Build a PICO-8 platformer in under 5 minutes

Drop in a sprite sheet, set your animations, and generate a fully playable platformer instantly.

Made for quickly prototyping platformers without writing boilerplate code.

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👉 Try the Builder

Suggestions for updates are welcome!
Post a GIF of the character you made!

===>Pro Sprite Tips<===

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How to use

1. Create your character (name + animations)
2. Click Copy
3. Open a new PICO-8 cart
4. Paste (CTRL+V)
5. Add your sprites to the sprite sheet
6. Press ▶️ and play

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Sprite sheet

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platformer builder tool kit animation code cool

How to play : L move left, R move right, U deploy wings, O head facing left, X head facing right

First game, first playable version,
Still a lot of work todo, upload for critics
Any remarks are welcome

An old prototype of raycaster. Was somewhat going to become a dungeon crawler with mostly color ramps of red, green, blue and white colors but it never came to be anything other than a prototype.

Note that Pico Pico is referred to as ピコピコ here, and Pico-8 as ピコ8, as a Japanese-style shorthand 😂

Where did the name PICO-8 come from?

It came from the Japanese phrase ピコピコ, which is an onomatopoeia for retro audio (commonly used to say "retro/lo-fi")

Writing ピコピコ in ピコ8

@zep added the entire Japanese glyphset to ピコ8, which makes sense due to the language including the naming basis for the console.

Steps to type ピコピコ / ピコ8

- ピコピコ
-- [Ctrl+K] for Katakana (カタカナ)
-- Type this: [PICO]‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎‎ ‎‎(‎ ‎ ‎ピコ‎‎ ‎ ‎)

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pico8 picopico naming

I made an interactive wallpaper for my elemental dragon character Clun (クルーン). He spins and creates tornadoes and plays the trumpet/cornet.

Responds to theme colors.

Please enjoy spinning him on your desktop!

Also check out the Screensaver!

wallpaper dragon character cornet

Probably maintenance, worth a report anyhow!

More importantly:
Having filenav open for a while and tabbing out then back in absolutely jumbled my theme:

Moments later, after tabbing out and back in again, it was fixed:

* Edit: It did it again! Only this time is didn't magically fix itself while I was looking away. I'll save the log just in case.

I wanted to compare and benchmark my 2 game object management systems. One's a componsitional OOP system, whereas the other one is designed to be a SoA-style ECS system. I was pretty sure that the ECS version was going to perform better, but I wasn't completely sure because of PICO-8's weird performance behaviour, hence the benchmark. The two carts are handling basically the exact same scene/scenario, just using the two different systems, so hopefully, it gives a relatively accurate performance comparison. From what I can tell the ECS system does perform notably better with this particular benchmark though the token hit is pretty big e.g. OOP carts tokens:724, ECS carts tokens:1497.

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benchmark

A simple particle effect backdrop I threw together for a placeholder title screen.

screensaver

Hello.

After a long journey you finally arrive at the Castle of Penrhyn, your quest for treasures and glory is about to start!

Explore the castle, fight enemies, grab some loot, and maybe you will reach your goal.

This is my second Pico8 game, a small "Zelda like" top down adventure, with a little bit of Darksoul inspiration (it's not a soul game though).

It started has a small POC project, and grow a little bit more than expected, the cart is now full (almost max token reach).

Hope you enjoy this adventure!

Controls

• Top/Right/Down/Left to move
• x to attack
• c(o) to dash or interact

Credits

• Various code taken from the tutorial and guide by

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action rpg adventure

Picotron Bamboo

First Project :)
Its a recreation of a demo on the picotron homepage. (The GIF next to "Bundled Tools")
Press "C" or "Z" to hide the player

Any feedback is appreciated

also:
Can someone tell me how to get this onto splore?

bamboo picotron first

A nice chill screen saver to relax to after nimbly handling awkward social encounters with local The Cheats. This screensaver is a port of take-a-break.exe from the Strong Bad Email Huttah! (https://homestarrunner.com/sbemails/60-huttah). Loops endlessly, there are no controls.

Testimonial: "Aahhh... so relaxing. Fshhhhhhhhh! Fshhhhhhhhh! Listen to the waves, man. Oh, hello my wingèd friend!" - Strong Bad

homestar-runner strong-bad beach screensaver

Merge your army -> Defend your wall -> Survive the waves !

Bastion Merge is a minimalist strategy game combining merge mechanics and tower defense!
This is my third game released on this fantasy console, after "Missing Jewel" and "Ghost Thief Pico".

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Gameplay :

-> Merge your units to upgrade them
-> Defend your bastion against waves of enemies
-> Earn gold and unlock new tiles
-> Optimize your grid to survive as long as possible

Every decision matters: merge now… or wait for a better combination?

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merge tower-defense puzzle medieval knights

A randomly moving small ball with dislocation

hiii HIII so as a beginner project I made this pong clone! It's not much and it's bad but I made it all myself without following a tutorial so YAY!

Controls: Use the Up and Down arrows to Move your paddle. Press X to get through the Title Screen and to reset after a Serve.

first-game pong funny

The Final version is here!

Use arrow keys to move around.
Use C or Z to jump.
Collect keys to get to the next level.

Wake up in an Abandoned Robot Factory, and find the exit to the outside world!

My quest to provide more zero-player games for the PICO-8 community continues with... Wunderball!

Zero-Player Drama!

Welcome to ​Wunderball​, a zero-player elimination game with needlessly high stakes. Twelve competitors gather to pass a ball, aiming not to have it in hand when its randomized timer hits zero. If they're caught holding the ball at that point, they're out!

Play continues until one player remains. Then their title defense begins!

Features

• Endless play​: Games play to completion without you, and the next round begins automatically after the winner takes a moment to celebrate. Watch games for as long or as little as you want.
• Immense competitor variety​​: Procedural generation gives random colors, names, throwing styles, holding tendencies, and celebrations to each competitor. Enjoy the emergent personalities!
• ​Massive name database​: A huge database of serious and silly names almost always ensures a fresh cast of competitors each game.​
• ​Effortless rooting interest​: Divergent styles and strategies among the competitors makes it easy to find one to cheer on. The winner of the previous game sticks around to defend their crown, so you can root for their continued success or swift ruination.
• ​Pause feature​: Halt the action at any point to take in the scene, capture a screenshot, step aside for a break, or whatever.​

Controls

Being a zero-player game, Wunderball is not controlled by player inputs. However, the following buttons can start or pause the proceedings:

Action	PICO-8​	Keyboard	​
Start Game	X​	X	​
Pause Game	O​	Z​

Etc.

You can find Wunderball on Itch

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zero-player

Full features:

Gameplay — 5 levels with increasingly complex obstacles: Level 2 has a horizontal wall, Level 3 adds a vertical one, Level 4 has a corner obstacle, and Level 5 is a full-fledged maze. The snake's speed increases with each level (10→8→7→6→5 frames/move).

Audio — Three sound effects: sfx_eat (ascending blip when eating), sfx_die (descending crunch when dying), sfx_lvl (4-note fanfare when leveling up). The background music loops differently for each level using a characteristically changing scale.

Gameboy Visuals — 4 Gameboy-style colors: #0f380f (black), #306230 (dark green), #8bac0f (light green), #9bbc0f (bright yellow-green). All art is from the code: cross-textured walls, snake with tracking eyes, animated food pulses, particles when eating, level transitions with progress bars.

Controls — Arrow keys (desktop) + swipe (mobile). Tap/press Z or Enter to start.

Prompt:

Create a multi-level snake game for pico-8 with sound, music, and art created from code. The color theme is gameboy. (Sonnet 4.6)

Update:

• add/fix background music.

snake gameboy

I found out about Voxatron many many years ago via the humble debut bundle they did however I had no idea they had spun it off into Pico-8 and now Picotron! What a hugely exciting discovery I just wish it wasn't Sunday!

Hope to start learning lots about this soon!!!

firstgame