Just recently finished a game dev class, and this was my submission to the final project. I definitely put more effort into it than I probably should have, but the game itself is actually quite addictive. Hope you enjoy!
And sorry that it doesn't look all that good; I'm still getting used to making art in PICO-8.
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You Can Only Shoot Sideways is a pure action game where you battle against endless waves of enemies that spawn from the edges of the screen. Each of the 20 levels must be completed by surviving until a boss appears and then defeating the boss. There's also an endless mode that spawns waves of random enemies for as long as you can survive.
The game is also on itch.io here.
5 comments
when running the attached program, it sometimes crashes picotron. It seems that if I open picotron back up, load the cart, and run it, it works fine. But if I then edit a variable such as
spread the cart crashes picotron upon running.
Edit:
It now crashes all the time 🙃
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A couple NES game music covers.
The first is "Demon Seed" from Konami's Castlevania III.
The second is "World Enslaved" from Tecmo's Ninja Gaiden II.
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IBS Runner
Parkour with IBS!
A procedurally generated rooftop parkour game with an... explosive twist. You burst out of a porta-potty and sprint across city rooftops. Miss a landing and you plummet to your doom. But when the gaps get too wide, hit that boost button -- brown and orange flames shoot from your butt as you rocket across the skyline. Your character's strained face says it all.
Features
• Procedurally generated cityscape -- every run is different
• IBS Boost -- activate while airborne for extra thrust (with flame particles!)
• Somersault landings -- every touchdown triggers a forward tuck-and-roll
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Kin Rummy is a points based card game with two distinct game mode:
- 500 - The first player to 500 points wins
- Exhaust - Once the draw pile runs out, the player with the most points wins
Tutorial
The in-game tutorial can be accessed from the title screen by selecting TUTORIAL and is an interactive way to learn many of the game mechanics explained below.
Starting a Game
To begin, select START from the Title Screen:
Then you must select a Family and Game Mode:
Your family is a key part of Kin Rummy experience, and so each Family has a unique deck and Family color.
5 comments
Hi everyone! I am currently a third-year PhD student. My research topic is so niche that finding a thesis jury has become a real-life quest, so I decided to process that stress by making my very first PICO-8 game about it.
A fair warning: Much like the real PhD process, this is a game about the struggle, not the victory. It is a short, satirical RPG-style adventure where you explore a world that doesn't quite have room for your niche research. Can you find a single person to join your jury, or is the academic void too vast?
Controls
Arrows: Move and interact
X: Advance Dialogue
O: Toggle Music (Off by default)
This is my very first finished project! I’m still learning, so the music is a work in progress. If you have any tips on composition or general PICO-8 logic (especially regarding the music or SFX), I’d love to hear them!
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The King is dead! With no obvious heir, the King's once-loyal commanders immediately start squabbling for control over the rich royal lands and, ultimately, the kingdom. Two contenders have emerged: you, controlling the blue faction, and your rival, controlling the pink faction. Your sages assure you that, having seized the initiative, you are sure to emerge victorious with careful strategy.
Tetro Domain is a minimalist strategy game. You and your opponent take turns claiming territories within the royal lands. On each turn you may claim a vacant territory adjacent to either the central castle or to a territory you have already claimed. Any territory completely enclosed by your claimed territories is also immediately claimed for you.
Some territories contain mines with a value ranging from 1 to 3. The game ends once one player controls a majority of the total value of the mines; that player is declared the winner. (Controlling the wealth of the mines ensures that their ultimate bid for the whole kingdom will be successful.)
The rules are explained in full in a short set of in-game "how to play" screens.
General controls:
- 🅾️ to confirm; ❎ to cancel
- on the game map, 🅾️ to claim a territory; ❎ to summon in-game menu
From a design/mathematical perspective, Tetro Domain is built around the idea of the strategy-stealing argument. This argument proves that the first player has a winning strategy, but it does so nonconstructively: it does not provide any indication of what that winning strategy might be.
Update (v2, 3/19/2026): Fixed a small bug where returning to the main menu after viewing the story blurb was erroneously resetting the title music
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Here's a little drum sequencer. 8 independent channels/voices. Each channel can have an unique length, can be muted/unmuted, and can play forward or in pingpong mode, providing lots of poly-rhythm possibilities and performability. The whole sequence can be paused/restarted. There is currently no save feature. I didn't spend very long creating the sounds. Perhaps someone can make better sounds and reuse this.
There is a fair bit of jitter, inconsistency in how the beats are triggered. Everything I have found suggests this might be due to a limitation in the way Pico-8 generates timers based on fps. Does anyone have any suggestions to smooth this out? I'm at a loss with that problem.
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How to play
- Go fast, go far, stay alive.
- Accelerating, hitting cars or using your EMP depletes your battery.
- Get close to other cars to recharge your battery.
- Once you have enough energy, use your EMP to clear the road
Controls
- Left/Right arrows : turn
- Up arrow/O button/W key : accelerate
- Down arrow : brake
- X button/X key : trigger EMP (when charged up)
Credits
A big thank you to @Piero, @Scotaire, @voidgazerBon and my partner for playtesting and for their feedback!
Cart label by @thesailor
Fade to black code by @zep
10 comments
I made a really tiny game where you put bunnies in bed.
I made it because I was really really sleepy.
Arrow keys to move, Z to select bunnies.
Take the matching color bunnies to the matching color beds.
3 comments
A little toy that spins and transforms an array of lines to make some cool patterns.
⧗⧗⧗ Made in just a week! ⧗⧗⧗
★ Controls! ★
Use the arrow keys ⬆️⬇️⬅️➡️ to spin and curve the line(s)
Use ❎🅾️ to flip through the menu and ⬆️⬇️⬅️➡️ to toggle and tweak the spiral EVEN FURTHER!
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A small rabbit goes on a quest ... !
Use Z to dash into foxes and dodge fireballs while pushing boxes to unlock levels of the tower.
Made over a weekend (with some edits after).
Credits:
Bodhi: Sprites, Animation, Movement
Matthew: Enemies, Special Effects, Level Design
Ollie: Collision, Music, Sound Effects
1 comment
Cow Plinko
You are a masterful dairy farmer...FROM SPACE!!!
Made to test- tile object collision,gravity,points,sfx,music
You can and WILL get stuck, trying to figure this out
1 comment
Alpha Test – Tiny City Simulation
v0.02
Fire!
We have moved closer to the sun, Fire Stations help...
v0.01
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Simple Lua Syntaxer, making use of undocumented C tokenoid() (faster than creating the syntaxer in lua).
Will be documenting this on the Picotron Wiki later.
Many thanks to @xietanu for their help with figuring out tokenoid
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I'm potentially interested in making an RPG within Picotron, and I think that having a map is probably a good place to start before I add a player and enemies. My main problem is that the Picotron map editor is primarily for 2D maps, and while I could create a tile set to look 3D that would not solve collisions, or having the player sprite go behind certain parts of the map. So, right now, I'm thinking of trying to make a separate map editor, for this style of map, as I have seen other custom editors in Picotron before.
The way I want my map to look is to have two dimensions combined into one (height and depth) and leave the width alone. This means that sides parallel to the depth and height are not shown. Currently, my plan is to separate the world map into small sections of cubes, with dimensions defined in metadata. The file itself would be i32 userdata, one for each cube in the map. I haven't chosen an order for the bits, but I know what to include:
3 bits--Collisions on the left, top, and front sides of the cube.
2 comments