Munchkin [Lexaloffle Blog Feed]

PICO-BALL: a Sports Game Starring Jelpi

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 00:03:47 UTC

A PICO-8 sports game starring Jelpi!
[8x8]

Play solo or together in a mashup of tennis, volleyball, squash, and wallball where the only rule is:

two bounces on one side is a point for the other.

Controls

The controls should all be in the game, but for those who aren't familiar with PICO-8: ESDF is used for player 2 instead of WASD so it works on many international keyboards as well as QWERTY.

I recommend that those playing with controller or you PICO-8 veterans go to 'game settings' from the pause menu to make the controls work better for controllers and z/x keys. The game is playable with just arrow keys for each player, but it may make things a little harder for some if the settings aren't changed.

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Gamemodes

Solo

🏆Campaign: Help Jelpi ascend the ranks and meet an old comrade...
🧱Wall: Play a solo match against the wall (The Unbeatable Opponent) to see how long you last (powerups come in handy here)
👁️Spectate: Watch opponents you have unlocked in campaign play against each other, can help you figure out how to beat a tough opponent (could be together...)
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Together

👊💥Versus: Face each other in a PICO-BALL match, powerups add a lot of depth, craziness and sillyness
🤝💖Co-op: Work together to keep the ball(s) in the air (the powerups both aid and hinder your juggling ability)

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Campaign Opponents 💥🏆

Strider
[8x8]

Newcomer to the game, has a hard time getting shots that go way over their head
Heli
[8x8]

There isn't a rule against flying, but luckily this helicoper-creature isn't too good at catching up to a quick-moving ball
Frog
[8x8]

[8x8]

A dapper frog that uses his tongue for some crazy trick shots (which work about half of the time)
Bird
[8x8]

This opponent is actually good at flying and is not afraid to come over to your side, so well-placed aggressive shots are the way to go here
Mimo
[8x8]

Jelpi's old friend and comrade with the same moves, gets more aggressive as the game goes on, which can be taken advantage of...
‎‎

You can wear hats that you unlock from beating each opponent!

	[40x8]

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So,

	[56x16]

Have fun!
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Development Notes

I had the idea for this game in the shower somewhere around three months ago from today. A simple multiplayer tennis-like that would be a fun, small little project. As you can probably see, this game didn't quite live up to that second adjective, but I'd say it has successfully fulfilled the first one (which is the more important one).

First I made a prototype with boxes and a non-functional net and the game proved to be fun! I had yet to fine tune the physics though, so it was a pretty chaotic and janky (even moreso than it is now :). Then I decided I needed to replace the boxes with characters. I had a hard time coming up with any humanoids within such small pixel counts...

	[40x16]

Then, I had the idea of using Jelpi! (Jelpi is PICO-8's demo/example mascot for those who don't know) I'm so glad this bolt of inspiration struck me because it drastically changed the way the game was shaping up for the better. It gave me so many ideas for stories, situations, opponents, modes, and also gave the game a good artstyle (sorry old doodles of mine still at the back of the match-cart sprite-sheet...)

	[8x8]

	[8x8]

What's funny is that the menu cart's file size is bigger than the game cart's (this is a multi-cart game with two game files, one for the menus and cutscenes and another for the gameplay). I've also spent about the same amount of time working on both, which is rather ironic. I had to do a lot of token-saving on the menu cart, because the cutscenes take a lot of data, or at least they do in the way I programmed them. This was also my first time putting a lot of effort into a somewhat complex menu, leading to the increased time and spaghetti code invested there. If I were to do it again, I would probably do it quite differently.

I had a lot of fun conjuring up the story and making those cutscenes along with remixing the Jelpi music! I've remixed the main song for the title screen and one of the match themes, and the jungle and dragon theme for the other two match songs. The first half of jungle themed one ended up being based off of a song I made for fun a couple of months ago, unrelated to the game, the baseline/intro-melody being stolen directly from that. The dragon one is pretty untouched from me compared to the other tracks. My main addition of the raspy melody is supposed to be like the dragon's roar (it's based off the sound effect used in the intro cutscene), but I don't think that's very obvious.

Intro -> Menu Theme (starts at pattern 10):
[sfx]
The Three Match Tracks (patters 0, 16, and 32):
[sfx]
These tracks take three channels sometimes, and due to all the rapid sounds in-game they occasionally cut out, but I've tried to make it not too noticeable and I think it's worth it.

Balancing the opponents was tough because their difficulty changes a lot based on your playstyle. It's normal if you find the Bird or the Frog harder than Mimo, but hopefully you find Mimo a bit tougher than the Strider!

Over the first two months I was pretty inconsistent with my work on the game (I was also busy in those months), but in the last month I've done a ton of work which has brought me to finally complete the project! I'm really happy I used Jelpi for the project, not only because the project was positively affected, but because I feel like there aren't enough Jelpi based games. The only complete Jelpi game I can think of is Pico-Ware, so being able to add to the Jelpi universe is great. We've got to thank Zep for making these adorable characters.

If you want to try making a custom opponent it should be somewhat doable, I've put some simple instructions in the match-cart files. First use load #pico_ball_match and then follow what's in the top of that part. Be warned that a lot of my code in all of this project is a rather messy and uncommented.

Thanks for reading all these development notes! I'm glad someone's interested in them!

version history

By the way, the current version is visible in the in-game credits, it's currently 1.1.2.
The numbers go, gameNumber.featureUpdate.patchNumber.
It's quite likely that I'll have to fix a bug, and I might add some extra hats in the future (I didn't have time to rework the code to allow extra hats from co-op and wall high scores if I wanted to get the game out in July) so the latter two numbers may change, but I don't plan to make a sequel, so the first one probably never will!

1.0.0: original release, 7/29/2025
1.0.1: patch, 7/30/2025; tweaked strider speed range, slowed the bird slightly to make the match a little easier, fixed the "rewatch intro" pause menu option from replaying the intro incorrectly when chosen while in a submenu, allowed spectate to let you see matches with the next opponent you have to beat in the campaign, removed arrows/esdf text from this Lexaloffle version (for console authenticity and because the people here are already familiar with PICO-8)
1.1.2: features+patch, 7/31/2025; reduced bird force slowed the bird slightly to make the match a little easier, fixed hollow particles showing up as filled in cutscenes, fixed bug where replaying an opponent would reset your save data to as if you had just beaten them for the first time, added ability to see your best match scores against each opponent, added a star on the campaign and home screen if you've beaten the game (or gotten the secret hat), added a secret hat for completionists!
1.1.3: patch, 8/5/2025; fixed crash that occurs when completing matches with a double-digit score, fixed unnecessary double loading on menu when winning a campaign match, made transition peephole cover the winner card when a new match is quickly chosen

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‎Here's the game's itch.io page: https://void-gamesplay.itch.io/pico-ball
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Credits

Game (Code/Music/Sound/Story/Art) by @Munchkin (Lexaloffle BBS), a.k.a. PlayerTheMaker (itch.io)

Original Jelpi characters/themes/sound-effects/art and PICO-8 itself, @zep/Lexaloffle

Special Thanks

Friends and Family for playtesting the game and giving feedback (and being a great motivation for me to make the game!)
The PICO-8 community (yes you here on this BBS, and those in the Discord, and those who came from the subreddit), for contributing to this fun little gem of a community!

Chance Heroes

Sat, 30 Nov 2024 01:07:42 UTC

At the present moment the game often crashes when attacking in versions of picotron including and after 0.1.1e, and I'm not sure why, so

please play game on itch.io where the game works without issue: https://void-gamesplay.itch.io/chance-heroes

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chance_heroes

by Munchkin

[Click to Play]

THE GOD OF CHANCE HAS TAKEN OVER THE VAMPIRIC CASTLE: TAKE IT BACK

Use and manipulate the dice you roll each turn to most effectively deal damage to, and protect yourself from, the strange enemies in turn-based combat.

Maneuver through the castle walls and interior to reach and reclaim the throne, gaining upgrades along the way.

CONTROLS

Left/Right arrow keys: choose a category
Up/Down arrow keys: choose an option
Z key: confirm/select
X key: cancel or exit action/selection

BASICS

Each turn you get some random dice (you get two each turn at the start but can increase that number later on).

Each move accepts certain kinds of dice to perform its action. Some modify the value of the dice, such as splitting one to give you two smaller ones, combining two dice, and more that can be acquired later. Others deal damage or grant/inflict status effects.

There are three status effects, which some moves can grant, inflict, ignore or remove:
Evasion: Attacks will miss against this entity. The value decreases each turn.
Defense: Damage will be done to this statistic before the entity.
Poison: At the beginning of their turn this entity will take this much damage. The value decreases each turn.

Enemies will show who they are targeting with a symbol by their head. If that symbol is not there that means they are going to do a move that does not involve targeting someone (likely a status effect, heal, or in some cases, a multi-target attack).

After you defeat the set of enemies in a room they will yield coins which you can use to buy upgrades in the store.
You will be able to proceed to the next room, and often there will be two doors to choose between.

OTHER INFO

A full run takes ~30-45 minutes, but you'll probably die a few times at first, so it will probably take 1 - 2 hours from first play to beat the game.
There's a good bit of lore in the game, its all rather silly stuff. I didn't make it with much intention so any theories you can infer are fair game.

DEVELOPMENT

This game was largely inspired by Dicey Dungeons and Deltarune. The combat system is clearly derived from Dicey Dungeons, but the inclusion of three party members who have independent health and moves were more-so from Deltarune (not to mention the moving grid background).

This is the first full game that I've made in picotron, and I think it went pretty well. Picotron is still in it's alpha 0.1 stage but it's still been generally effective and straightforward in allowing me to make this, keeping many of the positive aspects from its older (yet littler) sibling, pico-8. I did have to fight to get around its oddities and constraints at times, like putting the sprites into different files so it didn't crash from lack of RAM/memory, but even that was sort of fun. However it's still far from fully fledged or practical for something like a large scale commercial game, for example.

I started work in this game soon after the beginning of August, and now I'm releasing it around the end of November, so it took about 4 months to make. This is probably my biggest game so far in most ways (playtime, art, story, etc.). I set myself the main deadline of before 2025 after a I realized this was going to be a full game and set little weekly deadlines for a bit to keep the progress going. I'll probably take a little break from working on games for a while (or at least games I'm going to try and finish or release).

I started this project with a cool idea that I didn't necessarily intend to make into a full game. I had ideas about what it could look like as a full game, but I didn't expect to actually do that. Because of that the code is really sloppy, built off of a bunch of systems I implemented just so I could play my concept.

I had a ton of nebulous ideas when I started work on the game, one of those being the intro sequence/cutscene, and making it, after the rest of the game was pretty much done, was so cathartic. I also had seven character ideas that you could pick from when starting a run, but making three was hard enough in the end. "Fireworker" was sorta turned into the shopkeeper, and the "Axetress" was going to be reworked as one of the midway bosses from a play gone wrong, but she turned into the vampire slayer skeleton. I was going to make "Mr. Tank" a mini-boss from which Wield got the defense ability, but that was scrapped and he gets said ability from the store now. I think "Vampire," "Sworder," and "Gun Girl" were good choices in the end.

CREDITS-

(if not specified assume lexaloffle credit)

Code/Art/Music/Sounds : @Munchkin (lexaloffle) a.k.a. @PlayerTheMaker (itch) a.k.a. Crayon (Youtube)
Rounded Rectangle Function: @wuffmakesgames (Discord)
Triangles: @NuSan
Audio Data Retrieval Functions: @pancelor
OkPal palette creator/manager: @drakmaniso
Shrinkotron: @thisismypassword (lexaloffle) a.k.a. @thisismypassport (github)
Some Instruments: @abledbody
Lotsa people in the Picotron discord server helped me out! (especially @Soupster [lexaloffle/Discord])
Playtesting/Advice: friends and family

Version History

1.0.0, November 29th 2024: First release
-- issue: music cuts out instead of fading out (to be fixed when picotron version 0.1.1e releases)
1.0.1, November 30th 2024:
-- issue: music cuts out instead of fading out (to be fixed when picotron version 0.1.1e releases)
-- fixed: restarting the game after winning no longer breaks door selection and coin collection
-- fixed: a missed Snipe removes all evasion on targeted enemy
-- fixed: some typos
-- changed: sparkles on win screen now only generate when the mouse is moving
-- changed: the Snipe ability now always hits after two misses in a row

itch.io website link

Please give any feedback you have. I probably won't add much of any new stuff, but I will fix bugs and balancing.

cave_of_the_crown

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 18:20:48 UTC

cave_of_the_crown

by Munchkin

[Click to Play]

Fight off waves of enemies and gain an upgrade after each wave.

I made this in about a month and was very inspired by the combat of Hollow Knight (this is essentially my version of the Colosseum of Fools from it).

Controls + Instructions

Controller works too, O and X are just some of the main 4 buttons.

move---⬅️/➡️
jump---🅾️
slash---❎
heal---hold ⬇️
ability---tap 🅾️+❎ at same time (+ ⬆️/⬇️ for some abilities)

You can hold the up/down arrow keys while slashing to direct it up or down, this can be done in mid air and you can bounce of enemies head if you slash down on their heads (aka, pogoing).

Slashing at a projectile will reflect them (use this to damage the flying shooters).

Each time you hit an enemy you get energy, which appears in the orb on the bottom left. You can use this to heal or use an ability. Healing and some abilities take 1/3 of your energy orb, some abilities take half of that amount, 1/6.

Development

This is the first time I really pushed the limits of Pico-8, I exceeded sprite sheet capacity and stored it as strings in the code. I also ran against the token limit quite a bit. Both the token limit and compressed capacity warnings were blinking quite a bit at the end 🫠

I used up all the sfx tracks, mostly for music which I had a lotta fun making, I actually got carried away and made most of it before half the game was done :)

I would've liked to make the final boss a more interesting fight, to have a proper tutorial instead of text on the menu and the description, include another enemy, etc, but alas, tokens were sparse.

The Very Little Bit of Lore

You see, they say the crown has great power. So using that power the queen has possessed/controlled the enemies from her domain at the bottom of the cave, that's why they have green eyes. Or was it really the queen..?

The boss fight characters are (in order): The Lost Monarch, The Royal Knight, and The Crowned Queen

Have fun! Its pretty tough, so good luck!

game by @Munchkin
playtesting from @DianteClark

itch.io version: https://void-gamesplay.itch.io/cave-of-the-crown

Bounce Battle!

Wed, 27 Mar 2024 23:26:41 UTC

bouncebattle

by Munchkin

[Click to Play]

A little silly lil' game I made to play with my friends (so its only two player), and figured I might as well publish it.

Some things to know:

You gotta fast fall and let go before hitting the ground to gain height.
If you dash into a bullet it is reflected and bounces back and recharges your dash instantly (yes ping pong is possible).

The rest is to be discovered as you play, have fun!

Fireship

Sat, 02 Dec 2023 00:58:47 UTC

fireship

by Munchkin

[Click to Play]

Warning: The PCM audio has clicks/artifacts when the game is played in browsers

You can turn it off by entering the pause menu (ENTER on keyboard) and turning the sound effects option to "pcm off"

I'm not sure how to fix this issue, I believe its a a problem with how pico8's web implementation works. The sound effects should work properly when run in from the pico8 splore or in the exported binaries I published on itch.

I decided to make most of the sound effects using pcm (feeding data into the buffer instead of using the normal pico8 sound system) for fun and to figure out how they worked, and it also left free sound channels for music. I probably should have tested how the sound worked in browsers before I built the whole games function around it. (I also included an option to only have the boost/acceleration sound turned off in case people are okay with the artifacts for short sound effects like enemy deaths).

Anyway,

Game Controls/Info:

Mouse+click to accelerate your ship toward your cursor position - (this consumes energy, don't run out!)
-This will make your ship shoot fire which is how you damage enemies (running out of energy stuns you)
Don't get hit by enemies or bullets!
-You'll loose one shield each time, run out and you die (no checkpoints or saving, you lose your progress)
After each wave of enemies you clear to get the chance to choose modifiers
-You get to pick one of two options, each has a good thing and a bad thing
Right-click to use you special once your extra meter is charged up from defeating enemies
-At the start it heals you two shield, but you may get the option to change what the special does in the modifiers

There are 11 waves with more and more enemy types introduced over time.
Well, the 11th wave is a boss fight, so not quite a "wave."

Here are the names I gave the enemy types:

Drifter
Dasher
Shooter
Exploder
Bouncer

That's it for this one (for now)! Hope you enjoy it!

Yet Another Mountain

Sun, 21 May 2023 18:54:31 UTC

yet_another_mountain

by Munchkin

[Click to Play]

Yet another celeste-classic like!

It's very difficult but I think some people can beat it :)

Also please let me know of any save data issues or game breaking bugs (I know of some minor ones that I left it).

axis_dodger

Sun, 08 Jan 2023 07:35:31 UTC

axis_dodger

by Munchkin

[Click to Play]

This is my submission to the Interstellar Jam 4!

The theme was "Another Dimension," so in this game you have to avoid projectiles by moving across your 1D line (an axis) in a 2D realm!

By collecting orbs you can change your axis and gain a score point. Once you get hit and run out of health, that's it, that's your score.

I would say you've beaten the game once you get a star/gold medal, 14 axis shifts, but you've really mastered it once you get the wow medal! (don't worry, its not that much further)

itch.io version: https://void-gamesplay.itch.io/axis-dodger

snowy_solver

Thu, 22 Dec 2022 16:13:12 UTC

snowy_solver

by Munchkin

[Click to Play]

A little holiday puzzle game!

It was kinda rushed in 1.5 weeks to be done before christmas, so it may have some bugs...
I think perhaps I could have developed some ideas and made some more advanced complex puzzles, but that will be for a possible sequel or update.

Hope you enjoy anyway! Happy holidays!

picos_2

Sat, 10 Dec 2022 23:18:07 UTC

picos_2

by Munchkin

[Click to Play]

Can you get the blue screen of death? Can you beat the painful virus hidden in another program? Can you complete the ritual?
That, and more, is right here, in picOS 2.0!

This is a sequel to my previous (and not very good) adventure into a desktop-like thing: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?tid=43948.
I completely redid everything, and although not super optimized , it works okay, and has some secrets and easter eggs.

If you want to make a program for it, here is the cartridge:

There are some more instructions in the code on how to do it.

ytivarg

Mon, 12 Sep 2022 04:29:15 UTC

ytivarg

by Munchkin

[Click to Play]

This was my entry to the Interstellar Game Jam. (Which I won! [though there were only 14 people])

The theme was 'defy the law' so in this game you defy gravity by being pushed instead of pulled by planets (more like dense asteroids due to their size) thanks to a gravity inverter you stole!

x_equals_rng

Sun, 17 Jul 2022 03:06:49 UTC

x_equals_rng

by Munchkin

[Click to Play]

This is a game I made in two days for the GMTK game jam 2022 (you can rate it here: https://itch.io/jam/gmtk-jam-2022/rate/1618378).

Its like a normal platformer, but the X button changes function randomly after each time you use it. There are three possible states it can switch to, and you have to think quickly using the move you end up with at any moment.

Personally, I think that this idea to utilize the theme wasn't the best. It certainly is somewhat creative, but it isn't always the most fun or engaging as I hoped.

I do have 16 more hours till submission closes, but I hope to spend at least 7 of those sleeping, and the rest doing things that mean I can't work on the game.

olympus

Mon, 11 Apr 2022 18:41:40 UTC

olympus

by Munchkin

[Click to Play]

Because of a serious bug, and for speedrunning reasons, below is an earlier version of the game that had hyper dashing, allowing for some crazy speedruns.

This isn't a celeste mod! (even if it would have been easier to make a celeste mod...)
I programmed and made everything my self, which explains why this is pretty much an inferior version of celeste.
Anyway, there is a super super secret Blueberry. A little hint: A ledge with no spikes, up through an invisible gap.

And to address the (often annoying) auto-wall slide, it really helps a lot of people play the game, so I decided it was worth allowing more people to play in exchange for some annoyance. I've realized since that auto wall slide should only work when your velocity is heading down, but its really hard to implement it in my spaghetti code

Avoid

Mon, 21 Mar 2022 00:11:51 UTC

avoid

by Munchkin

[Click to Play]

A game very "inspired" by https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=66443#p.
This is basically that game but created from scratch by me, which is overall worse, and has a focus on both getting kills and surviving for a long time.
Hope you enjoy!
(there are also comments after you die, which vary based on your scores)

bird_diver

Mon, 07 Feb 2022 00:17:48 UTC

bird_diver

by Munchkin

[Click to Play]

A little game about diving around as a bird.
Despite being quite broken, hard, and in general, not fun, I hope you enjoy.

I think this game would've been a lot more fun if I understood compression and curved collision better. This game could have really benefited from an open world map so that it could go in more directions instead of from left to right. Curved collision would have just made it a lot easier to not get stuck on corners. I might try making this again in a game engine or graphics library.

Snowman Creator

Tue, 14 Dec 2021 23:39:44 UTC

snowman_creator

by Munchkin

[Click to Play]

This is a game where you throw snowman parts around. Hope you enjoy!

Timmy's Return, The Grappling Hook

Fri, 10 Dec 2021 00:29:53 UTC

timmy_2_the_grappling_hook

by Munchkin

[Click to Play]

This is a sequel to my (very bad and DIFFICULT) first pico-8 game: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?pid=84086#p
Hope you enjoy!

a_small_place

Tue, 05 Oct 2021 23:02:20 UTC

a_small_place

by Munchkin

[Click to Play]

This is a small game where you can see the entire world at once!

pic_os

Sun, 25 Jul 2021 17:21:11 UTC

pic_os

by Munchkin

[Click to Play]

This is my biggest pico-8 project so far!

Switching between windows by clicking on them gets buggy when there are more than two windows. I recommend either using the icons at the bottom, or not having a lot of windows open.

It would be great to see if others could build on this and make it better. If you want to do that, here is the cart:

hero_of_the_legend

Sun, 11 Jul 2021 18:30:33 UTC

hero_of_the_legend

by Munchkin

[Click to Play]

This is a little top-down legend of zelda like game. I hope you enjoy it!
(the music transition going in and out of the forest is a bit janky, but I couldn't figure out a better way to do it.)

colorpixel

Sat, 15 May 2021 04:10:57 UTC

colorpixel

by Munchkin

[Click to Play]

You have color, but you must find the prism to spread you color across the world!

And...can you finds the TACO ending?