Space Toy
A 3D starfield toy that lets you accelerate up to warp speed. Press forward to enable warp mode, and back to slow back down.
Pressing buttons 5, 12, 13 and 14 (picotron buttons, 'x', 'f', 'g', and 'q' respectively) let you change the video mode if you like a pixel-y look. You can also press 4 ('c') to toggle full screen mode on the web version.
Press 4 to toggle fullscreen on and off.
Space Toy is my first picotron program.
Note:
Epilepsy warning! There is a flash when you reach maximum speed.
4 comments
BIRDOIDS! on steroids
A flocking simulation turned arcade game based on Craig Reynolds' Boids algorithm (1986)
Watch a flock of 40 birds swirl, scatter, and regroup across a handcrafted countryside — then hunt them down as a hungry predator!
About
Birdoids implements the classic three rules of flocking — separation, alignment, and cohesion — with a 270° field of view and nearest-neighbor limits for realistic emergent behavior. The birds react to threats, flee from eagles, and fill the sky with life.
The landscape features a village with a church, windmills, a lake with dock and reeds, farmers' fields, wandering animals, playing children, a kite, butterflies, hay bales, and plenty of ambient countryside sounds — all in pure PICO-8 pixel art.
Controls
- ❎ — flap / start game
- ⬅️ ➡️ — steer
- 🅾️ — toggle range visualization
- ⬆️ ⬇️ — toggle screen-wrap (intro)
- ⬅️ ➡️ — toggle attract mode sound (intro)
Game Modes
Attract Mode — sit back and watch the flock in action with optional sound
Arcade Mode — press ❎ to start! Flap, steer, and catch as many birds as you can before time runs out. Catch the golden bird for extra time. Watch out for the eagle — it steals 4 seconds on contact! Score enough to earn extended play.
Under the Hood
- Boids algorithm with all three Reynolds rules: separation, alignment, and cohesion
- 270° field of view (0.42 turn) per boid — they don't react to what's behind them
- Nearest-neighbor limit (7) to keep flock behavior realistic and save CPU cycles
- Eagle AI with three states: circling, diving, and leaving — it tracks the predator and swoops in for time-stealing attacks
- Procedural landscape — terrain, clouds, houses, trees, fields, flowers, bushes, brook, and lake are all generated at init from seeded randomness
- Ambient life — farm animals graze and turn, kids play and wave, walkers stroll, butterflies drift on sine waves, chimney smoke rises, windmill blades spin, and a kite bobs in the wind
- AI demo mode — the predator hunts autonomously in attract mode, chasing the nearest boid
- Screen-wrap toggle — boids and predator can wrap around or bounce off edges
- 19 SFX — flap, catch, crunch, countdown tick, ambient bird calls, eagle cries, frog croaks, cricket chirps, owl hoots, and more
Built entirely within PICO-8's constraints — no sprites used, everything is drawn with pset, line, rect, circ, and oval primitives.
Credits
Made by manhill and Claude AI (2025)
Boids algorithm: Craig Reynolds, "Flocks, Herds, and Schools: A Distributed Behavioral Model" (SIGGRAPH 1987)
6 comments
Hi! This is my first project in PICO-8, and I barely knew anything about coding when I started. It took me several days to finish, but it was worth it because it’s mainly a gift for my boyfriend.
It’s a very short game since it’s not meant to go any deeper. I know you might find a few bugs, but I was basically racing against the clock, haha.
I love my boyfriend very much, and I hope he likes it.
Story.
You are a hopeless cat who feels misunderstood by everyone. Life has become monotonous, yet there is still a need to keep moving forward through the forest in search of a reason, and of a life companion.
The environment changes as positive messages appear on the signs around the map, reflecting the new perspective of our protagonist.
3 comments
Batty
This game was made for the 2025 New Mexico Game Jam. You are a mother bat. Your babies are hungry! You must get food. Each night you must hunt, using your batty sonar to both find and stun your prey. This is my first Pico-8 game.
Gameplay
You must stun the bugs with your pulse in order to harvest them. Hit each bug with two pulses to stun it. A bug that's been hit once will have a small dot above it. One that's been hit twice will be stunned and slow and disoriented. Perfect prey for you! Then simply fly into them. Bugs that haven't been stunned are not edible.
Some bugs (red) are invisible to you until your echolocation reveals them.
Credits
Music from here, courtesy of snabisch on itch.io.
3 comments
Release 0.2.2 added the following:
Added: processes receive window gui messages at the top level: click, doubleclick, tap, doubletap, drag, release, hover
Out of these events, all work at the Window level except for 'drag' and 'release'. (Note that all of these events work as expected when applied to a GUI element, just not to the Window)
Minimal code to test and show the bug as follows:
on_event("release", function(msg)
cls()
print(pod(msg))
end)
function _draw()
end |
This should print the event message to the screen, but nothing happens. If you change "release" above to "click" (for example), then you will see the event message printed. Both "release" and "drag" produce nothing, all the other events listed above produce output as expected.
For anyone running into this issue, you can replicate most of the functionality using the "mouse" event which captures every mouse event. But this workaround requires more manual work.
0 comments
squirt
Hi I'm new to Pico 8 and this is my first game. I've tried to make games before on other engines but didn't get far. this is almost a completed game.
The game is heavily inspired by the ZX Spectrum game PSST! which was one of the first games I ever played sometime in the mid 1980s.
Pick up cans and spray the bugs to protect your plant. Different can colors work on different bugs. you must put the can back on an empty shelf before picking up another color.
8 comments
ill leave the context aside for now, but:
im trying to come up with icons for the various buttons of btn(). the ones in color 7 are the original ones, the ones in color 6 are ones i came up with, and the ones in color 13 i have no idea for. im trying to keep it 8x8 max size, 5x7 ideal size, and one color, to coincide with the built-in icons in pico-8 and picotron; and nonspecific, so they can fit any arbitrary project.
button 6 is the pause button, so i gave it a classic pause icon; buttons 12 and 13 are a :) face and a <3 heart, which im happy with but im sure theres better ideas out there; buttons 14 and 15 are left and right bumpers, pretty self explanatory.
any suggestions or ideas?
15 comments
I'm just beginning to use pico-8, and this is a simple project I made a while ago.
Scoring:
Coin - 5
Coins - 10
Ring - 15
Chest - 30
Ruby - 50
7 - 100
multiplied by however many patterns you get:
3 in a row (any direction) - x5
4 in a row - x10
5 in a row - x25
4 corners - x15
Wide V or N across the grid - x25
O shape - x40
if you run out of money, just reroll again to top yourself up.
Let me know if you have any improvements or comments!
1 comment
Code Breaker
Code Breaker is a shoot'em up, score builder game where destroying viruses that have invaded your computer requires precision shooting and dodging.
Controls
To move the anti-virus left and right/spend points on anti-virus upgrades use the arrow keys.
To dash/exit menu use X (x on a keyboard)
To shoot/choose menu option use O (z on a keyboard)
Controls can be inverted in the settings menu in the game.
2 comments
Hello! Here's my game called BUTTER!. And a little story behind it: In 1981, when I was 13, I wrote a small BASIC program called OFF-SHORE for my Atari 800. You had to land a small helicopter on an oil rig.
The game was good for its time, but it got lost. Recently, I learned about the Pico 8 and was immediately thrilled. Could I re-write my old heli landing game? But what was I supposed to do? I only know a little Atari BASIC. The answer is obvious: BUTTER! is an AI product. Aside from the game idea and the precise vision of what my game should look like, my contribution to the game is very small.
I hope you like it!
On to the Game:
Your mission:
2 comments
DICE-SECTOR
a PICO-8 Shmup developed with passion
Controls
Press "X" or "❎" on your controller to fire weapons
Press "C" or "🅾️" on your controller to change weapons
Use keyboard's arrow keys or controller pad to move your ship
Attention!
special weapons have a heat effect and in order to keep using them you need to wait or to grab a cool-down pick up
Rules
Defeat all enemies
Have fun (:
If you destroy an enemy while is attacking then you get more points
Something about the game
This is the second game I've ever developed and I had a lot of fun doing it.
6 comments
This is a generator for Mythic Bastionland. It tolls 18 times on character sparks, but you can swap languages (left/right), make a new roll (down) or look at previous characters (up).
now supports rolling knights too!
0 comments
roll lots and lots of up to 3 different colored dice!!!
cpu will start to lag above ~40 dice so be warned
up/down: add/remove 1 die
left/right: add/remove 5 dice
Z: roll dice
results show up when all dice stop rolling
1 comment
The Last Spellcaster
Controls
- left/right: move
- z: jump
- x: attack (once you acquire spells)
- down + down (tap twice) to change spell.
- enter/menu: access to some special option (still in progress)
Brief description:
This is a platform game with skill progression, combat, and environmental puzzle solving.
It is inspired by metroidvania games, wich I am a big fan of.
The player has four main spell it can learn and cast:
10 comments
