. It's still not a hard game, but I like it that way.
New music and sounds added to the game.
Slight overhaul of visual effects and graphics.
New splash screen.

~~You can't do much in this game. Much like the original flight to Hutton Orbital~~. You can turn your thruster on and off. ~~That's it~~. Preferably you turn it on if you want to reach your destination. You only really need to turn it off once you are there. But remember to do so in time or you miss Hutton Minimal. The T-5 has a really good thruster but its turning cycle is a big mess (yes, you have to start over).

Features

76 commodities ranging from alpacas to rare PlayStation 5 consoles.
113 lines of monologue.
New spaceship never seen before in the Elite universe.
Nothing of the above matters since you still just have to wait in this game.

Thanks for playing!

Update

v3.0: Further Refined.
v2.0: The Rogue Like update
v1.2: added acheivements (press arrow key down on title screen to access them).